“It’s been very meaningful that we are about the same age and in the same situation, all working together to get back from this hard time,” says a 29-year-old recovering Israeli soldier and yeshivah student.

It’s late afternoon and among the members of this very special minyan are two in bandages, another in a cast, one with burns on his face and arms, and still another wearing an oxygen pack on his back.

These wounded soldiers factor into the 2,771 (and counting) soldiers that the Israel Defense Forces have reported injured since Oct. 7, and they are a much-cherished crew. As soon as the Gandel Rehabilitation Center opened its doors on Jan. 16 to its first patients at Hadassah Medical Organization’s Mount Scopus campus in Jerusalem, the staff had to curb the enthusiasm of an unexpected crush of visitors. And not just family and friends, but Israelis from all over—even American visitors lining up to pay a visit to these injured heroes.

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Hadassah’s new $137 million, multi-story rehabilitation center was scheduled to open in May on the medical organization’s Mount Scopus campus, the result of years of planning, fundraising and construction. But on the night of Oct. 7, seeing the devastation from the Hamas attacks and fearing an even greater conflict, Hadassah Medical Organization’s director-general, Dr. Yoram Weiss, made two decisions: to construct a fortified hospital on the campus that could operate even under heavy attack and to open the rehabilitation facility to patients by January.

“People thought we were crazy. But we did it,” Weiss told eJewishPhilanthropy last week during a tour of the facility, the Gandel Rehabilitation Center, which began receiving patients last month and will double its capacity in the coming weeks.

Weiss, who walked through the partially constructed center like a proud father showing off a newborn child, stressed that while he “loves to brag” about the facility, he gives full credit to its rapid opening to his staff.

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The sounds of Hadassah representatives clapping and singing “Shalom Aleichem” welcomed the first patients into the Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus on January 15, part of a phased opening of the new facility.

These initial 12 patients in the War-Wounded Department will have the opportunity to heal using state-of-the-art equipment, including 1st Sgt. Yotam, who was the first to come through the doors.

“The first patients, all of whom were wounded in the war — heroes and heroines to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude — begin their journey in the new center in a designated department with advanced equipment and systems that were built and installed especially for them,” said Prof. Yoram Weiss, director general of the Hadassah Medical Organization.

The Gandel center will offer a host of special treatments along with physical and occupational therapy, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and respiratory and orthopedic rehabilitation. There will be a PTSD center and rehabilitation for neurological problems caused by brain, spinal cord and nervous system injuries. When construction is complete, the 323,000-square-foot eight-story center, named for John Gandel and Pauline Gandel of the Gandel Foundation in Melbourne, Australia, will care for 10,000 patients annually. The center will feature 140 in-patient beds — a 250 percent increase for the Hadassah Medical Organization — and an out-patient clinic able to serve 250 patients a day.

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