Upon completion, Shaare Zedek was the most beautiful building in Jerusalem
Concerns over hygiene and public health plagued the daily lives of residents in the Old Yishuv throughout the 19th century. Grinding poverty, malnutrition, squalid living conditions, and a dearth of adequate health care facilities in Ottoman Palestine facilitated the spread of disease. In order to alleviate the deplorable health situation, and to provide a viable alternative to the local missionary-run hospitals, three Jewish hospitals were established in the Old City in the later decades of the century. The first was the Meir Rothschild Hospital, named for and funded by Baron James Mayer de Rothschild of France, followed by Misgav Ladach and Bikur Cholim.
At the turn of the 20th century, members of the Kollel Ho”d (Holland and Deutschland) community embarked on an ambitious initiative to build a new Jewish hospital, the first one to be constructed outside the Old City. A plot of land was purchased on the outskirts of the small Shaare Zedek neighborhood, down Rechov Yaffo. The hospital would eventually assume the name of the neighborhood, though for decades it would be referred to as “Wallach’s Hospital” after its legendary founder.
Born into a prestigious Neo-Orthodox family in a small town near Cologne in 1866, a young Moshe Wallach attended medical school in Berlin and Wurzburg. When he was 24, he was dispatched to Jerusalem by the Frankfurt community and the Vaad Hapekidim V’hamarkalim in Amsterdam, which oversaw funding for the Old Yishuv, to assist with medical care. Settling in the Old City, he had the distinction of being the first known physician to perform a tracheotomy within its walls. Following several years of making house visits and operating a private clinic — he was also a mohel — he returned to Europe to fundraise in Germany and the Netherlands for building Shaare Zedek.
Upon completion, Shaare Zedek was the most beautiful building in Jerusalem, and its spacious wards and grounds made it the largest state-of-the-art facility in the city. The ceremonial opening took place on January 27, 1902, the birthday of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II. Dr. Wallach was appointed the general director and chief physician of the hospital. He wanted to have the most modern medical facility in the country, with high hygienic standards, the first quarantine ward for infectious diseases, vaccinations, and even a dairy on hospital grounds to provide fresh milk for the patients — no small luxury in Jerusalem of that era.
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