To the Rescue 

As more “in-towners” make their way out of the Tristate area, new arrivals all ask the same question: “What, no Hatzalah?” When emergency response-time is a question of seconds, more and more out-of-town communities, even those with modest Jewish populations and who’ve always relied on 911, have been upgrading their infrastructures to include that quintessential rapid response team, whose international motto is “90 seconds or less”

Night Seder

in the Philadelphia Community Kollel in Lower Merion, a small suburb of west Philadelphia, started out as usual on a December evening in 2022. The room pulsed with energy as avreichim studied the Gemara Shabbos with their local chavrusas. In the general din, no one noticed one man rise from his spot — until he keeled over, unconscious. The silence stretched for a heartbeat too long, and then the room of shocked bystanders exploded in chaos.

Rabbi Moshe Starkman, from Bala Cynwyd, who was there with his chavrusa, remembers the ensuing panic.

“No one had emergency training, aside from a lifeguard. We didn’t know what to do,” he says.

Someone started to perform CPR — which was unnecessary since the patient had a pulse.