Meet the Jewish couple funding Christian missionary hospitals in Africa

• Author: ASAF SHALEV/JTA
• Published date: 07 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Rabbi Erica Gerson and her husband, Mark, a businessman, who helped found the African Mission Healthcare Foundation in 2010 and sit on its board, have now become possibly the largest private funders of Christian-provided medical care on the continent.

They say they don't feel any contradiction or unease about donating to missionary institutions because the hospitals provide what is often the best or even the only medical care available in some parts of Africa. As many as 50% of health care providers on the continent are "faith-based," according to estimates.

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"We feel animated by the Talmudic teaching that saving a single life is saving a world," said Erica, who was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and is a trustee of Rodeph Sholom School, a Jewish day school in New York.

Mark added: "My wife's a rabbi, and I'm the rabbi's husband. And so we study the Torah and do what we can to live by the Torah, which more than anything else it tells us to love the stranger."

The Gersons also send a lot of money to Israel, especially in support of United Hatzalah, a network of 6,000 volunteer medics who zip through traffic on motorcycles responding to emergencies before an ambulance can arrive.

The prevalence of missionary hospitals in Africa is a legacy of the 19th century when European groups sought to convert local populations, but, today, proselytizing isn't part of the care provided, according to David Toole, a Duke University professor of ethics, theology and global health, who is researching the role of mission hospitals in African health care systems.

In the countries Toole has studied, Catholic hospitals, for example, outperform the government ones. "And the people know that," Toole said. "So if you really get sick and you need care, you don't go to the government hospital."

The Christian hospitals' effectiveness is directly related to their missionary identity: "It has a lot to do with morale of the employees, the way the employees are treated and the sense of mission that the hospital has as a Christian institution serving to the community," Toole said. "They're not proselytizing in any overt way. But they are trying to live out by example, what it means to be Christian. And the community sort of responds to that."

Support for Christian hospitals in Africa has been dropping in recent...