Jerusalem, Israel - Apr. 25, 2022 - On March 30, 2022, BJL reported on Israel opening the first foreign humanitarian field hospital in war-torn Ukraine. The hospital, named “Shining Star,” has been operated by Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s Health Ministry, and the Clalit health management organization and has treated thousands of patients, mostly women and children as the men have stayed to fight the Russian invasion.
To support the humanitarian effort in Ukraine, a benefit concert was organized in Modiin-Maccabim-Reut on April 12, 2022. Titled "Let Music and Song Open Your Heart to Help The People Of Ukraine!" the concert featured talented and internationally known Israeli musicians: Marina Lebenson, Shirelle Dashevski, Elena Odintsova, Pavel Levin, and Maria Arhireeva. The program was a combination of classical & jazz performances with modern Israeli songs and popular Jewish melodies.
The money raised from the ticket sales was donated to the Friends of Sheba Medical Center to fund the field hospital. "The 66-bed hospital Kochav Meir (Shining Star) was the first mobile hospital set up in Ukraine by a foreign country " Simona Halperin, the Head of the Euro-Asia Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, informed the audience at the opening of the concert.
The hospital was established in the yard of an elementary school in the town of Mościska, located in Western Ukraine with about 3,000 residents, and treated more than 2,000 sick and wounded people in the first two weeks. " Most of our patients were women, physically abused, tortured, and wounded. Their husbands continued fighting on the front-line defending Ukraine and did not know what their wives had been through. Most women arrived with underage children" shared Michal Siegel Kirshenbaum, a gynecologist at Sheba Medical Center, who had traveled to work at the field hospital accompanied by her 5-month-old baby.
The hospital is in bad need of medicines and surgical equipment to care for people whose daily routine was brutally cut short by the war. Most of the female patients, determined to rescue their children from the war zone, had been walking for hours, some even days in the freezing cold, holding the whole world of their previous life in a small bag or suitcase. Often the only belongings they managed to pull out from the debris of destroyed homes.
Dr. Kirshenbaum told of a boy from Mariupol who arrived at the hospital rescued from a house that collapsed after intense shelling of the city. The only thing he and his father took from the debris of their former home was a saxophone. Upon the boy's release from the hospital, the son and the father played jazz for the hospital staff to express their gratitude to the Israeli medical delegation.
"Music is our dedication to peace. Great musical creations make our world a kinder place for all to live. A ticket to this concert was people’s personal contribution to the medical assistance that Israel provides today to the affected people of Ukraine. I'd like to thank the municipality of Modiin for housing the event at the local concert hall Yad le Banim, and all the contributors to the success of the performance," commented the initiator and organizer of the benefit concert Elena Livshiz.
