Call it a busman’s holiday. On a beach vacation, I find myself reading Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream, by Francine Klagsbrun (Yale University Press, 2024). 

As much as I’ve read about Szold (I even put on a one-woman play about her, which I’ve performed for Jane Fonda and playwright Eve Ensler), I always learn something new when I read about this colossal Zionist hero. 

I learned here that Miss Szold, as she was called, was embarrassed as each of her birthdays was celebrated with a fundraising campaign by the women of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Yet, knowing the dire health and educational needs of pre-state Israel, she always agreed. 

Her particular discomfort was a comfort for me. As pleased and honored as I was to recently receive Hadassah-Israel’s Builders of Jerusalem Award together with my friend and colleague Barbara Goldstein, I felt discomfited by inviting people to attend a ceremony that included a financial contribution. 

The cause couldn’t have been a better one. All funds went to help complete the Gandel Rehabilitation Center on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, opened in haste in January 2024 to accommodate our newly wounded soldiers. This week, the number of our soldiers wounded since Oct. 7 was announced to be a disheartening 20,000. Never have we needed rehabilitation more. I have personally witnessed the return to full life that this first-class rehabilitation center can provide. 

 More or less, what follows is what I said as I accepted the award. 

A word about my co-honoree, veteran Hadassah activist Barbara Goldstein. We share the same first name – which turns out to have been the most popular name in American in 1942 when she was born in New Jersey. Seven years later, when I was born in Connecticut, the name Barbara had been outstripped by Linda and Mary, never to reign again. 

Because we work together and often think alike, we are sometimes called “the Barbaras” – like the “Carolinas.” North and South Carolina were once a single colony which split up, but we’re a good fit together, and understand each other’s goals, frustrations, and sense of humor. We Barbaras share a love of Israel and the values of Hadassah. 

I want to thank you all in the names of the soldiers and civilians who are benefiting from the Gandel Rehabilitation Center. 

Let’s remember that two years ago, we didn’t have a first-class rehab center in our capital city. 

We are approaching the second anniversary of Oct. 7, and I’m thinking of two of the war wounded who were sharing a room at Mount Scopus already on October 8. 

One was an undercover officer whose first name we could never mention. We just called him H, and when visitors came, he wore a mask like Zorro. 

H had saved for a long time to buy himself a Hummer. On Oct. 7, he drove south from Jerusalem and, without connecting with his unit, fought terrorists in the kibbutzim. 

His hospital roommate was a police detective named Timor. “I’m just a plain policeman doing my duty,” he told me. “I have no story.” 

I would later find out that Timor was the first police officer to confront the terrorists in Sderot. He fought off a pickup truck of terrorists with the 14 bullets in his handgun, rescued a fellow police officer, and sounded the alarm in the hard-hit city. 

Both men returned in ambulances, without their cars. Both had serious bullet wounds. Their beds were in the obstetrics wards. 

But now we have a wonderful rehabilitation center – although it’s far from completed. Whenever I’m there, I’m uplifted by the spirit of the soldiers, who are eager to get better fast so they can return to their buddies in the field. 

A tank gunner who used a break in reserve service to travel to the US, where he was run over by an ISIS terrorist in New Orleans, described the Israeli rehab process he is undergoing as a kind of “tough love” in which you are nudged to work harder. 

How proud I am that we who live in Jerusalem have taken on this holy cause. What did the prophet Isaiah say? “Zion will be redeemed in judgment, and her captives with tzedakah.” 

The paths of my life have all led to Hadassah. 

I grew up in the rural small town of Colchester, Connecticut. In my family, “Hadassah” was a sacred word. I went with my father to a Hartford antique shop to find the perfect gold pin into which to set my mother’s life membership badge. My mother made my sister Charlotte and me life members, too. 

In fifth grade, we Colchester Jewish kids all joined Young Judaea, then sponsored by Hadassah. By my senior year of high school, I was elected Connecticut region president, and was driven to lead activities at clubs around the state. 

One evening, we were dancing the hora, and the music changed to “Jerusalem of Gold.” I had an emotional jolt and felt something shift inside me, too. At a Young Judaea retreat, the Israeli emissary challenged me about the authenticity of my commitment to Zionism. I was insulted. Here I was, spending my free time with Young Judaea while my classmates were driving around in ’55 Chevys. That day, amid the Connecticut greenery, walking near the rippling Salmon River with its New England covered bridge, I had an epiphany. I saw myself hiking in the Negev. I knew I was destined to live in Israel. 

When I started writing the true stories that have become my trademark, especially in my Jerusalem Post Magazine column, “The Human Spirit,” the first one was about a remarkable woman who rescued her three children and her grandmother from a blazing fire. She was a patient at Hadassah hospital. 

The heroine of my novel, The Thirteenth Hour, is a researcher at Hadassah Hospital. I wasn’t working for Hadassah at the time. 

All our children have had part of their studies or professional lives associated with Hadassah. 

So when a headhunter offered me a public relations job for Hadassah, I agreed to do it for a year. 

Here I am, more than 25 years later, hundreds of stories and videos and speeches later, and continuing. At the same time, I was privileged to be offered to write this column for the Magazine. Here I am, 677 columns later – but who’s counting? 

I’ve been fortunate to be accompanied on this journey by my supportive husband, Gerald Schroeder, by friends and family, and blessed with beautiful and brilliant children and grandchildren. Zionists all. 

This award, so graciously presented to me, is called Bonei Yerushalyim, “Builders of Jerusalem.” Three times a day, Jews everywhere pray that God’s presence should return to Jerusalem. The blessing begins with the word “and,” which connects it to the previous blessing, which ends with the word tzaddikim, “the righteous.” That’s all of you – who are building Jerusalem. Not only the building on Mount Scopus that is helping to rebuild so many lives, but by living here and summoning God’s presence from the Heavenly Jerusalem. 

Jerusalem is built of stone, not plywood or bricks. Sometimes I think we, too, need the extra strength of stone to live here. As the old Jerusalem song “Hakotel,” written after the Six Day War by Yossi Gamzu, says: Yesh anashim im lev shel even; yesh avanim im lev adam. “There are people with hearts of stone; there are stones with human hearts.” 

Thank you for the recognition. May we forever have the strength of stones and caring hearts.