Hillel Yaffe

Hillel Yaffe (1864–1936) (Hebrew: הלל יפה‎‎) was a Russian Jewish physician and Zionist leader who immigrated to Palestine during the First Aliyah. He was instrumental in curing malaria among the Jewish population of Palestine in the early 20th Century, and helped improve the medical infrastructure of the Yishuv during the same period. The Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera is named after him.

Hillel Yaffe was born in 1864 in a small village in the Ukraine. His father was a merchant and a man of means, who provided his son with a traditional Jewish education. When he grew up, Yaffe was sent to learn in a secondary school in order to expand his horizons. These studies encouraged him to study medicine and brought him close to the Zionist movement. When he finished secondary school, he traveled to Geneva, where he began to study medicine. Afterward he specialized in eye care in Paris. He began to publish laboratory work in his field of expertise, and his research was respected in the scientific community. Yaffe's decision to specialize in medicine, especially in eye care, derived from his dream to become a doctor in the Land of Israel. In 1891, he traveled to Turkey, the seat of the Ottoman Empire, where he received a license to practice medicine. From there, he sailed to Jaffa.

After traveling around the country, Yaffe settled in Tiberias. He worked as a doctor there for two years (1891–1893) and then moved to Zikhron Ya'akov. He was noted especially for his dedicated work for the people of Hadera, who were suffering from malaria. He visited the moshava of Hadera at least twice a week and succeeded to heal some of the men, but the mortality rate remained high. Slowly it became apparent that a fundamental, broad program would be necessary to remove the scourge of malaria from the Jewish settlement, since individual treatment was insufficient. In 1895, two years after he became the doctor of Zikhron Ya'akov, Yaffe received a nomination to become the representative of Hovevei Zion in Israel. This nomination opened a new chapter in Yaffe's life.

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