Soroka Medical Center

Originally appeared in Jerusalem Post Magazine on October 2, 2026

What a journey it has been from the Philadelphia suburbs and Messiah University, a private interdenominational Evangelical Christian university, to an apartment in Beersheba.

When Tiffany Schatz attended the Medical School for International Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev starting in 2005, living in Israel and even being Jewish were far from her mind. Now, Dr. Schatz is an olah, a Jewish mother of three, a thoracic surgeon at Soroka Medical Center, and an active member of the Beersheba musical theater community. 

What a journey it has been from the Philadelphia suburbs and Messiah University, a private interdenominational Evangelical Christian university, to an apartment in Beersheba overlooking a large, beautiful park.

Schatz met Jacob, the Jewish man who would eventually become her husband, while studying for the MCATs, the medical school admission test. Schatz knew there was something special about Jacob and that they might have a future together. Nonetheless, she began her medical studies in Israel and they continued dating long distance.

“I had a crash course in Judaism in his absence,” Schatz notes playfully. “I was having really positive exposure to Jewish culture and the Jewish faith and Israel. I already had a positive outlook on Israel.”

Jacob proposed one year later and they got married the following year. “We tried to institute a lot of Jewish traditions at our wedding.”

Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, southern Israel, March 30, 2026. (credit: YOSSI ALONI/FLASH90)

The two next came to Israel together, but their living conditions were not ideal. “It was very hot and we did not have a working air conditioner.” Schatz notes that Jacob was very clear about one thing: “I don’t think I will ever want to live here!” Tiffany reasoned that, if they were to ever return to Beersheba, they, like other professionals, would have air conditioning and a car. As far as Jacob was concerned, “Israel was off the table.”

After a year of doing research, Schatz pursued a five-year surgery residency in Waterbury, Connecticut. She marvels at the good education and training she received. Their first child and only daughter, Noa, now 16, was born there.

The next stop for the growing family was a fellowship at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

They were exploring the possibility of adopting a child, and when asked by the adoption agency, they indicated that they were open to the possibility of adopting a child with disabilities. They soon learned that Schatz was pregnant and expecting a child with significant disabilities. The Schatz family viewed Caleb’s birth as a gift from God that they were ready to receive. He is now nine.

Parenting two children, including one with high support needs – all while starting a new job – was very challenging. As they began to feel they were “figuring it out” and “coming up for air,” they learned that they were expecting a third child, a son, Eli, now seven, who also has disabilities. Schatz shares that Eli’s birth, much to her delight, “caused significant improvement” in Caleb. “He now had a brother and a playmate.”

Schatz decided to open a private practice in the Washington area to afford her greater flexibility and to balance work and home responsibilities.

When the COVID pandemic hit in 2000, they felt far from family and relocated to Philadelphia, purchasing Jacob’s childhood home, which his parents were selling and encouraged them to buy. “We had a good life and expected we’d live there forever.”

‘If I could be there to help, I wanted to be there’

THEN, OCT. 7 happened. “I heard so much about what was happening at Soroka and pictured the wards, the operating rooms, and the surgeons I knew. They were taking care of the wounded. If I could be there to help, I wanted to be there, and I signed up to be a volunteer.”

Schatz attended a webinar that discussed needs and opportunities. A presentation by Soroka Medical Center director-general Prof. Shlomi Codish both inspired her and “threw her for a loop.”

Codish thanked everyone for wanting to come and volunteer but said that it was very disruptive as doctors learn the various systems, then leave. “We really need for people to come and stay,” Codish boldly said. “It was like an arrow to my heart,” Schatz reports. “Yeah, I’ll do it. I am willing to come and stay!”

Schatz spoke a lot to herself while trying to make a decision about moving to Israel. She “spoke” about how she had decided to “throw her lot” with the Jewish people, and about how antisemitism had wreaked havoc on the Jewish people for millennia. She had a more difficult time speaking with her husband about aliyah – and waited a month.

