Inside ArtScroll - Season 4 Episode 5: Eli Beer of United Hatzalah

[Music] Hello everyone and welcome back to Inside Art Scroll where the books you read and the people who write them come to life. Today I am privileged to be joined by Ellie Beer, founder of United Hotsah about whom a brand new book 90 seconds has been released by Art Scroll. Ellie, what a pleasure to have you here. A true honor. Thank you very much. It's really exciting to your name and reput reputation precede you. So many people know about what you've done. They may not know your life story, which is what this super book by Rabbi Nakman Seltzer is going to do. is going to let people in on your background and your story. Right before this interview though, you were mentioning something fascinating that when you were coming now to America from Aritis where you live, you had a real life moment of meeting someone who's been impacted by your work. Just before we get started, I was so taken by this story. Tell tell us a little about what happened. So, Hashem sends me ways of motivating me to continue the work and I was coming to the states now just yesterday and in the airport I come to the counter of Alal. I give my luggage and the woman says to me, she sees my name. She says, "Hatalah, United Hatella saved my husband's life a year ago." I said, "What happened?" and she says, "I live in a little kibbutz in the south of Israel in the negative and my husband suffered a cardiac arrest. A young man all of a sudden dropped dead. I called for an ambulance and before I turned around 90 seconds later, a volunteer of United atella by the name of Gonen shows up with a defibrillator and starts performing CPR on my husband." She says, 'We all crying, seeing our h our my husband, our the father our k of my children is is lying there on the on the floor with no no heartbeat and we're praying and all of a sudden a few a few minutes after he started CPR and he shocked him with a defibrillator, my husband came back to life and 50 minutes later 50 minutes later an ambulance shows up and if it wasn't for the United Hotel volunteer who showed up in 90 seconds he wouldn't be alive. So I asked her, "Give me the name of the volunteer I want to call him." And thanked him for what he did. We have 6 and a half thousand volunteers, but they need to hear a good word, too. So I called him up. He was crying when I called him up. He couldn't believe it. He said, "Ellie, I saved lives for many years. I'm a medic from the army. I was a soldier in the army as a medic and now I'm volunteering at but I was traumatized 25 years ago exact to the date February 4th 1997 I was a medic in the army and the worst accident happened two helicopters crashed up in the north next to Kratchmona and 75 young soldiers perished I couldn't save anyone I was there running from one soldier to the other and I couldn't couldn't save anyone. I was crying for months. I was traumatized and I decided to start volunteering and saving lives and I love doing it every day in Atsella in United Aut. But this man that I saved that you calling me for this is a neighbor of mine not far from me. I got to him within less than 90 seconds which is your vision. And when I saved him, I realized it was the yard site of the 75 soldiers, 25 years for the for the assaim, the tragedy of the helicopters. And when I s when I heard this story, I came here and I said, Hashem gives me these stories all my whole life to just keep me going to fill up my battery, right? And I love sharing these stories to motivate other people, to inspire other people. Well, you are an inspiration in the sense that you as as really one person, you had a vision, you had a dream, you also had the determination to bring that dream to fruition. And we we don't know how many lives your efforts have sold, but it's have have saved, but it's it's, you know, it's it's an in inestimable number. And uh you're you're you know, you have tremendous to your credit for doing so. But let let's go back to Ellie Beer as a youngster. Where did you grow up? Who impacted you before you came to that important juncture in your life? Well, I grew up in Uranim. I was born to an American family. That's how I speak English. And my parents were Americans. My father was Rabbi Gabriel Beer. My mother Kaya beer. And I had six brothers and sisters. Um when I was six, almost six years old. There was a young boy. Uh I experienced one of the worst experiences anyone could experience, even an older person, a terrorist attack on a bus in Bvagan where I grew up, not not far from Color to Yeshiva. Mhm. A bus that was coming into the neighborhood on a Friday afternoon. The number 12 bus blew up on the bus stop. Six people were murdered and over 50 people were injured. And I was looking at the people on the floor that were laying there and screaming for help. And I was just a little boy. I couldn't do