Beneath the Hospital, a Village

Yolande Bloomstein Weiss wrote in the Jewish Standard about her experience underground at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem during the war with Iran. Her husband, Rabbi Abner Weiss, was battling sepsis when the hospital moved stable patients to its empty level -3. Within hours, nurses, workers and families transformed the concrete hall into a functioning field hospital.

“Through it all, the nurses remained calm — steady, focused, deeply kind,” she wrote. “Jews and Arabs worked side by side as family members helped. Half the workers were Arabs. Half were Jews. Down there, those distinctions felt irrelevant.”

What emerged was a village: “We shared updates, offered comfort, hugged strangers who no longer felt like strangers. Fear was present, certainly — but so was tenderness. So was solidarity.”

Rabbi Weiss is now recovering. Read the full story in the Jewish Standard.