The Klausenberger Rebbe’s vision for a hospital based on Torah values came to him during the Holocaust

Illustrations: Marion Bellina

Named for: the first donors to the cause

Laniado Hospital in Netanya, founded by the Klausenberger Rebbe, Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam ztz”l, has become the standard for excellent medical care in the Jewish world and beyond. Sanz-Klausenberg chassidim manage the hospital, which today is under the direction of the current Rebbe, Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Halberstam.

The Klausenberger Rebbe’s vision for a hospital based on Torah values came to him during the Holocaust, when he self-treated a Nazi-inflicted gunshot wound on his arm with a leaf and a branch. He promised himself that if he got out of that inferno alive, he’d build a hospital in Eretz Yisrael where every patient would be treated with dignity and where all the doctors and nurses would believe in G-d and know that they were fulfilling the greatest mitzvah in the Torah.

Rabbi Halberstam spent 15 years fundraising. The first major donation was a $300,000 bequest from Swiss banking brothers Alphonse and Yaakov Avraham Laniado (originally from Aleppo, Syria), and the hospital would be named for them.

Laniado first opened with a maternity clinic in 1976, and the hospital continued to expand each year. Today it boasts a vast campus that includes units for radiology, hematology, pediatric emergency, oncology, in-vitro fertilization, geriatrics, women’s health, a nursing school, and a research center.

Did you know:

The Rebbe viewed Laniado as a Torah institution just like those that surrounded the campus. He instructed that it should never close, even during doctors’ strikes, and that everything possible be done to keep patients alive and improve their quality of life.

The first cure for West Nile virus was discovered by Laniado researchers.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 878)