Excerpting: “90 Seconds: The Epic Story of Eli Beer and United Hatzalah” by Rabbi Nachman Seltzer. Mesorah Publications Ltd. 2023. Hardcover. 499 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1422633076

(Courtesy of Artscroll)

Chapter Three:
A Failed Attempt

The next time Eli got together with his friends and fellow volunteers at Magen David Adom, he told them about an idea that had been brewing in his mind. It was an idea that he would end up referring to many more times throughout his life.

“The only way we’ll be able to save lives,” he said, “is if we figure out a way to reach a patient within 90 seconds.”

The others looked at him as if he were crazy.

“How on earth are you going to be able to get volunteers to people’s homes within 90 seconds? It doesn’t make sense!”

“If you have enough volunteers living in a certain neighborhood, you could reach anyone in that neighborhood within 90 seconds.”

They looked at him, not sure where he was going with this.

“Let’s say you have an apartment building, and there are 10 volunteers living in that building. If there’s an emergency call, then it goes without saying that a bunch of the volunteers will be able to get there within 90 seconds, right?”

They nodded.

“Well, it’s the same thing with neighborhoods. The key is to have enough volunteers in every neighborhood. If you have that, you’ll be able to reach everyone around the country in 90 seconds, and you’re able to save the lives of every person when they need you most.”

Though no one really took his idea seriously, Eli wasn’t discouraged. Especially since he had another idea that he wanted to try.

Eli had always prided himself on the fact that he wasn’t afraid to do anything. He was a person who had the chutzpah to suggest ideas others wouldn’t suggest and to try things other people shied away from. After serving as a volunteer for many months in the back of an ambulance and having learned so much about how to save people’s lives, he suddenly had a major breakthrough.

Israel might be able to boast of having one of the best ambulance services in the world, but if the ambulances weren’t able to reach patients in the critical window of time before all was lost, it didn’t matter how great a service it was. People were dying every day despite their best efforts to reach them on time. In Eli’s opinion, the system was broken and needed to be rebuilt.

At that moment, Eli had one of his out-of-the-box brainstorms.

What if he were to go to the national radio station—Reshet Bet was the only major station at the time—and deliver his message to the citizens of Israel?

“Every day,” he imagined himself saying, “there are numerous life-threatening health emergencies occurring all over Israel. If we could convince Magen David Adom to share emergency information with the radio, like if a baby is choking on a certain street in Tel Aviv, then anyone listening to the radio who is a medical professional would be able to drop what they are doing and run over to save a life if the person is close enough and they could get there in time.”

At that time, everyone in Israel listened to the radio because there weren’t as many options for entertainment as there are today. Which meant that if Reshet Bet made such an announcement, and television’s Channel One did the same, all their bases would be covered and a staggering number of lives could be saved.

Eli shared this idea with his fellow volunteers at MDA. Without exception, every single one advised him not to waste his time trying to pitch the idea to the Israeli media. They would never agree to work with them.

In the end, Eli told himself that his friends were right. There was no way that the radio would interrupt a news program for such an announcement, especially since it wouldn’t have been just a one-time announcement but a constant stream. Instead, he had another idea. It was simple, but he thought it might just work.

What if he went to all the volunteers at Magen David Adom and asked every one of them to carry a pager? (This was the prevalent technology at the time. A short voice message was delivered to the intended recipient.) Whenever an emergency call came in to the dispatcher at MDA, all they needed to do was send out a message to all the pagers, and whoever was in the area of the emergency would drop whatever they were doing and run.

Armed with the chutzpah that would eventually turn United Hatzalah into one of the most effective lifesaving forces in the world, Eli Beer sought to arrange a meeting with the head of Magen David Adom—a man named Chaim. Eli asked Chaim’s secretary for a meeting, and she penciled him in obligingly. Chaim was a nice guy, and Eli genuinely liked and respected him. Eli was hopeful that Chaim would see things his way and agree that what he was proposing was a good idea.

But Chaim didn’t see things Eli’s way.

Not even a little bit.

“It’s not a good idea,” he told Eli bluntly.

“Why not?”

