Yad Sarah

In June 2023, Yad Sarah reported 350 paid staff and approximately 7,000 volunteers working across 126 branches throughout Israel.[1] Israel's Ministry of Health lists the organization as operating 125 branches and 30 help departments.[2] Volunteers span a wide range of roles: physiotherapists, drivers, equipment repairers, dental workers, hotline supporters, and branch managers all serve under its umbrella.[1]

JNS reported that Yad Sarah procured and lent more than 385,000 pieces of medical and rehabilitation equipment per year. The same article listed the most-borrowed items during the preceding twelve months as 128,551 wheelchair loans, 112,902 crutch loans, 91,839 walker loans, 54,535 oxygen-cylinder loans, and 44,377 breast-pump loans.[1] Those category counts together exceed the stated annual overall figure, and the source did not explain whether the figures used different counting methods. Yad Sarah estimated that its programs aided people 1,250,000 times per year and that it affected one in every two Israeli families.[1][5]

Most offerings are free or nominally priced.[1] The annual operating budget is financed almost entirely by donations, with more than 70% raised within Israel; the organization receives no ongoing government assistance.[1] A Yassam retail group within the organization sells new equipment at reasonable prices, with bulk purchasing used to negotiate favorable terms with vendors.[1]

Yad Sarah's services are open to people of all backgrounds, including secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews, Arabs, Druze, and Circassians.[6] The Jewish Virtual Library also lists Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze among those served.[3]

JNS and the Jewish Virtual Library date Yad Sarah's establishment to 1976.[1][3] A Globes account, however, says Uri and Michal Lupolianski founded it in the early 1970s while separately recounting the Jerusalem inhaler initiative as beginning in 1976.[8]

According to the better-known origin account, Rabbi Uri Lupolianski, living in Jerusalem's Ezrat Torah neighborhood, sought a nebulizer for his baby and had difficulty obtaining one. After acquiring a device, he passed it to a neighbor in need, then purchased seven more because such equipment was hard to find in Israel and began lending them to local families.[1] Globes reported that during a difficult Jerusalem winter, families whose babies were at risk of pneumonia came to the Lupolianskis' door nearly every evening, and the couple used their own money to buy inhalation devices.[8]

The organization was named for Lupolianski's grandmother Sarah, who was killed in the Holocaust.[3] The lending operation began in the family's three-room apartment and grew into a nationwide network.[6] Its inventory expanded to include cribs, breast pumps, wheelchairs, and eventually more than 150 kinds of medical and rehabilitation equipment.[1][9] Lupolianski articulated a mission of supporting people from "cradle to grave."[1]

The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies later identified Yad Sarah as an organization working for all communities in Jerusalem. It recommended encouraging such cross-community organizations because they respond to genuine needs and can contribute to a more positive civic atmosphere.[10]

The organization's best-known function is the free or low-cost loan of medical and rehabilitation equipment, including hospital beds, shower chairs, lifts, oxygen concentrators, wheelchairs, walkers, and crutches. The service helps patients, older people, and those with disabilities remain at home.[7][1] Equipment loans also extend to displaced people: following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, Yad Sarah lent home-care equipment to elderly and disabled Israelis displaced from their homes.[7]

Israel's Ministry of Health documents a range of additional departments, including a distress hotline, mobile dental clinics, life-story documentation, a Holocaust survivors' department, and consultation and guidance services.[2] The mobile dental clinics bring specialist dentists and assistants directly to older adults and homebound patients, conducting thousands of treatments throughout Israel with an emphasis on first aid.[11] Volunteers made more than 163,000 calls to seniors experiencing loneliness and isolation in figures reported in 2023, while the Life Story Project recorded hundreds of seniors' personal accounts to preserve their legacies.[5]

Yad Sarah also operates rehabilitation centers. Its Jerusalem project known as "Jeremiah 33" combines a luxury hotel with a rehabilitation center. Lupolianski insisted that its rehabilitation swimming pool be placed on the 15th floor, surrounded by windows and facing a view of Jerusalem, despite the added cost, so patients and their families could benefit from the setting.[6] The organization reported 3,400 treatments for people with neurological issues across five rehabilitation centers in a single year.[5] An in-house occupational therapist develops adaptive products, including one-handed scissors and adapted kitchen utensils, to promote independence.[5]

Additional programs include accessible transportation, telemedicine and home-hospitalization equipment, eldercare legal services, and support groups for caregivers through Yad Letomech, which identifies caregivers who may need help and connects them with regional groups.[1] In figures for 2022, Yad Sarah reported 2,700 recipients of pro-bono legal assistance and the distribution of more than NIS 1.5 million in medicines free to older people.[5] Its fall-detection sensors are linked to an emergency hotline that can alert emergency services when a user falls.[1][5]