anything. And it impacted me for many years. I was thinking about what ever happened to that old man on the floor. Did he survive? What happened to him? He was screaming for help. I couldn't help him. And I was always thinking if I could have helped him, maybe I would have saved him. And I decided one day I'm going to save people's lives. Wow. That's quite a young age for for a child to process that that those types of images, right? I mean, well, I grew up near Yadvashm and I used to go to Yadvashm frequently. I used to spend time there looking at stories and reading stories and looking at pictures of Holocaust survivors and and seeing what the Nazis did to the Jewish people. And I always said, "If I was alive, I would help people." Mhm. And I heard my father tell me stories when he was a young boy growing up in the Lower East Side. He would raise money uh in Vad Hatsala then. Oh wow. As a 10-y old boy post war 1938 my father was raising money to save Jewish souls from the Nazis. And I said if I was alive in that time what would I do? And then when I was during that time growing up, that period growing up and remembering that incident with the 12 12 bus blowing up, I always said one day maybe I could save people. It was always my dream to save one life. Mhm. Talking about how many lives did I save? I don't know, but I know I saved at least one life and that was always my dream. And then um that opportunity came when I was 15. And what what happened at that point that you were able to finally bring your your dream I mean you're only 15 years old 16 years old what happened at that point that you were able to to actually put it into action so you know I wasn't the best student in um you know I I don't know what maybe ADD ADHD and other things dyslexia a little and uh I was always looking for things to do And I saw a sign on a tree. It was like these signs that you have to pull out the piece of number, the number on the bottom that if you want to become a EMT, they have a course for yeshiva boys during the summer. Uh the city of Jerusalem did it and I and I registered right away and I said, "This is my opportunity now. I'm going to go volunteer as an in an ambulance to save lives." What what did your parents think about that at that point for you to do that? Actually, my parents were very happy. My father was thrilled when I told them. I just found a way of I could. My father knew how much I wanted to save people. That's all I cared about. I mean, if you would give me any other thing like you say, "Oh, you go to space. You want to go to space?" No, I don't want to go to space. I want to save a person. I was thinking always about what if I would have done something when I was a boy. And I said, "Maybe now I could save someone." And I went to learn. It was like a month during the whole bayazman I was learning. And the end of the Bayman, I got my certificate. I This is my first certificate ever. Wow. I don't think I ever got a certificate in school. That's cool, right? I was going to say your story really is encouraging. Not every kid does well in school. We know that. Not every child who makes it through the school system is an A+ student. I forgot what the what the saying is, you know, be nice to your BNC students cuz they're the ones who are going to come back to support your institutions later on. There's some kind of saying like that or save you. Yeah. Or that's exactly the point. Someone like you who may not have done well academically, but you had a fire burning inside. You really did. And you knew you were going to make a difference. You just weren't sure how. That's true. And then when I finished the gradu when I graduated and I became officially an EMT, uh I was sure the next day I'm going to save people's lives. It was no question in my mind. And I was very disappointed. I was so disappointed when I joined an ambulance and I realized how it's not so easy to save people. Mhm. And I realized that although people think an ambulance saves lives, volunteering for a year and a half in the back of an ambulance, I realize it's almost impossible. You help many people. You people who are waiting for you and are breathing on their own, they could wait and you get there and you help save them, but you're not really saving them. You're you're you're helping them get to the hospital, right? People who are not breathing by the time you get there, they're brain damaged and you can't save them. And if you do save them, they die a few days later. I said, "What's going on? I'm in an ambulance. I'm doing CPR like we're supposed to. We're doing resuscitation. We're getting to really bad car accidents where people are laying there. We're getting there with an ambulance and we're not getting them back to life." And this happened over and over. People were calling saying, "We spoke. We when we got there, they were screaming at us. We just spoke