The Life of Leah Chollak, the Woman Behind Ezer Mizion

Rebbetzin Leah Esther Chollak had only been married two months when her father suffered a serious stroke. This difficult situation became the catalyst for the birth of an organization providing medical assistance to patients all over Israel.

As Rebbetzin Leah’s husband, Rabbi Chananya Chollak, sat at his father-in-law’s side in various hospitals, he had occasion to observe the difficulties facing other patients’ families. He saw parents struggle to divide their time between hospitalized children and little ones at home, families at bedsides with no food to maintain their strength, and patients forced to rely on costly ambulances for their frequent hospital visits.

These and other challenges, intuited Reb Chollak, could be resolved with some careful coordination, some kindhearted individuals, and a little elbow grease. He began arranging for people to stay with hospital patients to give relatives a much-needed break. He invested in a van to transport kidney dialysis patients to and from the hospital for free. His wife Leah began bringing her home-cooked meals to the hospital. In 1979, from the modest Chollak home, the organization we now know as Ezer Mizion — Israel’s largest health support organization — was born.

And behind the scenes, Rebbetzin Leah Chollak a”h was the heart and soul of the nascent organization.

Humble Beginnings

“At first, we were living in a two-room apartment. That was where it all began,” Rabbi Chollak remembers during the shivah for Rebbetzin Leah. “Families of sick people and others who needed our help came to see us there. We didn’t have a shred of privacy. Leah would be sitting in the other room with five small children, trying to raise them with a sense of normalcy. And I would think to myself, ‘Master of the Universe, how is she able to do it all in this small apartment? She needs so much strength.’

Limited space and the critical nature of the work required Leah to keep all of the organization’s documents in precise order. “The ‘office’ in our home was a single cabinet where we kept the files and all the papers,” Rabbi Chollak continues. “The cabinet would be closed for Shabbos, and my righteous rebbetzin would light Shabbos candles on top of it. That cabinet held within it all the merits we had accumulated throughout the week.”

Even once the Chollaks moved to a larger apartment on Rechov Eshel Avraham — where Reb Chananya currently lives — Ezer Mizion still overtook their home.

Rabbi Chollak points to the wall, explaining, “Everything took place within these four walls; it was so small and cramped, packed with medical equipment people would come to borrow. And Leah welcomed everyone in as if they were her only children, and along with that, she took care of our family.”