A memoir both bittersweet and inspiring by an American pediatric
oncologist who spent seven years in Jerusalem treating
children—Israeli Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and Palestinian
Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza—who had all been diagnosed with
cancer. In 2007, Elisha Waldman, a New York–based doctor in his
mid-thirties, was offered his dream job: attending physician at
Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center. He had gone to medical school
in Israel and spent time there as a teenager; now he was going to give
something back to the land he loved. But in the wake of a financial
crisis at the hospital, Waldman, with considerable regret, left
Hadassah in 2014 and returned to the United States. This Narrow Space
is his poignant memoir of seven years that were filled with a deep
sense of accomplishment but also with frustration when regional
politics got in the way of his patients’ care, and with tension over
the fine line he had to walk when the religious traditions of some of
his patients’ families made it difficult for him to give those
children the care he felt they deserved. Navigating the baffling
Israeli bureaucracy, the ever-present threat of full-scale war, and
the cultural clashes that sometimes spilled into his clinic, Waldman
learned to be content with small victories: a young patient whose
disease went into remission, brokenhearted parents whose final hours
with their child were made meaningful and comforting. Waldman also
struggled with his own questions of identity and belief, and with the
intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that had become
a fact of his daily life. What he learned about himself, about the
complex country that he was now a part of, and about the brave and
endearing children he cared for—whether they were from Rehavia,
Me’ah She’arim, Ramallah, or Gaza City—will move and challenge
readers everywhere.
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A Pediatric Oncologist, His Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Patients, and a Hospital in Jerusalem
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780805243338
Publisert
2017
Utgiver
Random House Digital Inc.
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter