On Yom Kippur we recite the classic Vidui, Confession, a list of the mistakes and failings for which we seek forgiveness.

On Yom Kippur 1945, just months after liberation, Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam zt”l, the Klausenberger Rebbe, stood as Chazan before fellow survivors. Having endured the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust, he recited the words of the Vidui not as statements, but as questions:

“Ashamnu – Were we, G-d forbid, unfaithful to G-d and fail to remain loyal to Him? Gazalnu – did we steal? From whom did we steal in Auschwitz and Mühldorf? … Maradnu – We rebelled? Against whom? We rebelled against You, Master of the Universe?”

“This Vidui,” he declared, “was not written for us.”

But then the Rebbe thundered anew. There was, he said, something for which they did need to seek forgiveness. How many times, amid their suffering, had they cried out: “Master of the Universe, I have no more strength. Take my soul.”

For those moments of despair, the Rebbe said, they should ask the Almighty to restore their faith and their trust in Him.

The Klausenberger Rebbe was a towering figure in the Jewish world, renowned not only for his scholarship but for his extraordinary resilience and unwavering belief in the sanctity of Jewish life. He had lost his wife, his eleven children and much of his family in the Holocaust. Yet from the devastation he emerged not with a mission of retreat, but with a determination to rebuild.

And perhaps there is no greater expression of that determination than Laniado Hospital.

The Rebbe dreamed of establishing a hospital in Netanya where every patient would be treated with dignity and compassion, and where the preservation of life would stand at the very heart of its mission. From his own experience of suffering came an extraordinary commitment to saving others.

Today, that legacy carries a new and urgent responsibility.

The Sharon region of Israel needs an Emergency Centre capable of continuing to save lives even when Israel itself is under attack. The threat of missiles means that an emergency department can no longer simply be a place to which people are brought for safety and treatment. The hospital itself must be protected.

Laniado’s new Sheltered Emergency Centre is being built to ensure that, even under missile attack, doctors, nurses and medical teams can continue treating the sick, the injured and the most vulnerable in a secure, protected environment.

There is a profound connection between this project and the vision of the Klausenberger Rebbe.

In 1945, having witnessed a world in which Jewish life had been treated as worthless, the Rebbe chose to dedicate the rest of his life to demonstrating precisely the opposite: that every life is precious, that every life deserves to be protected, and that even in the darkest moments we must continue to build for the future.

More than eighty years later, that responsibility passes to us.

We cannot control when Israel may next come under attack. But we can help ensure that when it does, Laniado Hospital remains able to fulfil the Rebbe’s sacred mission, protecting life, treating the injured and serving the people of Netanya and the entire Sharon region, whatever is happening outside its walls.

This Yom Kippur, as we remember the extraordinary faith of the Klausenberger Rebbe, we are reminded that faith is not only something we feel or something we say.

It is something we build.

And by helping to build Laniado’s new Sheltered Emergency Centre, we are helping to ensure that the Rebbe’s promise to rebuild Jewish life continues – protecting and saving lives for generations to come.