“For one, we can’t give out emergency information that comes into the dispatcher. Our insurance wouldn’t allow it. Besides, people can’t just walk into a patient’s house without an ambulance.”

When Eli put forth his counterarguments, Chaim’s response was, in a nutshell, to go away and stop bothering him.

“When I saw that I wasn’t getting through to him,” Eli recalls, “I pulled out my log book and showed Chaim the numbers I had written down detailing the details of every call I had gone on—in real time.

“‘These are the real numbers,’ I said. ‘These are the times from the moment a call comes into the dispatcher, not from the minute the ambulance leaves the station. I’ve been keeping this log for the last year and a half. This tells the real story.’ ”

But Eli could see that he still wasn’t getting through to the boss.

“Chaim,” he said, a hint of desperation coming through, “I can help you save lives! All I need is for you to allow the dispatcher to send the emergency information to the pagers that every volunteer will have.

“Give me the go-ahead, and I’ll start working on recruiting more volunteers so that we have a better chance of getting to every emergency in time to save lives—even if there is traffic on the road and the ambulance is having a hard time making it there.

“I can help you save lives! I can help! Let me be your liaison with the volunteers. You have nine ambulances in Yerushalayim, but I’ll be able to arrange for another 30 or 40 volunteers all over the city. All I’m asking is for you to give me the go-ahead and I’ll get to work!”

Chaim’s reply was instantaneous and resolute.

“It’s not going to happen.”

There was no room for negotiation. The answer was no. In Chaim’s opinion, there was no need for volunteers to be available to run to the scene of an emergency—even if they would be able to arrive there before the ambulances. Eli’s idea had never been done before in Israel, and people have a hard time changing the status quo.

But even though change can take a long time to implement, that doesn’t mean you don’t try. Eli wasn’t ready to give up.

“Chaim, I can help you save lives,” he insisted.

Chaim was impatient with the kid who wouldn’t leave his office.

“Are you suggesting that we’re not saving lives?”

“Of course Magen David Adom is saving lives,” Eli said, trying to contain his frustration. “But there are major emergencies happening all the time, and we’re just not reaching the people in time. In all the time that I’ve been volunteering with Magen David Adom, I haven’t had the chance to bring a person back to life, and that’s because by the time the ambulance was able to get through traffic, it was too late.”

Now Chaim was really mad. “You know what,” Chaim said at last, truly angry at this upstart teen who was wasting his time, “I think you’re bored. Why don’t you go work in a falafel shop?”

Chaim wasn’t the only angry one. Eli left the office, furious. He had a revolutionary idea and no agenda other than his burning desire to save lives. When he had walked into Chaim’s office, Eli had genuinely thought the CEO was going to jump at the idea. The only thing he was asking for was the willingness to share the information needed to make the idea a reality. Now he was upset and disillusioned. After seeing a boy who had choked to death on a hot dog, part of him wanted to stop volunteering even though that had been his whole life until that point. Suddenly he didn’t see any reason to volunteer if he couldn’t save lives.

While he was standing in Chaim’s office, many traumatic scenes had flashed through his mind. It was like a movie with the sound turned off—just scene after scene after scene.

One scene he recalled was the aftermath of the first terror attack where he served as a volunteer for MDA. It happened on Jaffa Road. He could still hear the words of the dispatcher over the radio.

“All ambulances to 40 Jaffa Road. There’s a terrorist with a knife stabbing people at the bus stops.”

When they arrived, they found an elderly man lying on the ground, the terrorist’s knife still lodged in his back. Eli performed CPR on the man—with the knife still in his back. But he died.

Then there was the car accident on Herzl Boulevard. The car was totaled before they got there, and the driver was no longer alive.

So many traumas—but he had never managed to save anyone. It happened again and again. Eli knew that he couldn’t save everyone. But too many times it was only a matter of getting there sooner.

When Eli left the office that day, he said one last thing.

“Chaim, I will do this with you or without you. But it’s going to happen.”

Chaim would end up becoming good friends with Eli Beer. There would come a day when Hatzalah even presented Chaim with a trauma bag for his car sporting the Hatzalah logo—a gift he gratefully accepted.

That, however, was all in years to come.