ing ill at ease in the hospital's nursing
school. Did Catholics call their hospitals
Catholic Hospital? Did the Presbyterians
call theirs Protestant Hospital? No, said
the rabbi, it was time for Jews to follow
suit — which they soon did, renaming the
hospital Sinai.
Other Jewish hospitals had made the
switch long before. At its founding, Jews
Hospital of New York accepted patients
outside the faith only in cases of emer-
gency. But after caring for riot victims and
Civil War wounded, the hospital decided to
open itself to everyone. It had always been
forthright about its Jewish roots, even to
the extent of boldly displaying its Hebrew
name, Beth Holim, on the facade of the
building. Still, in 1866, it became Mount
Sinai.
One Jewish hospital after another
opened its doors to men, women, and chil-
dren of every faith. And in time, they were
admitting more non-Jews than Jews; the
proportion of Jewish patients in Jewish
hospitals declined from about 60 percent
in 1933 to barely a third by 1964. Today.
the Jewish patronage of some Jewish hos-
pitals is down to a quarter or a fifth. And,
these days, in the largely black neighbor-
hood that surrounds Sinai of Baltimore,
according to one black neighborhood
leader, the attitude is, "We love Sinai.
Most of our people ask for it. Most of us
consider Sinai our hospital."
Once, Jewish hospitals served Jewish
patients, Jewish doctors, Jewish needs,
Today, it's not so simple. Today, they must
consciously choose just which slot in the
wide spectrum of Jewish identity they
wish to occupy.
Sinai of Baltimore, says Spike Fore-
man, its president for 13 years before as-
suming the presidency of Montefiore, is
"about as Jewish a Jewish institution as
you're likely to find." Rabbi Samuel Vit-
sick, hospital chaplain since 1953, can
point to how Orthodox Jews have actually
moved to Baltimore to be near Sinai; how
the demand for kosher food is five times
that foreseen when the hospital was built;
how the hospital will bend over backwards
to accommodate the observant. When
Sinai installed non-electric doors for use
by the Orthodox on Shabbat, says Fore-
man, it was "a conscious statement to the
world at large that we were Jewish, so that
those whose lifestyle made them visibly
different, and sometimes not so attractive
to others, would be welcome."
For Mitch Rabkin of Beth Israel Hos-
pital in Boston, warmth and personalized
care are enough to give his Harvard teach-
ing hospital its special Jewish flavor.
"Plus," he adds, a smile in his voice, "the
food is better" — though, except for about
half-a-dozen meals a day, not kosher.
Sometimes, being Jewish can amount
to a marketing ploy. Seven years ago,
when he assumed leadership of Sinai of
Detroit, Irving Shapiro deliberately set
out to boost the hospital's Jewishness. "To
be candid, I saw it as a marketing device"
he says, a means of clearly differentiating
the Sinai "product" from all others. Until
then, he says, Sinai's Jewishness had been
downplayed. Reversing that policy was "a
way to position ourselves in the market."
A chaplaincy program, a quote from the
Talmud in the main lobby, and a quarterly
meeting with the Detroit rabbinate, were
among the several measures adopted.
The forces that originally led to the
founding of Jewish hospitals are plainly a
thing of the past. Jews are still a minority,
but, as Spike Foreman puts it, "they're
minorities like Lutherans are minorities."
Jewish physicians find residencies and
staff appointments in hospitals
everywhere. Jewish patients feel increas-
ingly at home in religiously neutral set-
tings. One Jewish federation official goes
so far as to say, "There's no such thing as a
Jewish hospital. After all, there's no such
thing as a Jewish broken arm or a Catholic
broken arm. It's a broken arm."
W
ith scant exceptions you'll find
no one prepared to say that
Jewish hospitals should be dis-
banded. But you'll also find little unanim-
ity as to why they shouldn't, the reasons
offered being almost as many as the
number of people you ask. "Once an organ-
ization is formed it has a life of its own,"
says St. Louis' David Gee. "People find
ways to justify it."
Jewish hospitals, one argument goes,
Continued on next page
A student nurse in the old Sinai Hospital of
Baltimore places a compress on a mannequin's
head to demonstrate medical training. Sinai
closed its nursing school in 1974, now has a joint
program with Church Hospital and Johns
Hopkins.
Attendants rush a patient to Sinai of Detroit's
emergency room in a photograph dated 1967.
Last year, Sinai served 36,000 patients in its
emergency room.