What The Jerusalem Post Did Not Tell You – The Real Reason The Rabbinate Chose Life Over Death

Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post reported what it claimed was a no-brainer:

Israel's Chief Rabbinate approving construction of underground operating rooms and an underground children's ward for a hospital in missile range of Gaza.

The rabbis needed to approve because ancient graves were found at the site – graves the Antiquities Authority believed to be Roman or early Byzantine, not Jewish.

(Religious restrictions on re-interring graves apply to Jewish graves, but not to non-Jewish ones. The re-interred must be treated with the utmost respect whether they were Jewish or not.)

It turns out Israel's haredi-controlled Chief Rabbinate spend a year refusing to re-inter the graves. 

The Post reported Edah Haredit (Badatz Yerushalayim, the anti-Zionist haredi umbrella group based in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem) threatened mass demonstrations and conducted a campaign to prevent the hospital from moving the graves.

The Post made it appear as if the Chief Rabbinate quickly did the right thing and approved construction when, in fact, the Rabbinate held up that construction for more than a year, and only approved it after the following story ran in Ha'aretz's Hebrew paper:

The quick, the living or the dead
By Ronny Linder-Ganz

Last Sunday, fate beckoned to Dr. Shimon Scharf, the manager of Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. A delegation of the Chief Rabbinical Council in Israel came from Bnei Brak and Jerusalem to personally examine the graves around the hospital, where a brand-new wing, protected from rocket attacks, is supposed to be built. Theirs will be the final decision on whether the new safe wing is to arise. 

Suddenly, in the middle of a heated argument, the siren warning of an attack went off and the rabbis hastened to take shelter, receiving a personal taste of the issue on which they were to rule. 

Yet even that sobering experience failed to persuade them to make the decision so crucial to the people of Ashkelon and the environs. 

Israel 2009, situation report: Rockets are landing throughout the south, residents and soldiers are being injured and brought to the hospital. The medical center supposed to serve them may have bandages, but it has no safety to offer. It is not reinforced to withstand rockets and plans to strengthen it are in abeyance. 

Why? Because the site for the new branch turns out to host ancient graves, possibly of Jews, and the rabbis are firmly opposed to moving the remains, for fear of dishonoring the deceased. 

Lacking protected zones, the hospital, which serves about half a million people in the area, is working in its most limited format - only 20% of its capacity compared with normal times. The result is suffering. 

Non-urgent operations and treatments are postponed. Women in labor and patients with cancer or needing dialysis, who would otherwise be treated at Barzilai, are shunted off to distant medical centers. Only the most critical medical attention is provided, sometimes under threat and in operating rooms that lack protection from rockets. 

Scharf had thought his job was to run a hospital. Now he finds himself in an impossible, positively surreal situation. He's at the center not only of a regional conflict but of a religious war as well. He is fighting for the right of the hospital to execute its plan to protect itself, so it can accept the sick and injured under fire as well, without fear that a rocket will land on them in the middle of the procedure. Conversations with him show that Scharf is not only supremely frustrated: He's also deeply familiar with the relevant religious directives and instructions. 

"I never dreamed this is what I'd have to deal with," Scharf says. "I wasn't taught this in medical school or in administrative college. Insane. That's the word for this situation." 

The farce began a year ago. After years of engineering and architectural planning, and fundraising, the form of the new facility took shape: 22,000 square meters including a reinforced basement capable of taking in 250 patients, above which would be reinforced emergency rooms, operating theaters and a pediatrics ward. All would be able to withstand an attack. 

It wasn't easy but the hospital administrators found the $34 million funding for the first part of the project, the basement and emergency room, from private donations and government funding. And a contractor was chosen to do the work. Some of the $32 million needed for the next phase, building the children's ward and operating theaters, was raised as well. 

Yet the work ended shortly after it began. 

"As soon as we started to dig, the Antiquities Authority showed up, told the Religious Services Ministry [that graves had been found], and everything stopped. Then the talking began," says Scharf. 