to him. He was talking to us. What took you so long, but it wasn't our fault. We were fighting traffic, the distance. And people don't realize it takes you two or three minutes to get into the ambulance cuz if it's late at night, so the the ambulance crew are sleeping because they are union. You have to get up, get dressed, run to the vehicle till they get to the scene. And that's probably without traffic cuz I usually that's that's not even an issue. So what well how did how did you end up in the realm of how did that happen? Well, we didn't have any at Israel then. Atella operated in New York, right? Hershel Weber started that. Um but what did what was in existence at that time in Israel? They had an ambulance service. They had a ambulance service. Public or private? It was really a private non-governmental organization, not government. Um, only one, Mckendome. Then, today they have a lot, over a hundred ambulance companies. But then it was like one ambulance, they had maybe nine or 10 ambulances on call in. So, if one ambulance was bit, all the ambulances were busy, they would call an ambulance from outside, maybe she or another city nearby. uh and it would take time but even there's ambulances in the city they were all stationed in one place. Mhm. So imagine to yourself before Uber, you would call a car service to go to the airport and they would say, "Okay, you'll be there, the taxi will be there in 25, 30 minutes if you're lucky." Same thing because ambulances would have to come from one station. And we would sit in the ambulance station waiting for the emergency calls. And when we got their call, I remember as a 15-year-old boy, it was 3:00 in the morning. We got a call in Gilo, which is in the other side of town right next to Mar Cro. And we get a call, a lady called for her husband not breathing. And it was a freezing night that the the driver, ambulance driver who was a worker, we were volunteers, was sleeping. So we had to wake him up. He had to put his shoes on. He had to go to the bathroom. And we he was rushing of course, but he got to the ambulance, he forgot something in the in the room. He forgot his cigarettes. And I had to go get his cigarettes because how could he operate, you know? And I was thinking, I was a kid. I went crazy. How could this thing happen? But I that's that was like a normal routine. I run. I get it. It took us two or three minutes to get out of the station. We get on the road. It's takes 15 20 minutes to get there. By the time we got there, this man wasn't breathing. We started CPR. And after 40 minutes of work, another ambulance shows up with a doctor and he says, "This man is not alive anymore." And this happened over and over. And a year and a half after I started volunteering. I had a log on. I used to write down every emergency what time we received it and what time we arrived. And I realized the average response time was 17 minutes. Wow. Wow. But they you couldn't complain. That was one service. That's what happens in every country when you have one service of anything. So I was in my back of my mind I'm thinking how could we make things better? And I always said if someone is not breathing, if a kid is not breathing, why don't they stop the radio broadcast? They only had one station on the radio in Israel then. Mhm. Why don't they stop the station broadcasting music or the news and say a little boy by the name of Schlomma Zelman is not breathing now. He lives on in this in this neighborhood in this neighborhood. Could someone run to save him because an ambulance is coming from the other side of town. I was thinking about it. Uhhuh. But I knew that it's not going to happen. And then we had an incident that changed my life. It was a it was a Thursday and we we were in Harat Topi Mount Scopus which is next to Romatesko and we get a call while we were cleaning up the ambulances after the ambulance after another incident and on the radio on the walkie-talkie the dispatcher of Mendome says to the driver are you available to take a call it's like a code red like a code one a child not breathing and he said, "Um, I'll jump." Yeah. We ran into the ambulance. He started zooming to Bagan, which is the other side of town, right? Fighting traffic. They didn't have the bacon road. It was very difficult. Took us 21 minutes to get there. A child, seven years old, choked on a hot dog. His mother was trying to save him, but she couldn't do anything. Another neighbor came and spilled a whole bucket of water on him. So, we started doing CPR on a freezing cold, wet child. The mother was hysterical. She was She said, "Why did it take you two hours to come? You murdered my son." And we didn't murder the son. We just trying to get there fast. But we were the only ambulance available in the city. And after about one or two minutes, a doctor who was nearby saw the ambulance that came. He ran to help. And