Geula of all trades

After working her way through medical school with some help from a surprising source, Dr. Geula Batsir, a pioneer in holistic medicine, has for 44 years been helping others

By MAXINE LIPTZEN DOROT
Dr. Geula Batsir in her clinic (photo credit: GEULA BATSIR)
Dr. Geula Batsir in her clinic
(photo credit: GEULA BATSIR)
A cleaning lady, the first Yemenite female student to be accepted to Hadassah Medical School, a farmer, tour guide, mother, sister, grandmother, medical clown, family physician, practitioner of various holistic medicines, high school math and physics teacher and a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University Medical School are some of the things that Dr. Geula Batsir has been in her 68 years. And after meeting her, I have a feeling she’s only just begun.
“In 1926, my parents decided to come to their beloved Zion,” she relates. “They made the long and dangerous journey by foot and camel across the desert, until they got to Alexandria, and from there, by boat, to Palestine, eventually settling in Netanya. There, over the years, my mother gave birth to 11 babies, all at home because she didn’t trust conventional medicine. The neighborhood midwife helped get her though all 11; I was No. 9.”
Thus begins Batsir’s tale, a life story that reads like a Hollywood movie.
Her childhood was not an easy one. Her family was very poor, so much so that the firstborn daughter was sent to clean houses in Tel Aviv when she was only nine years old. She would come home once a month for a Shabbat.
Geula fared somewhat better. She missed school days because “I never said no,” which meant taking care of her siblings, nieces and nephews and doing the chores they neglected. She would also, on many occasions, get to school late, as she recounts.
“My mother suffered from sinusitis, I think because of all the beatings she got from my father, so I would run to kupat holim [health-fund clinic] early in the morning before it opened. When the nurse came, he would give me the first number for the doctor.
Sometimes I would sit there for two to three hours until he came. My mother knew she had the first appointment, so she would come to the clinic when the doctor was scheduled to arrive and trade places with me.”
From there, Geula went straight to school, a 3-km. walk in each direction, made easier when she bought a used bicycle with money saved from after-school cleaning jobs.
Despite all her absences, she was a top student throughout her school years, with a special love for math and physics. In high school, she joined Bnei Akiva, and wanted to go to the army. Her father, however, had a great respect for education and did not want her to go. He told her that if she signed a promise not to join the IDF, he would let her go to university. Respecting her father’s wishes and realizing this was probably the only way to get an academic education, she signed.
Although she loved math and science, Batsir decided to meet the challenge of studying medicine, the most difficult of all disciplines. She applied to and was accepted to Hadassah Medical School, a coup for any female at the time, but a special achievement for a Yemenite woman.
Tuition came from many places. She worked three afternoons a week cleaning houses, and spent her free time going from government officials to government officials looking for help. She got a stipend from Rotary Netanya (there was no school financial student aid then), free housing for a year with “problematic” girls from WIZO, and then discounted dormitory living by taking part in all kinds of school programs.
In her early student years, she approached then-finance minister Pinhas Sapir, who told her he had no budget to help, but he was so impressed with this determined, spunky young girl that he gave her a yearly stipend of 1,000 lirot from his own pocket, a small fortune in those days.
Batsir was able to concentrate on her studies, but three years later Sapir died and the money stopped, so back to cleaning houses it was. Meanwhile, in her second year of studies, she got pregnant.
“My boyfriend was 19, he loved me a lot. He was a soldier who came home once every two weeks, and we got married. After my daughter was born, my mother took care of her back home in Netanya. Every Shabbat and all the months after exams until the start of the new semester, I went home to take over the care of my daughter.
“In the end of my sixth year, I got pregnant again, and the same routine was followed. My husband was still coming home once in two weeks, and so it was up to my mother to continue her support.
It was, to say the least, indispensable; I couldn’t have gone through medical school without her help.”
Upon graduation, Soroka Hospital in Beersheba approached the new doctors, offering them positions in its new medical school and growing hospital, sweetening the pot by offering free housing.
“Eleven of us who had families jumped at the chance, 10 men and me,” she said. “So off I went to Beersheba, where my husband, daughter and I lived in housing provided by the hospital. My husband was still in the army and still coming home once in two weeks; my daughter was in gan [nursery school] for a good part of each day while I did my residency.
“I started in pediatrics until I saw an announcement in the hospital that a new type of medical practice was being offered, family medicine. I jumped at the chance. For me, the draw of treating patients in their own clothes and not in hospital gowns, seeing them in their houses or neighborhoods and allowing them some control of their treatment was just what I wanted. My colleagues looked down at me. ‘You’re going to be a health fund doctor? Why? They know nothing and you are brilliant. Stay with us here.’ “I finished my medical school studies in 1973,” Batsir continued, “and gave birth to my second child during final exams and at the start of the Yom Kippur War. I did all my tests but the last one, in surgery. There was no way I could do it, and there was no time for the lecturers to prepare a makeup exam, because of the war.