"I agreed to compromise on a solution that would have involved losing 10, 15 beds in the emergency room so they could start building. But then the Hevra Kadisha [burial society] people began running around the place, checking every stone and speck. 

"They turned the place into a virtual minefield. There were places that they declared were graves, though according to the Antiquities Authority, there's no grave there or anything else. But everybody - the Antiquities Authority, the Religious Services Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office - stood at attention. It's a disgrace." 

Last week the Knesset House Committee convened and a representative of the Religious Services Ministry said that even if there had been no delay and the work had begun a year ago, the branch wouldn't have been finished. Scharf is outraged. 

"We wasted a precious year. If we'd have started a year ago, today we'd at least have a concrete bomb shelter like at Soroka Hospital, where patients could be placed. If we don't start to build it will never be ready. It's a death sentence for the hospital. Is anybody delusional enough to think that after this campaign is over, there won't be any more wars?" 

He had predicted that the rocket footprint would extend to Ashkelon back in 2005, Scharf says, and he was right. "The arguments I had with the Finance Ministry and government are over. It isn't right that now I have to argue over graves. It's a scandal." 

It isn't even clear whether the graves in question are of Jews. "This entire area sits on graves and is well known to archaeologists," Scharf says. "Other graves found in the area were of pagans, Muslims and Byzantines. But the rabbis won't open even one grave to check whether they're Jews. I can't understand their attitude." 

So there Barzilai is, waiting for the word from the Chief Rabbinical Council. Last Thursday, says Scharf, he felt that a solution was nearing and that the graves could be moved while preserving the dignity of the dead. There are rabbis in the council who are trying to help, such as Yehuda Deri, the chief rabbi of Be'er Sheva, and Rabbi Yona Metzger. 

"They know that the Torah has solutions, and one need not be dogmatic. But on Sunday they came again to inspect and didn't decide. It seems that the rabbinical council is under some sort of pressure, I don't know why," he says. 

Who could save the situation and make a decision? 

"If the government were to order the Antiquities Authority to continue work and move the graves while preserving the dignity of the dead, then the problem would be solved. It is impossible for people from Bnei Brak and Jerusalem to dictate to us what to do. They talk a lot about the dignity of the dead, but forget the living," Scharf says. 

They claim it isn't pikuah nefesh - necessary to preserve human life. But there are rabbis who say that even future danger is pikuah nefesh. In my opinion, half a million people who need a hospital, cancer patients and dialysis patients who run to distant hospitals for treatment, is pikuah nefesh." 

Scharf spends his time running from between the Knesset and council. "Somebody has to intervene and end this story," he says. "I think the situation today proves the point." 

Religious Services Minister Yitzhak Cohen rejects the complaints against the ministry and council; it's the hospital's own fault. "It's very convenient to attack the observant and indulge in cheap demagoguery," Cohen says. 

"There is a tremendous omission by the hospital, which wasn't prepared for this war, didn't take care to reinforce the hospital as one on the front line, didn't ask to reinforce its existing critical units such as the operating rooms and the emergency room. The government invested NIS 2 million in reinforcements in the area. Every clinic and kindergarten around Gaza were readied, and only the hospital did nothing." 

Scharf rebuts that he has a letter he wrote in 2005, warning of things to come, so the ministry should stop casting groundless blame. "He's evading the real problem - moving the graves with the permission of the rabbis," he says. "Work could have started a year ago if they hadn't gotten in our way." 

Cohen argues that even so, the unit wouldn't have been ready because construction was planned to take 36 months, and no tender was ever issued to build the facility. All that began was the groundwork. Also, the ministry proposed that the new facility simply be built on another site. "We're still waiting for answers about schedule and the cost of moving the building," Cohen says. 

Barzilai is appalled by the idea of changing the plan. "It would cause three more years of delay, or more," Scharf says. "Meanwhile, Hamas isn't waiting."

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