Well-timed book on ground-breaking Dr Mary Gordon

MOIRA SCHNEIDER

CAPE TOWN

Pictured: The cover of a book on the life of the legendary Dr Mary Gordo

“Married to Medicine”, written by her nephew Professor Jack Metz and great-nephew Gordon Metz, is a testimony to a woman who dedicated her life to the service of humanity in her chosen field, both in this country and during the 12 years she spent in Mandate Palestine and Israel.  

Born in Telz, Lithuania in 1890, Mary was the granddaughter of Rabbi Eliezer Gordon, chief rabbi of Telz and “the most renowned Jewish scholar of his day”, in the words of co-author Gordon Metz, who launched the book at an event hosted by WIZO in association with the Jacob Gitlin Library.

Rabbi Gordon had set up the famous Telz Yeshiva which was the biggest such institution in the world at the time.

In 1900, Mary’s family moved to Warsaw, Poland. Mary had decided by that stage that she wanted to become a doctor, but there was nowhere in that part of the world where a woman could qualify in medicine, so they moved again, this time to England, where she was admitted to the University of Newcastle Medical School in 1908.

This in itself was quite a feat as very few women were allowed into medical schools at that time.

After she graduated, Mary immigrated to South Africa and in 1917 was the first female doctor appointed to the staff of the Johannesburg Hospital, as well as at the Wits Medical School where she lectured from 1923 – 1946. In 1919 she opened a private practice, becoming “the best known woman doctor in South Africa at that time”.

During the course of her duties, she delivered many infants who became known as “Mary’s babies”, among them politician Helen Suzman. Mary herself never married, saying that she didn’t have the time to look after her patients and a man!

Mary had a great affinity for her Jewish identity and in 1946 she visited Palestine. She had wanted to practise her profession there, but was unable to get a visa or the right to practise, due to a surplus of doctors and preference being given to Holocaust survivors.

She came back to South Africa, but in 1947, volunteered for WIZO in Palestine and it was then that she was approached by the Jewish Agency to go to Cyprus, where she became head of the Jewish wing of the British Military Hospital for refugees from Eastern Europe who had been refused entry to Palestine by the British and were deported to detention camps there.

The refugees were so struck with her compassion and dedication that they named her “Mother Mary”!

In November, 1948, Mary returned to Israel and joined the Israeli Defence Forces. Two years later, at the time of Operation Magic Carpet, she established and ran an emergency hospital at Rosh Ha’Ayin for Yemenite Jews who had been evacuated from that country.

Later she set up a vocational school for the children of these immigrants so that they would be better equipped to find employment.

In 1958, when she was close to her 70s, Mary returned to South Africa, setting up a clinic and volunteering her services as a doctor to a farm school for blacks.

“The key lesson of her life for me,” said Gordon, “was that she never stood on the side-lines, but always got involved. She sided with the poor, the oppressed, the marginalised – that was her life.”  

As Mary herself once said: “Life is a battle not for yourself, but for what you believe is right and truthful and necessary.”