Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization of America is an American Jewish volunteer women's organization. Founded in 1912 by Henrietta Szold, it is one of the largest international Jewish organizations, with nearly 300,000 members in the United States."Building towers in the sky", Haaretz Hadassah fundraises for community programs and health initiatives in Israel, including the Hadassah Medical Organization, two leading research hospitals in Jerusalem. In the US, the organization advocates on behalf of women's rights, religious autonomy and US–Israel diplomacy. In Israel, Hadassah supports health education and research, women's initiatives, schools and programs for underprivileged youth. It is also a partner of the Israel Coalition for Trauma."What we do"
History
Origins At a meeting at Temple Emanu-El in New York City on February 24, 1912, Henrietta Szold together with other Zionist women, proposed to the Daughters of Zion study circle that they expand their purpose and embrace proactive work to help meet the health needs of Palestine's people. The goal was to promote the Zionist ideal through education, public health initiatives, and the training of nurses in what was then the Palestine region of the Ottoman Empire. Because the meeting was held around the time of Purim, the women called themselves "The Hadassah chapter of the Daughters of Zion," adopting the Hebrew name of Queen Esther. Szold became the first president. Within a year, Hadassah had five growing chapters in New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago and Boston. Its charter articulates twin goals: to begin public-health initiatives and nurses training in Palestine, and to foster Zionist ideals through education in America.
The first years: Establishing healthcare in Palestine In 1913, Hadassah sent two nurses to Palestine, Rose Kaplan and Rae Landy. They set up a small public health station in Jerusalem to provide maternity care and treat trachoma, a dreaded eye disease rampant in the Middle East. The core of future Hadassah education programs emerged when Jessie Sampter founded The Hadassah School of Zionism in New York in 1915. The school required chapter leaders to take courses, instituted a correspondence course and inspired other Hadassah chapters to create their own Schools of Zionism. Sampter published "A Course in Zionism," a collection of facts, essays, and reading lists financed by prominent American Zionist, Judge Louis Brandeis.
By 1916, Hadassah established the Palestine Purchasing and Supplies Department (later the Hadassah Supplies Bureau) to buy and ship items unavailable in the yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine. Although Hadassah's first two nurses were compelled to return to America in 1915, the physicians with whom they had co-operated– Dr. Avraham Ticho and Dr. Helena Kagan – as well as the midwives and probationers were able to carry on their work.Reifler, David M. Days of Ticho: Empire, Mandate, Medicine, and Art in the Holy Land. Gefen Publishing House, 2015/5775, pp 133-4, 144.
Hadassah established the American Zionist Medical Unit (AZMU) in 1918, which was composed of 45 doctors, nurses, dentists and sanitary engineers. The sole female physician in the group was Sophie Rabinoff. The unit was set up to combat the intolerable health conditions of postwar Palestine and to create permanent health and welfare programs. From the beginning, it established a principle that it would serve all with equal care, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity or nationality. The AZMU helped to establish six hospitals in Palestine which were then turned over to municipal authorities. Led by Alice Seligsberg, the unit sailed for Palestine in June, bringing desperately needed drugs, medical instruments and supplies, linen and clothing. That year, Hadassah also founded a nursing school to train local personnel and create a cadre of nurses. Over the next few years, the unit, based in the old Rothschild Hospital in Jerusalem, initiated American-style health and welfare programs with intensive campaigns to wipe out malaria, cholera, trachoma and scalp diseases in many Jewish communities in the yishuv. The unit organized a sanitation program and founded Hadassah hospitals in Jaffa, Tiberias, and Safed, as well as opened the Nurses Training School at the Rothschild Hospital in Jerusalem. The first 22 young women graduated from Hadassah's Nurses' Training School in 1921. In 1924, the unit's name is changed to Hadassah Medical Organization."History of Hadassah"
In 1919, Hadassah organized the first School Hygiene Department in Palestine to give routine health examinations to Jerusalem school children. During the Arab riots of 1920, Hadassah nurses cared for the wounded on both sides. Henrietta Szold also moved to Jerusalem that year to develop community health and preventive care programs. Back in New York in 1920, Alice Seligsberg formed Junior Hadassah, which provided innovative programs for young women who wanted to participate in Hadassah's Zionist mission. In the same year, Henrietta Szold moved to Palestine to lead the medical work started by the unit. She remained based in Jerusalem until her death in 1945.
In 1921, Hadassah nurse Bertha Landsman created Palestine's first permanent infant welfare station, Tipat Halav (Drop of Milk), in Jerusalem. The overwhelming success inspired Hadassah to expand the program, delivering fresh milk to needy families by "donkey express." Hadassah also opened a hospital in Tel Aviv, the city's first hospital. Under Hadassah's philosophy of "devolution," it initiated and developed a number of facilities and projects and then transferred them to the appropriate municipalities. Hadassah transferred administration of this hospital to the Tel Aviv municipality in 1931.
1923: Hadassah instituted a school lunch program to teach nutrition and serve healthy meals to children and teenagers in Palestine. Pennies are collected by American Hebrew school students to fund this project, which is devolved to the Israeli government in 1950, with Hadassah's support ending in 1954.
