The director of Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak, Professor Motti Ravid, announced his resignation on Thursday after attacking the Haredi community in an interview on Reshet Bet radio which was received with harsh rebukes.
In a kind of suicide dive, Professor Ravid said this that the Haredim in Israel “have been educated for years to take everything and not give anything back. To this day there has never been such a complete public that disregards the law in such a brazen way and kills people.”
Ouch.
When asked if he was concerned about the approaching Simchat Torah holiday and its impact on the morbidity and overcrowding in his hospital, Professor Ravid replied: “I’m no longer worried, I know – there will be another wave of illness, I hope it won’t be very big.”
The hospital director added: “This is one of the most lawless events in the history of the State of Israel. I do not understand what’s the connection between faith and religion and what they’re doing. It’s the distorted education of a population.”
He concluded: “The rabbis, the ones who are there, the wise ones, are shouting ‘Stop,’ but their audience is not listening.”
Transportation Deputy Minister Uri Maklev (United Torah Judaism) commented on the interview with Professor Ravid, saying, “This is a man saturated with hatred and hypocrisy, who for years has made a living from the public with which he is so disgusted. He is willing, for well-known motives, to poison the well from which he drank for decades.”
Maklev added: “This is a self-conflicted personality. Why doesn’t he get up and leave? If his words are sincere, how can he provide service and heal patients from among the public he so loathes even one more day?”
So he got up and left.
Israeli news outlets suggested on Thursday that the hospital had been planning to fire Ravid and his no-holds-barred interview was given after he realized his days at the helm there were numbered.
After retiring from Meir Hospital in Kfar Sabba in 2004, Prof. Ravid took over the management of the hospital in Bnei Brak which he took into the 21st century. Under his rule, Mayanei Hayeshua tripled its intake and today it is an established community hospital recognized for specialization and affiliated with a university.
The Mayanei Hayeshua management expressed its regret over Prof. Ravid’s remarks “in which he uttered offensive things that should not be said against the Haredi public in general and its rabbis in particular. As a result, this morning Prof. Ravid submitted his resignation to the hospital management. In light of the difficult and challenging period in which the health system finds itself, the date of his departure and the procedure of overlap with his successor is being negotiated with the hospital management. The hospital management thanks Prof. Ravid for his great contribution to raising the level of medicine at the hospital.”