“I had to bring home a paycheck, so I taught math and physics in a local high school, where there was a shortage of teachers because of the war. I enjoyed doing that, and did it for a year, until I could take my surgery final, which I passed.
“Now I had to get my family medicine license. I had to pass an oral and written test, which was very, very hard.
This was the very first family medicine test given by the state, and they made it so difficult that only six of us in the entire country passed the exam! “I did my residency in family medicine, half of it in Soroka and half in a clinic outside Beersheba. They put me in charge of health clinics in 16 small villages and two kibbutzim in the South. I was given a car so that I could get around (“my white horse, coming to save the day,” as my patients referred to it) and [my work] was inspected by my supervising doctor once a month.
“We moved to a moshav in the Yamit area [which was eventually handed over to Egypt]. One of my patients there was a nurse who was suffering from recurring UTIs [urinary tract infections]. I sent her to do every lab test, every exam possible, tried everything; nothing worked, and then she just disappeared.
“After a while, she came back. She told me that she had been treated by Yitzhak Ben Uri, a naturalist from Tel Aviv and one of the founders of natural therapy in Israel, and she was completely free of her UTIs. I didn’t believe it! I took cultures and sent her for blood tests, and everything came out clean. She told me that she was through with antibiotics. I gave her a waiver and release form to sign, and that was that. For the entire time I was living there, she was free of UTIs because of the natural treatment she had received.
“Then another patient – a baby suffering from asthma who had been seen by several physicians before me and even after me – also ‘disappeared.’ I tried to find out what had happened to her, but couldn’t reach her parents, until one day they brought her to the clinic to announce that the baby was asthma-free. Completely gone! “‘What did you do?’ I asked them. I was astonished.
“‘Reflexology,’ they replied.
“This was something I had never heard of, and I was totally intrigued. These two patients were the catalyst for my studying holistic medicine, and I started learning right away.
“There were very few of us around the country then, so few that there were no supplies available, so I had to go to London to buy acupuncture needles. While there, I studied more, and later expanded my knowledge in China and in India.
“I was still practicing family medicine and also enjoyed going to medical congresses. In one of them, we were introduced to the art of medical clowning. We were encouraged to register for a six-month course that met once a week. I had become too serious and needed something to make me laugh, and this was a good way to lighten up. I took the course, entertained kids who were fighting cancer, and found my medical clown role to be a win-win: I brought smiles and laughter to the children and their families, and I became less severe, less serious.
“My husband grew up on a moshav, and when he finally finished his army service, we decided to buy some land in the South, but he had to sell his car to do this.
I had a car from work, and was the only one allowed to drive it. So every morning at 5, I went out to pick up the workers and bring them to the meshek [farm].
“We had three kids by then and never enough money, which made it necessary for me to help out after I came home from work, picking fruits and vegetables and classifying them for the market. We were in the South for over 20 years.”
Batsir and her husband stayed married for 25 years, the marriage ending in what slowly evolved into an amicable divorce. They have three daughters. Their only son, Dolev, died tragically at the age of 14.
“After my son died, I was angry at God. Really angry.
One day, while I was driving to see a patient, I screamed at God, ‘How could you do this to me?’ Suddenly, a young boy ran out of nowhere in front of my car and I almost ran him over. Had I been driving faster, I could have killed that child. I suddenly understood that there are worse things than losing a son – and that is killing someone else’s. It made me realize that my son was a lovely, wonderful gift I enjoyed for 14 years.”
In 2010, Batsir moved from a moshav near Ofakim to an apartment in Ashkelon overlooking the sea that she loves. She still works part-time as a freelance family medicine physician for the health fund. At the same time, she sees private patients in her home, treating them with different kinds of holistic medicine for all ailments, including cosmetic acupuncture, to treat kids with serious acne, or as a substitute for Botox.
Batsir spends time with her daughters and her six grandchildren. She has a patio full of plants, which she treats with loving care. Her other hobbies include cooking, studying with teachers and on her own with the help of the Internet, reading, spending time with friends, watching TV and reading tarot cards. She loves to travel, so much so that she became a tour guide, taking groups to Europe and Scandinavia during her own vacations from work.
“I am also an address for many people, including former patients, because of my wide knowledge in so many fields. They know that I’m always happy to help,” she said.
“Happy” – that is the operative word to describe G Batsir. In spite of all the hardships and tragedies she’s experienced in her lifetime, she is very optimistic and positive. She’s always smiling and singing happy tunes and lets loose in hearty laughs with great ease.
“I was raised in a religious home, but left formal religion when I got older. I am, however, religious in my soul; I believe in God; things don’t just happen. There is something bigger than me, and He is with me and helping me be a good person and doctor.
“You know, I’ve had some very, very difficult times in my life, but you have no choice other than to accept what life deals you, live life with patience, look at the good things in life, because there are so many beautiful things all around us, and always remember to say thanks for what you have.”


Related Tags
Mizrahi
yemenite jews