Page 199 - ירושלים: גיליון רפואי

Jerusalem Genizah

Shaare Zedek, A Communal Hospital

Shaare Zedek Hospital was the first Jewish hospital in Jerusalem established in the
new sector of the city. It was inaugurated on Tuesday, January 28, 1902, in the presence
of the city’s ruling pasha and community leaders. The hospital is renowned as a major
institution in Jerusalem, and its history is bound up with the history of the city in the
20th century.

The idea of founding the hospital began in 1873, when representatives of the Jewish
community in Jerusalem traveled to Germany. The envoys told of the problems they
were having with the Christian mission, which was offering the services of their doctors
and medication to the indigent Jews of Jerusalem. The founders of the hospital wanted
to establish a modern medical institution in Jerusalem which would serve the city’s
population with the most up-to-date medical and scientific know-how and methods
of treatment.

The first patient was 29-year-old Chana Rabinowitz, wife of Joshua, a butcher from the
Ashkenazi community, who suffered from an infection in her uterus, and who recovered
after a short hospital stay. Thousands of patients’ names were registered in the hospital’s
records, and medical files were opened for each patient. These files were to be preserved
for 100 years. At Shaare Zedek and other medical institutions, the files hold volumes of
patient information: names, ailments, treatments given, as well as the patients’ origin,
occupation, family background, and connection to the community, neighborhood, and so
on. Those unique “genizot” (archives) store important information concerning Jerusalem’s
population, and should be safe-guarded and used for research purposes.

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