In January 2024, Schatz shared her desire to move to Israel with Jacob. He was willing to listen and suggested that if they were going to consider it, they should be very thorough. They spoke with friends from the light opera group that Schatz had been part of in Beersheba and with a friend from Schatz’s medical school class.

They almost immediately began the aliyah process with Nefesh B’Nefesh and attended a Medix event for doctors wishing to practice medicine in Israel. The event spoke to Jacob as well. He reportedly felt “very comfortable” there. Schatz shares that gathering all of the necessary immigration documents became “like a compulsion,” and she enjoyed the feeling of making incremental progress every day.

AS THEY were making concrete plans to come on aliyah in August, they left their kids alone with relatives for the first time for an exploratory trip. Jacob’s mother was hospitalized while they were on their Israel trip – a sign that this was not the right moment for aliyah.

‘Why aren’t we there yet?’

Schatz, who had just taken herself off the on-call schedule, returned to and “ramped up” her practice. Fortunately, by January, Jacob’s mother was in better health. Schatz and Jacob checked aliyah flights and decided to make aliyah as quickly as possible. “He kicked in to high gear,” observes Schatz proudly, describing how Jacob began organizing and selling family possessions.

While some friends had cautioned against leaving school in the middle of the year, the family decided to move forward. “Fortunately, our, at the time, 14-year-old, was like super on board, and I was like, when are we going? What’s the soonest we can go? Why aren’t we there yet?”

“And so, we went in April,” reports Schatz, noting that, had they waited, the Iran war would have made their aliyah impossible. “The timing was remarkable, but it’s another piece of the remarkable story. If we had been stateside, we probably would have been like, ‘Yep, we’re not going. Never mind. That was a nice idea, but it’s not safe.’ But because we were here, we were like, we’re part of this.”

Schatz is now working as a thoracic surgeon, Jacob as a software engineer working on a start-up. Noa attends boarding school at Naale in Hod Hasharon and is now taking all classes in Hebrew – and acting, dancing, and playing piano. Caleb and Eli receive the services and support they need. “It does feel like it’s getting better and more manageable. And our kids, I think, are going to be okay.”

They are also finding their way socially. “I’m still involved with musicals. Last year, I was in the performance of the Pajama Game, and that was really fun, and I’m the producer this year.”

And they report, “We actually fit better here, because people like to have dinner at home and sit together. And it’s like we’ve slid right in, that’s exactly what we like to do – have people over and be invited to others’ homes!”

Next goal – making a few more friends who are native Hebrew speakers!  ■

Tiffany Schatz, 43
From Philadelphia, PA 
to Beersheba, 2025

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Originally appeared in JNS, www.jns.org, Mar 06, 2026.

From roadside missile strikes to reinforced wards, two physicians tell JNS how their hospitals adapt under fire—and why they remain committed to their work.

Before March 1, all of Dr. George Asfour’s medical interventions took place in hospital operating rooms. They did not involve running from his car on a highway after a missile attack, assessing the wounded, extracting a patient with a head injury and treating him on the spot.

But that changed one night in Jerusalem, a day after the United States and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran.

Dr. George Asfour, a surgeon at Kaplan Medical Center, March 1, 2026. Credit: Kaplan Spokesperson/Clalit Health Services.

Asfour, 36, thought his day of caring for patients—which began at 7 a.m. that Sunday—had ended after completing his rounds, performing three scheduled surgeries and checking on his patients one last time.

The Jerusalem resident, a senior surgeon at Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, was driving home around 10 p.m. when he heard sirens on a main road near the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood.

“I heard a siren, then saw and heard a missile explode on the opposite side of the road,” Asfour tells JNS in a video interview.

“I stopped the car, checked to make sure there were no injuries, saw three damaged cars and heard people shouting. Without thinking, I ran and removed a man from the car and helped evacuate them.”

“When I saw these cars, I only thought if they needed help—and jumped from the car.  In that moment, I didn’t think of anything else,” he adds.

One man had head and eye injuries, while two others sustained milder wounds, he recalls. After ambulances and police arrived and transported the injured to the hospital, Asfour drove home.

