Best Wishes
lo all of my
Family, Friends and Clients Yad Sarah
Serves A Nation
for a Happy,
Healthy and Prosperous
A
NEW man

SHELLEY KLEIMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

ED HURWITZ

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=Inn ri=it.

AMERICAN RED MAGEN DAVID
FOR ISRAEL

Dr. John J. Mames Chapter

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all our
friends
and
customers
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Extends Best Wishes
For A Year of Health, Peace &
Prosperity To All Our Friends and
The Entire Jewish Community

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30858
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n 85-year-old Jerusalemite
spends five mornings a
week repairing inhalators,
wheelchairs and walkers.
An unemployed, 61-year-old elec-
tronics engineer from the former
Soviet Union is being trained to
assemble orthopedic equipment.
A retired therapist teaches a
stroke victim how to operate a
computer, while a former teacher
shows him how to draw and
paint.
From young adults offering the
elderly companionship and a
helping hand to senior citizens
teaching disabled and home-
bound contemporaries a craft,
these are the faces of Israel's Yad
Sarah, the Organization for the
Free Loan of Medical Equipment
and the Rehabilitation of the
Sick.
Just one year ago, on Israel's
Independence Day, Yad Sarah,
which has become synonymous
with the spirit of volunteerism,
was awarded the Israel Prize.
"Although most people associ-
ate Yad Sarah with medical
equipment, the organization is
concerned with human needs in
the very fullest sense of the
word," says its founder and dri-
ving force, Rabbi Uri Lubiansky,
also deputy mayor of Jerusalem
It all began in 1976 when a
neighbor knocked on Rabbi Lu-
biansky's door, asking to borrow
a vaporizer for a sick child. "There
were no agencies which rented
out medical equipment in Israel
and purchasing costs were pro-
hibitively expensive," Rabbi Lu-
biansky recalls.
His father had asked Rabbi
Lubiansky to establish a
"gemach" (free loan fund) in
memory of Uri's grandmother,
Sarah, who perished in the Holo-
caust. Rabbi Lubiansky decided
to lend medical equipment in-
stead of money and transformed
a corner of his already crowded
apartment in an Orthodox sec-
tion of Jerusalem into a lending
station.
What began as a modest one-
man operation now numbers 70
branches throughout Israel with
some 50 salaried employees and
over 4,000 volunteers, making it
the largest nonpartisan volun-
teer organization in Israel. The
annual budget is $8 million, al-
most all of which is from dona-
tions from Israel and abroad.
Some 200,000 people a year
borrow from the organization's
supply of 272 types of medical
and rehabilitation equipment, to-
taling 300,000 items in all. The
equipment on loan runs from

walkers, hospital beds, breast
pumps and infant car seats, to
cardio-apnea monitors — a high-
ly expensive life-saving device for
infants with threatened respira-
tory failure.

A new immigrant assembles
wheelchairs at the center.

Sometimes the requests are
less than ordinary. A kibbutz
near Netanya asked Yad Sarah
to supply them with a chair for
an ailing kibbutz member, an oc-
togenarian who had been work-
ing in the cowshed for over 40
years clipping the animals'
hooves. Yad Sarah came up with
a specially designed chair to sup-
port his weakened knees and the
cows continue to receive their
regular pedicures.
The only prerequisite for bor-
rowing equipment is need. There
are no forms to fill out, no red
tape. Everyone who requests as-
sistance — regardless of person-
al status, race, nationality or
religion — receives it. One sim-
ply walks in, pays a symbolic de-
posit and walks out with the
item.
If it is a complicated piece of
equipment, Yad Sarah will de-
liver and install it and instruct
the patient or caretaker in its
use.
In 1993, Yad Sarah, in con-
junction with the Joint Distrib-
ution Committee, opened two
skill training centers, in
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, cater-
ing mostly to immigrant techni-
cians. They are taught Hebrew
and an additional skill — either
assembling orthopedic equip-
ment or emergency beepers,
items that until now were im-
ported. As a result, despite re-
ceiving a paycheck from Yad
Sarah, Bubil Yefin from Gorky