Contact:
Alix Friedman
afriedman@hadassah.org
NEW YORK, NY: October 31, 2022 – From November 14 to 17, Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, will gather its members in Jerusalem for Together in Israel: Our Pride. Our Purpose. Hadassah’s 100th National Convention. The meeting will bethe first in-person national convention since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in 2020 and the one-hundredth national convention since the inaugural event was held in Rochester, NY, in 1914.
The capstone of the 2022 convention will be the Hadassah Honors award ceremony on November 16. Former Hadassah National President and longtime volunteer leader Marlene Post will receive the Henrietta Szold Award, Hadassah’s highest honor, and First Lady of Israel Michal Herzog will receive the Power of Esther Award. Named for Hadassah’s visionary founder, the Henrietta Szold Award is given to individuals who embody her ideals and beliefs. The Power of Esther Award honors women who, in standing up for just causes, follow in the footsteps of the Bible’s Queen Esther.
"I am extremely moved to have been chosen for the Henrietta Szold Award,” said Post. “Hadassah has been a central part of my life for more than 50 years and there is no organization whose recognition means more to me. I am privileged to be part of the group of 300,000 women who make up this historic and vibrant organization and who steadfastly support Israel, women's empowerment and health care excellence."
Said Herzog, “I am honored to be the recipient of the Power of Esther Award from Hadassah, The Women's Zionist Organization of America. I am a great believer in the power of women and am especially humbled to receive such an award from an organization which does so much in support of projects advancing social mobility in Israel, advocating for women’s health and world class medical research.”
The Hadassah Honors event will include performances by The Israel Camerata, Israel's leading chamber orchestra; actor-singer Yehoram Gaon; and mentalist Lior Suchard.
Another convention highlight will be Hadassah’s Pride on November 15. The event will be a tribute to Hadassah’s historic commitment to its two hospitals in Jerusalem, Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem and Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus, and to Hadassah’s Youth Aliyah villages. The campus-like communities provide wraparound services for at-risk Israeli teens and for young immigrants from places in the world where it is no longer safe to be a Jew.
The convention sessions will be interspersed with tours, visits and other activities connected to 20 different “tracks” from which each attendee will have chosen three. Several tracks focus on Hadassah while others focus on Israel’s geopolitics, history, culture, food and wine.
All convention participants will visit Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem, a 700-bed tertiary-care hospital that is a national referral center for complex medical cases. The participants will see the expansion underway of the hospital’s Round Building and hear about the latest clinical research and the hospital’s collaboration with the Hadassah-Hebrew University School of Medicine and the Henrietta Szold Hadassah-Hebrew University School of Nursing.
The Israel gathering will be the first official meeting of Hadassah’s new Evolve Leadership Fellows, a special cohort of young members from across the country who will lead the next generation at Hadassah. The group will have a five-day pre-convention trip during which they will explore contemporary Israeli issues by visiting the Peres Center for Peace & Innovation, a Druze village, a Gaza border area and an agrotourism project, among other places. The young leaders will also spend time at contemporary and historic sites in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Said National President Rhoda Smolow, “After nearly three years on Zoom, I am thrilled to be coming together in Jerusalem with the women I consider my family. Together, we will celebrate Hadassah and the joy of being in Israel, the centerpiece of so much of our work.”
“There is no place more fitting than Israel to hold Hadassah’s one-hundredth national convention,” said National Convention Chair Joyce Rabin, “and there is no name more fitting for the convention than Together in Israel: Our Pride. Our Purpose. I am already anticipating the excitement I will feel when the wheels of my plane touch down at Ben-Gurion Airport.”