By DAVID A. SCHWARTZ, sun-sentinel.com
A mezuzah on the doorpost of a room at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale welcomes the Orthodox Jewish families of patients at the Catholic hospital.
“This is a place for Jews to feel a little bit more comfortable in a time of duress,” said Dr. Jon Kotler, an internist and head of the hospital’s nuclear medicine department. “Anybody who comes here on Shabbat can hang out here. They can wrap tefillin here. They can eat here.”
Kotler brought Holy Cross and Fort Lauderdale businessman Efi Fixler together to offer the only Jewish hospitality suite in a Broward County hospital.
Fixler, 37, the owner of a Fort Lauderdale transportation business, said it took a year of negotiations and construction work before the room was dedicated on Feb. 16.
The small room on the first floor of the hospital has two microwave ovens and two sinks — one each for meat (fleischig) and dairy (milchig). It also has a sofa, table and chairs, a computer and religious books.
Cabinets are stocked with crackers, tuna, cream cheese, water and soda. And there are chicken and rice kosher meals in the freezer. Fixler said he is arranging for delivery of prepared hot kosher meals on Shabbat as needed.
Fixler pays for the food himself through Gesher Tzedaka or Bridge of Charity, a social service organization he founded. He also supplies food to Jewish suites at Jackson Memorial Hospital South in Miami and Aventura Hospital in Aventura, both of which opened last year. Fixler said he wants to open other Jewish hospitality suites at hospitals that serve South Florida’s Jewish communities “one hospital at a time.”
Fixler said he prefers to call the room at Holy Cross a “Jewish family room.”
That’s fine with the Chabad Lubavitch of Fort Lauderdale. “We’re not judgmental. We’re here to serve everyone equally,” Rabbi Yitzchok Naparstek, the Chabad’s assistant rabbi, said.
Sister Rita Levasseur, vice president of mission and sponsorship administration at Holy Cross, said the hospital tries to meet the religious and cultural needs of patients. “We welcome our Jewish brothers and sisters in the area,” Levasseur said. She said kosher meals are available to patients and the hospital would make sure that Jewish patients know about the hospitality suite.
The 54-year-old Holy Cross has seen a slight increase in Jewish patients over the last two years with 16.7 percent of 2008 patients and 16.1 percent of 2007 patients indicating on hospital admission forms that they are Jewish, said Christine Walker Moncrieffe, the hospital’s director of marketing and public relations. But Levasseur and Kotler believe the percentages of Jewish patients are actually higher.
Kotler, who considers himself a secular Jew, said he has grown closer to the Chabad. He even participates in weekly Wednesday lunchtime Talmud discussions at the hospital that are open to the public.
And Kotler is proud of the Jewish hospitality suite. “I just want something that the Jewish community can look at with pride,” he said.
To contact Gesher Tzedaka, call 866-943-7437 or visit www.geshertzedaka.com.
