History
The original Hatzolah EMS was founded in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA by Rabbi Hershel Weber in the late 1960s, to improve rapid emergency medical response in the community, and to mitigate cultural concerns of a Yiddish-speaking, religious Hasidic community. The idea spread to other Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in the New York City area, and eventually to other regions, countries, and continents. Hatzolah, as an organization, is the largest volunteer ambulance service in the world. Chevra Hatzalah in New York has more than a thousand volunteer EMTs and Paramedics who answer more than 250,000 calls each year with private vehicles and a fleet of more than 70 ambulances.
Hatzolah organizations now function in Israel, Australia, South Africa, Mexico City, Belgium, Switzerland, several provinces of Canada, Russia the United Kingdom, and at least five states in the US.
In Israel, the largest Hatzalah organization is called Ichud Hatzalah (Hebrew: איחוד הצלה), Hebrew for, "United Hatzalah." Ichud was founded in the aftermath of Israel's Second Lebanon War in 2006 when its founders decided they would like to improve unified central rescue response.
Read more about this topic: Hatzalah
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)