“This school is no less dear to Sheldon’s heart than it is to me. That is also true of Ariel University, Samaria, and the entire Land of Israel,” said Miriam Adelson at the inauguration of the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson School of Medicine.
By Word Israel News Staff
In a boost for health care and education in Judea and Samaria, President Reuven Rivlin and Dr. Miriam Adelson inaugurated a new medical school at Ariel University in Samaria on Tuesday.
In addition to study areas and research labs, the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson School of Medicine also features four operating rooms, a gastrointestinal imaging institute, and university clinics for the paramedical professions.
Dr. Adelson, a physician by training, received an honorary doctorate. She said her late husband had looked forward to the medical school’s opening.
Sheldon Adelson, Israel’s biggest philanthropist, passed away in January.
“One of my most precious memories is the memory of both of us planning this building together. This school is no less dear to Sheldon’s heart than it is to me. That is also true of Ariel University, Samaria, and the entire Land of Israel,” she said.
Reminiscing about her time as a chief emergency room physician at Tel Aviv’s Rokach Hospital, Dr. Adelson told the 40 students receiving their doctoral degrees, “Only the doctor, the patient, and God are enclosed behind the curtain, with mere seconds in which to decide whether and how to do something that in the eyes of many is like a miracle and impossible. Every additional moment on earth is a blessing.”
President Reuven Rivlin, who also received an honorary doctorate, praised Ariel University as a “magnet for Jewish and Arab, religious and secular, male and female students.”
“Israel’s youngest university is also 100 percent an Israeli university: Zionist, innovative, a research leader, and mainly open to all tribes and sectors in the State of Israel,” he said.
The university has a student body of 16,000.
As Israel’s only university located in Judea and Samaria, the institution and its faculty occasionally face academic boycott controversies. It weathered unusual Palestinian criticism in 2012 when the Council for Higher Education in Judea and Samaria voted to upgrade the institution’s status from college to university.