Connection and Community on a Hadassah Evolve Leadership Fellows Trip to Israel

At a time when many people are still overly fearful about going to Israel, 10 Hadassah Evolve Leadership Fellows, including three from my own Hadassah Central Pacific Coast Region (CPC), traveled to Israel this past February to celebrate and appreciate the country, its people and the extraordinary work of Hadassah.

Tory Roman of Piedmont, Leah Bloom of Oakland and I from Santa Rosa—all Californians–represented the CPC Region, joining Evolve Fellows from across the US. The 10-day trip took us from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and from the Gaza Envelope to the Lebanese border. Although each woman had been to Israel multiple times before this, none of the CPC Region Fellows had visited since October 7, 2023, making this mission particularly poignant.

The trip also offered us a chance to see our organization’s greatest gems – its contributions to Israel’s medical care, through its two hospitals in Jerusalem, and to youth development through its Youth Aliyah villages. For those  like me who are rather new to Hadassah, the visit fully connected us to Hadassah’s mission for the first time.

Hadassah Evolve Fellow Leah Bloom at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus Underground Unit. Photo courtesy of the author.

Hadassah Evolve Member Tory Ross Roman near Metula. Photo courtesy of the author.

At the Hadassah Medical Organization’s Mount Scopus Hospital, we were awed by the underground parking lot that had been transformed into an on-call, 130-bed emergency and intensive care medical facility in two weeks immediately after the Oct 7 war began. Thankfully, this underground facility has never been needed, but it stands ready in the event of attacks on hospitals in northern Israel or on Mt. Scopus itself.

Also on the Mt. Scopus campus is the stand-alone Gandel Rehabilitation Center, a work-in-progress that already provides innovative, multimodal rehabilitative therapies.

Across town at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem, we met three amazing women, who have been balancing medical careers, home life and military responsibilities. We learned about the challenges of completing an orthopedic surgery education while serving as a medical officer for the Gaza Region; of staying focused while identifying those who were killed on October 7 and since; and of reimagining the mental health care paradigm for treating trauma patients when the trauma is still ongoing.

The Hadassah Neurim Youth Aliyah Village is at its core a home for at-risk youth, which provides them with education, counseling and love. It fosters independence, self-esteem and success. In addition to their regular classwork, students help out in the wild animal refuge, dog- training facility, or the organic nursery and farm. We were fortunate to not only tour the agricultural and wild life centers, but also to help plant seeds and to paint the agricultural center and to prepare activity boxes for the three coatis (large cat-sized mammals similar to raccoons) in the animal refuge. Making our day even better, all of this took place as we visited with students and admired the Mediterranean Sea’s incredible vista.

We participated in several volunteer projects, educational lectures and tours that placed Hadassah’s work in the larger picture of Israel today.  In Tel Aviv, we performed the simple yet essential task of inserting batteries and testing headlamps for soldiers; in Netivot, near the Gaza Strip, we bagged vegetables that had been donated for residents in need of fresh food; and in Shlomi, near the border with Lebanon, we cleaned an evacuated nursing home, preparing the rooms for crews of volunteers to stay in while they, in turn, rebuild the area.

We also bore witness to the October 7 massacre sites — the Nova Music Festival, Kibbutz Nativ HaAsara and the Sderot police department in the Gaza Envelope, where we heard from residents of that region. Though Israel is still living with tragedy every day, the heartbreak we saw and felt was outmatched by hope and resilience.

There is no question in my mind that the 2025 Evolve Fellows trip was instrumental in strengthening our connections to each other, renewing our bonds with Israel and deepening our understanding of Hadassah’s critical role in the country.

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Danielle is a member of the Hadassah Writers’ Circle, a dynamic and diverse writing group for leaders and members to express their thoughts and feelings about all the things Hadassah does to make the world a better place. It’s where they celebrate their personal Hadassah journeys and share their Jewish values, family traditions and interpretations of Jewish texts. Since 2019, the Hadassah Writers’ Circle has published nearly 500 columns in The Times of Israel Blogs and other Jewish media outlets. Interested? Please contact hwc@hadassah.org.