1924: Nathan Straus contributed $10,000 with which Hadassah develops its Infant Welfare Stations into a complete network, extending from Jerusalem to Tiberias. Pamphlets were distributed to all Hadassah chapters for five cents each.
1925: Junior Hadassah assumed sole support of the Meir Shfeyah Children's Village, a youth village housing World War I orphans and socially disadvantaged children (devolved to the Israel Ministry of Agriculture in 1953, with Hadassah continuing limited financial support).
1926: Hadassah forms a partnership with the Jewish National Fund (JNF), also known as Keren Keyemeth LeYisrael (KKL), an organization established in 1901 by the Fifth World Zionist Congress to purchase and transform land in Palestine for Jewish farming, housing, roads, and recreation. JNF became, and has remained, a major Hadassah project in Israel. Hadassah opens Palestine's first tuberculosis ward in its Safed hospital, which becomes the region's tuberculosis center in 1935 (devolved to the Israeli government in 1957).
1927: The cornerstone is laid at a solemn ceremony for the Nathan and Lina Straus Health Center in Jerusalem, conceived as a model for future health centers in Palestine, with funding from Nathan Straus. According to Dr. E. M. Bluestone, then Director of the Hadassah Medical Organization, this center would serve as the headquarters of the Health Welfare Department of the Hadassah Medical Organization, with space devoted to new health activities. Through the decades many preventive health programs were housed in this building - a dental clinic, children's exercise programs, and Nathan Straus' milk pasteurization plant among others.
1928: Hadassah's urban recreational activities program begins with the supervision of the Guggenheimer Playgrounds, with funds from the estate of Bertha V. Guggenheimer. By 1950, when the playgrounds were devolved to the Israel Government's Department of Education, the program had grown to fifty playgrounds throughout the country where urban children had a safe, sanitary place to play.
1929: Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO) opens the Nathan and Lina Straus Health Center to serve Jerusalem's growing population, made possible by a large gift from the Straus family. (Operates today as an outpatient facility in downtown Jerusalem)
Youth Aliyah 1933: Recha Freier begins Youth Aliyah (Jugendaliyah, Aliyat Hano'ar) in Berlin, working with German youth leaders to resettle Jewish children in Palestine. Henrietta Szold is appointed the first Director of Youth Aliyah by the governing council of the Yishuv, the Va'ad Le'umi.
1934: Youth Aliyah's first 43 wards arrive in Haifa. In what becomes a lifelong practice, Henrietta Szold greets them at the dock and accompanies them to Kibbutz Ein Harod. The cornerstone is laid on Mount Scopus for the Rothschild-Hadassah University Hospital (RHUH) and new quarters for Hadassah's Nurses' Training School.
1935: Spearheaded by National President Rose Jacobs, Convention delegates accept Youth Aliyah as an official Hadassah project and establish Hadassah as its sole American sponsor. Palestine's first social-service programs begin when Hadassah opens the Nettie Lasker Social Service Department in Jerusalem.
1936: In honor of Henrietta Szold's 75th birthday, the name of the nursing school is officially changed during graduation ceremonies to the Henrietta Szold Hadassah-Hebrew University School of Nursing. October 21 is the Groundbreaking ceremony for the Hadassah-Hebrew University Hospital and Medical School on Mt. Scopus, attended by Henrietta Szold, David Ben-Gurion, hospital architect Erich Mendelsohn and others Young Judaea, the oldest Zionist youth movement in the U.S. (founded 1909), joins the Hadassah family when Hadassah agrees to provide partial funding for the movement. The British Royal Commission, known as the Peel Commission, praised the work of Hadassah in its 1937 report:The Hadassah Medical Organization has developed a widespread system of clinics in Jewish centres and hospitals in the principal towns...Though naturally the Jewish population benefited most, the Hadassah medical services were available to all the communities in Palestine and many of the poorer classes amongst the Arabs received much assistance from the work of the organization. This disinterested philanthropy of Hadassah deserves recognition: it was a real step towards the promotion of good feeling between the two races; but unhappily the effect of its work was impaired by other influences.1939: The Rothschild-Hadassah University Hospital on Mount Scopus, the first teaching hospital and medical center in Palestine, opens on May 9. New Scopus quarters for the celebrated Henrietta Szold-Hadassah School of Nursing are also dedicated. When World War II begins in Europe on September 1, Hadassah begins war emergency shipments of medical supplies, equipment, food, drugs and clothing to Palestine. Hadassah began the Palestine Supplies Bureau in the 1920s.
Advocacy in the U.S. 1940: Hadassah and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) form the American Zionist Youth Commission, establishing Hadassah as Young Judaea's co-sponsor. Hadassah forms an American Affairs Committee, the core of today's American Affairs programs, reflecting Hadassah's concern with the ideals of democracy, freedom and justice in the U.S. and in the yishuv. War relief and defense of democracy are two immediate committee projects. Former Hadassah national president Rose Jacobs starts the Committee for the Study of Arab-Jewish Relations to promote "Zionism's unfinished agenda", co-existence between Palestine's two major populations.
1941–1970: Building healthcare in Israel