"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.”
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
My story
in the picture above: with Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel
"You will never reach your goals if you stop for every barking dog." (Winston Churchill).
This was one of my trips to Jerusalem, somewhere in the early 2000s. I was working as a department manager at the Ministry of Finance, overseeing macroeconomic decisions in the insurance and pension market, doing my dream job. But something elusive then picked up momentum, and the more I approached Jerusalem, the more I felt I might not be in the right place. That we only live once, and I still had the chance to do something immensely fulfilling. To save lives.
The thought of studying medicine and becoming a doctor first arose on that trip, and it began to materialize as days and months went by. Within two years, I became, at the age of 28, a first year student at the School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University.
From the very first moment, I fell in love with the world of surgery, and I knew that's where I would head after finishing my studies and internship. My love for children and taking care of them led me to eventually specialize in pediatric surgery.
Even before that, during my general surgery residency at Sheba Medical Center, I wrote about my experiences and the events that accompanied me during my rotations as a doctor - events of life and death, heroic surgeries, moments of happiness, horror, fear, and sadness, dealing with severe illnesses and with loss. This collection of stories turned into the book "Twenty-Six," published by Yedioth Books in March 2022, becoming a bestseller in Israel.
I completed my pediatric surgery residency at Schneider Children's Hospital in Petah Tikva, the best place to get trained as an expert pediatric surgeon in Israel. Throughout this long journey, and more than once along the way, I believed that dreams come true if you believe in them with all your heart. Whether it's in advancing at work, the admission process to medical school, a demanding surgery residency, or publishing a book. Furthermore, one should never stop dreaming, for no dream is too big. Even becoming the president.
