Each day, Dr. Maro Gete takes a vital role in the drama that unfolds at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital. Here the young resident, the hospital’s sole Ethiopian-born doctor, treats patients as he masters his skills in the complex realm of ENT.
By night, Dr. Maro Gete, 32, returns to his home-away-from-home, the Boys Town Jerusalem dormitory.
Home for Maro Gete, one of 11 children, was originally a small village in Ethiopia from where his family immigrated to Israel in 1991. At age 13, Maro began searching for a good religious and academic education, and gratefully found Boys Town Jerusalem. Maro lived and studied at the school, graduating in 2001 with a major in physics and computers. The serious, soft-spoken young man credits his BTJ teachers with enabling him to grow into a leader. “They helped me acculturate and feel at home as a Jew in Israel.”
During a deadly clash of the 2006 Israel-Lebanese War, IDF Lt. Maro Gete assumed command in place of his badly-wounded comrade. At the war’s end, Maro married this friend’s sister Shaked.
Maro’s next battle—and victory—was to be accepted to Ben Gurion University Medical School, where he completed his medical degree. He now begins residency at Shaare Zedek Hospital.
“The hospital is quite far from Beer-Sheva, and I couldn’t possibly commute,” Dr. Gete explains. Then I thought of my ‘home’ in Boys Town Jerusalem.” The school immediately provided him with a room in the same dormitory where he’d lived as a teenager.
“My wife and four children will join me this summer, and then we’ll move closer to Jerusalem,” the doctor notes. “For today, Boys Town, which was always my home, is now my haven.”
Boys Town Jerusalem is one of Israel’s premier institutions for educating the country’s next generation of leaders in the fields of technology, commerce, education, the military and public service. Since its founding in 1948, BTJ has pursued its mission of turning young boys from limited backgrounds into young men with limitless futures. From Junior High through the College level, the three part curriculum at Boys Town – academic, technological and Torah – is designed to turn otherwise disadvantaged Israeli youth into productive citizens of tomorrow. Boys Town’s 18 acre campus is a home away from home for its more than 900 students. More than 7,000 graduates hold key positions throughout Israeli society.
{Matzav.com Israel News Bureau}
