For the last three years, two afternoons a week, the Hadassah Medical Organization has offered visiting doctors an intensive medical Hebrew program. The whiteboard is filled with a mix of easy Hebrew terms alongside the words for laboratory (ma’abadah) and skull (gullgollet). There is also lo lazuz (don’t move) and lishbor (to break or fracture).
Among the students are an ophthalmologist from Panama, an Italian orthopedist and a radiologist who hails from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Beyond teaching, course leader Elisheva Pirard helps the doctors read their electric bills. She encourages them to try their Hebrew in the city too.
“A positive experience in Jerusalem helps build lasting bridges," she says.