Yad Sarah: New developments in Israel's oldest volunteer org

• Published date: 30 September 2021
• Author: LEAH ABRAMOWITZ
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

How many people know that there is a play center for special needs children in the afternoons in some of the branches; that a cadre of custom built vans exist to transport wheelchair bound elderly to wherever they have to go: for medical treatment, to family affairs and even shopping in the shuk. There is a division called Home Hospital Service, which enables people recovering from an illness to be cared for at home rather than in a medical center. This rather new Yad Sarah program makes this possible by providing basic essentials such as the loan of a hospital bed, a hoist if necessary, oxygen balloons, and even the periodic visits of home care staff – doctors, nurses and physiotherapists. "What a relief to be treated at home after my operation, rather than in a sterile hospital ward, next to another patient who snores all night or has loads of noisy visitors all day and night," says Noah, a recent recipient of this innovative benefit.

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How did Yad Sarah get started and what is its mission? The founder, former Jerusalem mayor Uri Lupolianski, had little expectations when he first started lending out inhalators to some young parents in his neighborhood whose babies or tots suffered from croup or bronchitis in the cold Jerusalem winter nights. "We were a young couple, just like most of our neighbors in Ezrat Torah," Uri recalled. "Our kids were always getting ear infections, colds and shortness of breath. But without the primitive inhalators they had then, we'd have to hospitalize our kids when they got sick. That was an undesirable solution for children and their parents. So we decided to open a gemach for inhalators, which no one had thought of before."

A gemach is a free loan society, which is usually located in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, a way to help one another (do a mitzva), either by lending money, cribs, bridal gowns, tools, tablecloths, even pacifiers and a host of other essentials.

"I remember the first time I wanted to build up a reserve of inhalators, I had to travel to the supplier in Tel Aviv. He couldn't sell me four machines all at once, so I came back with only two. Do you know how many inhalators Yad Sarah stocks today?" he asked me impishly. "Some 47,000!"

There are 84 other items that the various lending departments all over Israel can now supply with the down payment of a guaranty. They include milk suction machines for nursing mothers, sophisticated walkers and wheelchairs in tens of designs, urinals, pressure sore...