BGU | MY PATH, Haim Doron, MD

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE In this work, translated from the original Hebrew, in most cases the proper name of Clalit Sick Fund has been shortened, referred to as “Clalit” and at times – the sick fund (singular, regular noun). The term kupot holim or sick funds was employed for more than a century, until modified relatively recently in keeping with the spirit of the times that now labels these constructs as sherutei bri’ut or health services [providers] as in Clalit Health Services. When referring exclusively to ‘the [Clalit] Sick Fund,’ the translation has stopped short of capitalizing this term to avoid confusion – although Kupat Holim is often used as a synonym for Clalit. For example, Prof. Doron has sometimes referred to “Kupat Holim vs. Maccabi” or “Kupat Holim and Meuhedet,” both Maccabi and Meuhedet being rival health service providers to Clalit. Doron at times uses certain Biblical phraseologies that are common in modern Hebrew in certain situations. These carry a negative connotation that does not easily translate into English. The most marked example is “blending (sha’atnes) of public and private medicine.” In Hebrew, the verb sha’aznez strongly suggests this blending is a form of pollution. Or when Prof. Doron employs the Biblical concept of “a Sodom’s bed,” he does not simply mean the value neutral “fitting a square peg in a round hole.” Rather, he uses the Biblical allusion to signal an act that he views as fundamentally immoral. Such cases are elucidated in footnotes to faithfully convey Prof. Doron’s feelings and attitude that are clear in the original Hebrew volume. In Israel, health and politics intrinsically have been intertwined; and this theme runs like a thread through this volume. Nobel Prize laureate José Saramago once commented that the problem with reading a work in translation is “the foreign reader doesn’t always know what norms are being broken.” There is a parallel to this insight in the work at hand, that have led to insertion of some explanatory footnotes to provide subtext at certain junctures in Doron’s narrative about the dynamics – human and political – that are clear to the reader in the Hebrew original.

Daniella Ashkenazy

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