Back home, he turned on the television and reflected on what had just happened. His wife questioned his decision to run toward the blast scene. He did not tell his daughter, 7, or his son, 3, about the incident, though he acknowledges they may eventually see footage of it online.

Even his boss, Dr. Barak Bar-Zakay, director of the Hepatopancreatic and Biliary Tract Surgery Unit at Kaplan Medical Center, was surprised to see him back at work early the next morning.

“He was in shock,” Asfour says. “He asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ and said what I did was fabulous.”

For Asfour, his response was part of the job—especially during wartime.

The Jerusalem native studied medicine for six years in Egypt before completing internships and residencies at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem and Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot.

He had originally been scheduled to be off on Saturday, Feb. 28. Instead, a call from Bar-Zakay changed his plans.

By 10 a.m., he and his team had moved patients, equipment, supplies and medications from the fourth floor to the safer first floor.

“It was a hard day,” Asfour recalls. He left the hospital around 9 p.m. and returned by 7 a.m. the next morning.

After 8 a.m. rounds, the team discovered that three patients—including one suffering from sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition that can lead to shock and organ failure—required surgery.

“We prepare for surgery at 9 a.m., but there are only a limited number of operating rooms because not all of them are protected,” he says.

War transformed the hospital environment dramatically, he explains. “Everything changes,” Asfour says. “It is a stressful place.”

Patients were moved to the first floor, where departments shared crowded spaces.

“It is not your department with patients in their own rooms,” he says. “It feels like the emergency room with all the beds together. No one feels comfortable because there is another patient right next to you.”

Asfour and his colleagues divided their time among the emergency room, intensive-care unit and operating rooms.

Despite the pressure, he says the hospital staff functions like a family. “All of the doctors respect each other and treat each other like family,” he tells JNS.

He adds that he has never been treated differently because he is an Arab physician. “I feel like I am home,” he says “Everyone in the hospital loves each other.”

For that reason alone, he says, he is willing to drive 40 minutes each way to the hospital every day.

The patient he treated at the roadside, he reported, is now recovering at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Dr. Tiffany Schatz, a surgeon at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva, March 1, 2026. Credit: Soroka Spokesperson/Clalit Health Services.

From Philadelphia to Beersheva

At Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva, cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Tiffany Schatz says her patient care has remained inside the hospital.

The Philadelphia native, a mother of three children aged 7 to 15, completed medical school at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheva and surgical training in the United States. After years of practice in the U.S., she and her family made aliyah in April 2025, and she began working as a surgeon at Soroka.

Schatz, 43, says her medical expertise is frequently sought outside the hospital as well. “Last week we were having dinner with friends who mentioned a respiratory problem going on for two months,” she tells JNS. “I helped him get admitted to Soroka.”

Since the start of the current war, dubbed “Operation Roaring Lion,” Schatz says the hospital has maintained a sense of normalcy while adapting to wartime conditions.

Patients who could be discharged were sent home and elective surgeries were canceled. But cancer operations—her specialty—continued. “There is still lots of cancer surgery,” she says, as the hospital continues handling routine emergencies. “We treat someone who falls from a ladder and are ready for anything to happen.”

On Purim, nurses tried to maintain a festive spirit. “They wore silly wigs and took normal care of patients,” she says, smiling. “But the news was playing at the corner of the desk—a reminder that things are not normal.”

Another reminder came when a nurse arrived for work, reporting that a rocket strike in her neighborhood had blown out the windows of her home.

“There is no ability to stop and lament,” Schatz says. “Israelis just show that life goes on.”

Although her duties had not changed significantly so far, Schatz says staff members remained ready to be reassigned wherever needed. One colleague, she notes, was recently relocated to Yoseftal Medical Center in Eilat.

Balancing hospital responsibilities while her children remained home from school during wartime was challenging. Some acquaintances in the United States asked whether she planned to return.

But Schatz says she has no regrets about making aliyah. “Some people think we are nuts,” she says. “But this is where we are supposed to be. The war is not a reason to reconsider. This is part of the deal. This is our chance to help keep Israel going and be part of its future.”

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