It’s rather sad that Prof. Zeev Rotstein had to end his career as director-general and CEO of Hadassah Medical Center by stepping down to avoid a dismissal hearing, instead of leaving in a blaze of glory.
Rotstein, who was brought in to try to reduce the deficit and improve the efficiency of the financially ailing hospital, seemed to relish conflict and fought with too many influential people in order to implement what he considered to be right. There were some who admired him and agreed with him, but the majority did not, and when push came to shove, he was summoned for a hearing prior to dismissal.
Rotstein had a fine record before he came to Hadassah and he certainly didn’t want to stain it with a dismissal notice, so he announced that he was stepping down. But even so, there was a certain humiliation that goes back to his student days when he wanted to study medicine at Hadassah University Hospital. He was rejected and in the final analysis was accepted by the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, and did very well for himself as a cardiologist, and later as the director of a highly respectable medical center. When he was called on in 2014 to take Hadassah out of the mire, he was CEO of Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, where he had worked for 38 years and had become somewhat of a legend in the management and politics of health care. It took another two years before he made the move.
He was already approaching retirement age, but rescuing Hadassah was almost a compensation for the disappointment he had suffered in his youth. Now, at age 71, with a mostly illustrious career and a global reputation, he had to jump before he was pushed.
■ THERE WERE fewer demonstrators in the vicinity of the Prime Minister’s Residence last Saturday night than there had been over the past year and a half, but they made just as much noise as they waited for former prime minister and current Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu to depart. It was deadline day, and Netanyahu, his wife Sarah and son Yair could no longer justify staying in the house which they had occupied for more than a decade. They didn’t like the house. They had complained many times about the need for repairs and over obsolete equipment that should be replaced. But with all its defects, the house on the corner of Smolenskin and Balfour Streets was a status symbol, and it was difficult for them to let go.
They finally did leave after midnight when the crowd had dispersed, and are staying temporarily at their home in Caesarea, until their private apartment on Gaza Road is renovated and equipped with all the security technology needed to satisfy the Shabak. Their neighbors did not exactly enjoy a long respite. The apartment is within easy walking distance of the Prime Minister’s Residence, and the demonstrators could be heard from there as well as from much further away.
Some of the demonstrators have turned their wrath on President Isaac Herzog. In fact, the President’s Residence is even closer to Netanyahu’s private home than to the Prime Minister’s Residence, and some of the demonstrators, who have nothing better to do on a Saturday night, may very well gravitate between the two venues.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett shows no desire to move into the residence vacated by the Netanyahus, though many of his neighbors in Ra’anana who are being disturbed by demonstrations against him, would be pleased if he did move and tranquility would be restored to their neighborhood. But it should be remembered that the deal that Bennett made with Yesh Atid leader, alternate prime minister and current Foreign Minister Yair Lapid is that Bennett would be PM for only a year, and Lapid for three years.
Under the circumstances, there is no point in uprooting Bennett’s school-age children for only a few months. The school summer vacation period is looming, along with the High Holy Days, and then Hanukka a short time later, so it really doesn’t make sense to take them out of their schools in Ra’anana and enroll them temporarily in schools in Jerusalem.
■ WHATEVER ANYONE’S mother tongue may be, they become either amused or irritated when it is wrongly translated from another language, even when the translation may be technically correct. An example is a restaurant in the Galilee with a bilingual menu in which haze off (breast of chicken) is translated as Fowl’s Chest. The translation is technically correct, but the usage is not.
Closer to home, Talbiyeh resident Dr. Colin Leci, a frequent letter writer to The Jerusalem Post and to In Jerusalem, also writes of his displeasure to the powers-that-be at City Hall. One such letter that reached In Jerusalem notes that there are huge discrepancies in bilingual street and building signs.
The English is mistranslated or curtailed – or both. As examples, he cites a plaque at the junction of Disraeli and Alkalai streets with the word flour instead of flower and the Beit Shalom building in Ahad Ha’am Street, which has the correct name in Hebrew but in English is listed as Martin Pauser house.
“In fact, this building has a history that is not mentioned in that it was the headquarters of the Keren Hayesod and was paid for by donations from abroad – it had a hall that was donated by UK Jews,” he writes.
Also one of the buildings in Marcus Street, he continues, fails to mention both in English and Hebrew that it was once used as an RAF officers club. Why does he bring this up? Because these and other discrepancies call into question the authenticity of the information on the plaques. In other words, someone at City Hall, who is totally fluent in Hebrew and English, should be checking the texts and the history of buildings before the texts are consigned to plaques.
But with due respect to Leci, he too is missing a little history. Beit Shalom used to be the private residence of British immigrant lawyer Solomon (Shalom) Horowitz, who joined the Jerusalem-based law firm founded by British barrister Harry Sacher, who had been among the draftsmen of what is now known as the Balfour Declaration.
Sacher Park is named after him.
The law firm was founded in 1921, and is this year celebrating its centenary. When Sacher returned to England, he left the firm to his partner Horowitz, who renamed it. Today, it is one of the largest law firms in Israel, and its offices are no longer in Jerusalem but in Tel Aviv – curiously, on Ahad Ha’am Street. Among the clientele of the original office were the Palestine Electric Corporation, now known as the Israel Electric Company; the Hebrew University, the Weizmann Institute, the Hadassah Medical Organization, the Jewish Agency and several other major enterprises that helped to lay the foundations for the State of Israel many years before it actually came into being.
Horowitz never married, but was known to host gatherings of the elite of the country’s society and visiting dignitaries from abroad. When he died, he willed the property to Keren Hayesod for use for social and cultural events. Today, it is barely used for that purpose. Instead, it is used by several lawyers, whose plaques are affixed outside the building.
greerfc@gmail.com