Yad Sarah has mobilized rapidly in response to national emergencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization ordered 3,500 oxygenators after anticipating respiratory needs, and Lupolianski ordered 20,000 pulse oximeters before hospitals began considering rationing services.[1] He also acquired a mask-making machine during a domestic mask shortage.[1] Director-general Moshe Cohen noted that pandemic-era awareness of safe home hospitalization drove significantly greater demand for home-care equipment.[4]

Following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, Yad Sarah lent 46,150 pieces of medical equipment, most of it during the first month, and delivered and installed home-hospitalization equipment for 1,082 families so injured soldiers and civilians could recover at home.[7] The organization also expanded operations to support the prolonged rehabilitation of more than 2,500 soldiers.[7] Portable power stations were made available to patients at home who depended on electrically supported medical equipment; each unit weighed 23 kilograms and could keep equipment running for between four hours and two days, depending on usage.[12]

In January 2024, Houthi attacks in the Red Sea disrupted Yad Sarah's supply chain. Sixty-four containers of medical supplies expected that month had to be rerouted, with delays estimated at three to five months and increased costs.[7] Cohen described the situation as "a life-endangering delay of critically needed supplies for the unprecedented number of casualties of war in Israel." The organization sought alternative supply routes and called on the public to return loaned equipment no longer in use.[7]

Alongside its medical mission, Yad Sarah developed a domestic-violence counseling division focused particularly on Orthodox and Haredi communities. A 2013 Times of Israel article reported that social-work professor Shlomit Lehman founded the division in 2000 with two therapists and that by 2013 it had grown to 16 staff members serving approximately 150 patients per month.[13] Farber's 2010 study described the Jerusalem Unit for Domestic Violence as opening in 2001 with two staff members, expanding to eleven, operating as a walk-in clinic, and seeing approximately 150–170 people monthly.[14] These figures are historical and reflect different reporting dates.

Israel's Department of Welfare selected Yad Sarah to provide psychological and counseling services to Haredi victims of domestic abuse because of the organization's established reputation and trust within Orthodox and Haredi communities.[14] The unit received approximately one-quarter to one-third of its budget from the Welfare Office.[14] A rabbinical committee that included Haredi emissaries supported the work and helped navigate religious sensitivities, including concerns about women's participation in group therapy and the prohibition on speaking disparagingly of others, known as loshon hara.[14]

Services included treatment for women and men, both victims and people who had been violent, as well as children who had witnessed abuse. Specialized social workers were assigned to child clients.[14][15] The unit offered psychological therapies and community outreach, including lectures and workshops for community members, rabbis, mikvah attendants, and others.[14] In cases where a wife needed help with childcare or housework, Yad Sarah representatives brought her concerns to rabbis or yeshiva deans, who would then speak with her husband.[14] Researchers also noted concerns that children who witnessed abuse could face a greater risk of becoming perpetrators as adults.[15]

Yad Sarah's work has extended beyond Israel. A Tel Aviv University study reported that the organization built a rehabilitation center for amputees in Africa in coordination with the Israeli Foreign Ministry's MASHAV development division, presenting it as an example of an Israeli NGO working in the developing world with corporate support.[16]

In 2005, Globes reported that the United Nations granted Yad Sarah observer status, which the Israeli Foreign Ministry described as the first such accreditation for a Jewish Israeli organization.[17] A later Globes account described Yad Sarah as having been recognized that year as a consultative organization to the UN Economic and Social Council.[8] The reports use different terminology. The 2005 report credited lobbying by Israel's UN delegation and the Foreign Ministry.[17]

Yad Sarah has also emphasized its effects on Israel's healthcare system. In 2023, it estimated that its home-hospitalization equipment and related services saved the healthcare system more than NIS 5.5 billion annually and reduced hospitalization stays by 14,000 days. JNS and The Jerusalem Post presented those figures as the organization's calculations rather than independently established measurements.[1][5]

Sources list the Israel Prize, the President's Volunteer Prize, the Knesset Speaker's Award, and the Kaplan Prize for Efficiency among the honors associated with Lupolianski's work at Yad Sarah.[3] The organization has been described as Israel's largest national volunteer organization.[1][4] Holocaust survivor Hezekiel Herman, profiled by Ynet at age 92 as Yad Sarah's oldest volunteer, came each morning before the COVID-19 pandemic to repair wheelchairs and described volunteering as something that "brings people back to life."[18]

Yad Sarah's founder, Uri Lupolianski, was convicted in the Holyland corruption case in connection with bribes transferred to the organization as donations. The Tel Aviv District Court sentenced him in 2014 to six years in prison.[19] The court found that the funds had gone to Yad Sarah rather than to Lupolianski personally, but that they increased his power and influence.[19] The Supreme Court upheld the conviction in 2015 while reducing the sentence to six months of community service because of his medical condition.[19] The reports concern Lupolianski's individual conviction; Yad Sarah itself was not convicted.[19]