Banging pots and pans

By Diane Schwartz, Collier/Lee Hadassah President

In this year of COVID-19, we see countries, communities and individuals honoring nurses and other health care workers across the spectrum by cheering them on at set times of the day. From balconies in France and Italy to communities across the country, grateful Americans joined the world to send out love, praise and admiration for nurses and other health care workers by banging pots and pans, singing and creating beautiful music — even opera.

Honoring the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, the World Health Organization (WHO) established the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife in 2020. The effort seeks to advance nurses’ vital role in transforming health care around the world. This is so appropriate at this time, during a pandemic.

In 1912, Henrietta Szold founded Hadassah. The first effort she created in the new organization was in support of then-Palestine. She sent two nurses to help deal with health issues in the developing land.

Hadassah’s roots in the field go back to 1913, when the fledgling organization sent nurses Rose Kaplan and Rae Landy to then-Palestine and laid the groundwork for building a health care infrastructure in Israel.

Expanding on that effort, Hadassah led to the inauguration of an Americanstyle visiting nurse program in Jerusalem. It also funded welfare stations, soup kitchens and other services for Palestine’s Jewish and Arab inhabitants.

How we have grown!

In a Hadassah Magazine profile of Hadassah nurses, we learn that nursing is America’s largest health care profession, with more than three million practitioners in settings as diverse as primary care offices, schools, midwifery clinics, research laboratories and hospitals.

Hadassah’s Nurses Council offers mentorship, networking events, webinars and continuing education to nearly 2,500 members in 35 chapters across the country, including veterans as well as beginners.

Council members meet with congressional staffers on Capitol Hill to promote initiatives around Jewish-associated health concerns, like breast cancer. Continuing a more than century-old legacy, Hadassah members, who are nurses, collaborate with the Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO) in Israel.

Florida’s own Susan Lafer from Tampa is a nurse and past region president of our Florida Central Region.

“The group offers profound satisfaction by integrating core aspects of members’ identity,” she says. “Hadassah is for women and it’s about advocacy. Nurses are patient advocates.”

To understand the true and deep meaning of nursing as part of Hadassah, explore the September/October 2020 issue of Hadassah Magazine, where you can learn about and hear from veteran nurses as well as those beginning in the profession here and in Israel.

For a further view of how closely HMO and Hadassah nurses were, and are, tied to the development of the state of Israel and Israel’s health care system, you can read a wonderful book, following the life of a Sabra woman who became a Hadassah nurse, trained at the Hadassah School of Nursing, working at Mt. Scopus, the first hospital Hadassah opened. The nonfiction book, “Raquela, a Woman of Israel,” by Ruth Gruber, is a gripping and fascinating look at the life experience of Raquela and the work of Hadassah in the founding and development of Israel.

All Hadassah members can be proud of what we have accomplished, but we don’t stop there.

We are builders of the future for our children and grandchildren, both here and in Israel.