Laniado Hospital - History

History

The Rebbe began working towards his goal two years after founding the Hasidic community of Kiryat Sanz in northern Netanya. In 1958 he laid the cornerstone for a hospital, although he had no capital, no fund-raising apparatus, and no building permit. He petitioned the authorities for the permit, but the left-wing Minister of Health refused, reportedly offering Halberstam the job of supervising religious activities at government hospitals instead. In 1962 the leftist party which controlled the Health Ministry suddenly quit the government coalition and the ministry was given to the Torah-observant Hapoel HaMizrachi party. One day the deputy health minister, Yitzhak Rafael, and other officials visited the Rebbe in Netanya. After the meeting, the Rebbe called Rafael aside and asked him to use his position to help other Torah-observant Jews. Two days later, the building permit arrived in the mail.

The Rebbe spent 15 years personally fund-raising for his hospital in North and South America. Whenever he collected some money, he would continue building. In 1963 he received his first major donation in the form of a $300,000 bequest from the estate of Alfonse and Yaakov Avraham Laniado, Swiss bankers who had willed their money to health and educational institutions in Israel. The Rebbe decided to name the new hospital after the Laniado brothers. In 1972 a $500,000 grant from the United States Agency for International Development helped complete the electrical, plumbing and elevator systems. Now the only thing lacking was an operating permit, which the government was still loath to supply. The Minister of Health at the time claimed that permits had already been granted to three hospitals in the Netanya area, but Sidney Greenwald, the first chairman of the American Friends of Laniado Hospital, convinced him to issue one to the Klausenburger Rebbe, too. In the end, Laniado was the only hospital opened in Netanya.

The first building, an outpatient clinic, opened in 1975. In June 1976 a maternity ward opened, followed by an emergency room and internal medicine department in 1977, a cardiology and intensive-care unit in 1978, and ophthalmology and dialysis units in 1979. The hospital continued to expand every year thereafter. Until his death in 1994, the Rebbe planned the strategic development of the hospital's departments and services, and supervised every aspect of the hospital's operation.

Today Laniado Hospital includes departments for radiology, hematology, pediatric emergency, oncology, in vitro fertilisation, geriatrics, women's health, and many more. The largest department in the hospital is the maternity ward, which delivers more than 6,000 babies annually.

Laniado lies within a five-block radius of other institutions founded by the Klausenburger Rebbe — including synagogues, Talmud Torahs, girls schools, yeshivas, kollels, an orphanage, and an old-age home — and the Kiryat Sanz Hasidic community itself.