Ninety seconds. That is the critical time after a medical emergency when intervention can save a life. Whether it is a heart attack, a seizure, a child choking, or a terrorist bomb, those first 90 seconds make all the difference. And it is those 90 seconds that are at the heart of United Hatzalah, an organization in Israel that trains and dispatches volunteer medics to provide emergency response.
Eli Beer, Photo from United Hatzalah
Eli Beer is the founder of United Hatzalah, and he will be in Nashville on September 24th to speak about his experiences and his inspiration for founding the organization. Beer’s connection to Nashville began last year when local rabbis and community leaders visited Israel and toured United Hatzalah's headquarters. “It’s a very interesting connection that we all have. They came to Israel, and we dedicated the first of three ambulances. And now we’re going to do more and get more of the community to know what we do,” says Beer.
The ambulances to which he refers are at the heart of what the organization does. “It’s very simple. United Hatzalah is like Uber, the more Uber drivers you have, the faster responses you have.” That fact did not escape Bernie Pargh, who helped organize and fund the Israel trip. He also is the person who funded the ambulances.
Pargh learned about United Hatzalah in late October 2023, during the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, where Beer was the featured speaker. “He gave such an emotional, heartfelt, touching speech, that my father was very determined to talk to him. But the place was so big you couldn’t get within 10 feet of him,” says Pargh’s son, Franklin Pargh.
Beer spoke about October 7th, and the more than 800 people who were saved that day by United Hatzalah volunteers. “People from Magen David Adom were told not to go in there because it was too dangerous. But since United Hatzalah is an all-volunteer force, they went in there and several of their people were killed that day,” says Bernie Pargh. The story moved and inspired Pargh to donate funds to buy an ambulance.
And during that Israel trip, Pargh had another surprise in store. According to Franklin Pargh, what started as one ambulance donation became two. “Unbeknownst to me my parents decided that, as we were going to Israel, that if the visit went well enough, they would buy another there on the spot.” So as Bernie rose to say a few words, he asked Franklin to hold something. It was the check for the second ambulance. “They were really confused because we’d already sent a check,” says Franklin, “And my dad said, ‘yes, this is for a second ambulance.’”
“It was a joyous occasion, to say the least,” says Bernie, “We could give money to something we felt was going to help people 24/7, 365 days a year.”
It is gifts like these that Beer says connects Jews in the United States, and Nashville, with Israel. “The community is such a Zionistic community. And what I love about Nashville, what I heard from Bernie, about his coming with the rabbis, is the entire community is united from Reform to Orthodox to Chabad. It blew my mind.”
The Nashville group visits United Hatzalah headquarters in Israelr, Photo from United Hatzalah
Bernie and Franklin Pargh dedicate an ambulance to United Hatzalah during the mission trip to Israel by Nashville’s rabbis and community leadersr, Photo from United Hatzalah
The spirit of inclusion Beer observed in the Nashville group is also mirrored in United Hatzalah’s work. “You can argue about anything. And in many things, like politics, or sports, you can argue. But everyone can agree on one thing. That if God forbid your son is choking, you don’t care who saves him. The lives of your children and someone else’s children are more important than politics.”
Earlier this summer, Hezbollah by way of Lebanon, attacked a playground in the northern part of the country. Druze volunteers arrived first because the attack happened in their own neighborhood. “Our volunteers were there in seconds and the Druze volunteers, worked hand in hand with Jewish volunteers, Orthodox and secular Jews.” Currently United Hatzalah has 7,000 volunteers, and Beer says the goal is to grow to 16,000.
Beer was inspired as a young child after he witnessed a terror attack. “It’s the story of a 15-year-old boy with a dream. It was my dream, to save a life,” he says. To date, the organization has treated over 6.5 million people.
And like young Beer, children in Nashville are answering the same call. The students at West End Synagogue’s Beit Miriam religious school chose United Hatzalah as their annual fundraising project. School director, Sharon Paz, read Beer’s biography last summer and was moved to share it with her faculty. “Everyone was enthusiastic. And then, five weeks after we began our school Tzedakah project, came the tragedy of Oct. 7, 2023,” she said. Students and parents worked to meet the goal of raising $1,800, which will be presented to Beer in person. “This is amazing. A child who gives money, and raises money is for me the holiest thing in the world, and I am so excited.”
In the past year, United Hatzalah has responded to 750,000 calls, an all-time high, according to Beer. “In a normal day we have 2,000 calls. On October 7th we had over 12,500 emergencies. This was really the hardest day of my life. Every single decision I had that day was life and death,” he says. Those decisions include sending paramedics into the fire. “I sent people into the war zone. People with children, and husbands and wives. I sent my own daughters to the fire; I sent my wife to fight.”
On that day, Beer says as the Army was trying to keep responders out of the area, he decided to send in anyone who wanted to go. “I knew there were hundreds of people waiting there and dying and bleeding. The ambulances left the area.”
One of the rabbis who participated in the Israel trip is Rabbi Mark Schiftan, emeritus rabbi at The Temple. He says Beer is a hero in the truest sense of the word. “This guy with his idea and more important, his follow through singlehandedly changed the way first responders are able to help patients and save lives in the State of Israel.”
In addition to the traditional ambulances are the nimbler ambucycles which Schiftan says can cut through urban traffic in record time. And when combined with the network of volunteers who can cover those crucial seconds before a paramedic arrives, it is the difference between life and death. “He has created a lot of other volunteer heroes along the way.”
And as the relationship between Beer and the Pargh family has developed, so too, has the Pargh’s commitment to the organization. Plans are now underway for Pargh and his siblings to donate a third ambulance in memory of their parents. “After my sister and brother heard what they had done, they wanted to come up with a way to have a third ambulance dedicated to my mother and father’s memory.” The family plans to go to Israel soon to present this gift.
Since October 7th awareness of United Hatzalah has grown, so much so that a regional office was added to serve the central and southern part of the United States. Becca Near is the Central States Regional Development Director. She says, “The reality of Israel today helped us understand we need to increase the number of volunteers, the number of distribution facilities and supplies. Based on our data, we need quicker access to different parts of the region that we were not able to get to as fast.”
Near also points out that in addition to its work on the ground in Israel, United Hatzalah sends first responders to other crisis points in the world. “We send first responders into international conflicts like Ukraine. And then also domestic tragedies like Surfside, Florida, when we had the building go down.”
The upcoming event on September 24th is scheduled for 6:30pm at the Gordon Jewish Community Center. For more information, or to register, contact Rabbi Mark Schiftan at mschiftan@aol.com, or Bernie Pargh at bapargh@bellsouth.net.
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