What is Happening at Hadassah?

Well. I didn’t think that this would be the subject of my first/virgin/maiden (are any of these acceptable?) blog. It will be short but, I believe, important.

A young, emergency room doctor at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where my son David is a third year medical student, posted a heartfelt piece on Facebook this morning. She is a physician who loves her work. However it appears that our flagship medical institution paid all its staff only half their salary last month and haven’t yet paid the remainder. People are unable to pay rent/mortgage, buy food, meet standing orders.

I have not heard or read one item of news about this. No strikes, no demonstrations. If it were our educators they would be out on the streets….and rightly so!

I understand that this is not the first time this has occurred and that there have been some items in Ha’aretz about the parlous state of the hospital’s finances.

I’m sorry about the death of HaRav Ovadia Yosef (z”l), but the government ministries controlled by the party he founded, and led in the background until very recently, has distributed (my Facebook piece uses another word, but I suppose I need to be more circumspect when writing for an august journal) billions of shekels to highly dubious institutions and yet the government of our rich country cannot find enough to pay the emergency room doctors and nurses (and other staff). These are some of our finest men and women, working ridiculously long shifts saving the lives of all Israelis.

How about paying all government ministers and other senior bureaucrats only half their salaries. Let’s hear some protest voices guys!