he came up the steps of top floor of a building. And he said, "I'm a doctor, ER, doctor." and he started performing CPR with us for almost 45 minutes. And after that, he said, "There's nothing else we could do. Just bring a sheet to cover him." And this was the worst feeling in my life. I never felt so bad. In that moment, I realized that a doctor was a block away, but that whole time, he didn't know this kid is suffocating to death. Wow. And how do you know if someone would have let the doctor know earlier, he would have saved them for sure? People are not supposed to die from choking. There was easy techniques you could save them. The him but people have to know about it. And the problem was and still is ambulances keep their secrets from others very much like Uber would never share with that someone needs a ride and they don't have a car available. Right. Right. And that's how it works with ambulances. They keep the information inside instead of sharing it with everyone like screaming for help. Like an ambulance system should scream, "I'm on the way. I want to transport a live person. Please respond." You're saying it's like it's like any other field of endeavor where there's competition and everyone's kind of possesses possessive of their knowledge and and and you would think in terms of saving lives that there would be more of a community I thought so to save to save lives and I realized after being a year and a half in the back of an ambulance that it doesn't happen. ambulances when they get a call, it's not only in Israel, it's everywhere. In Iceland, when an ambulance gets a call, they send an ambulance to the person. They're not going to share with everyone living around respond to an emergency. So, I said, I want to start a service that volunteers will respond to calls before ambulances arrive. Not to replace the ambulances. God forbid they need ambulances, but to fill in the gap between the emergency happening until the ambulance arrives, which could take 17 minutes. And my goal was to get there in 90 seconds. I said, 90 seconds is the time you could get to someone and not only save their life, but prevent brain damage and organ damages. And I went to the It was obvious. I went to my friends and they all said, "We're in. Let's do it. But the problem is where do we get the information about a child choking? Who would share the calls with us? So I decided since I was a volunteer at Mcendome I will go to the head of the station in Jerusalem. His name was Kim Golik. He was a wonderful man but quite a tough Israeli person. He was you know it's it's controlled more or less by a union and by a organization. It's a hundred-year-old organization. I went over to him and I told him my idea and he didn't like it and I tried convincing him. I found myself very fast outside. He didn't like it because he felt threatened. He didn't feel threatening. He he thought it was a joke. He said it doesn't work like it doesn't work like that anywhere. Go to France. It works like that in France. Not in France, not in England, not in Scotland. It's not going to work in Israel either. When someone calls for help, he must get someone with a uniform with with, you know, with the with the, you know, organized ambulance. They can't just have random people running out to emergencies. Who's going to supervise insurance? You know, you have many reasons why not to do anything. And I was like, I had a dream to save someone. I was sure he's going to love the idea. And he he said, it's the stupidest idea. And he said, you're wasting your time. I will never forget. He said to me, "You look like you need something to do. Don't do it here." You'll see in the book I I describe that whole situation. Sure. Sure. But it wasn't He was a good man. He was really a good man. But you didn't take no for an answer. Even though you were a young kid. I never take no for an answer. Maybe that's why you're a master fundraiser also, which you do for United. We'll see. Because at the end of the day, you're Ellie Beer is a person who looks at the end goal. You're a person who looks at the end goal. You want to get there and you're going to get there one way or another. If it wasn't with his help, you were going to get there with someone else's help. Exactly. I I I understood he's not going to want to cooperate with me. He's not going to want to share information. All I wanted is if you get an address in Raatk in Bagan in Sanhedria, wherever it is, if you get an emergency of someone in trouble, just send us a beeper. you know, these pagers, this is the address. Go respond. If you get there, you get there. You don't get there, you don't get there. It's not an obligation. We'll get the volunteers to to get excited about it. We'll get them equipment. Just give us the emergency knowledge. And it didn't happen. So, I decided, you know what? I don't need your help. I can manage on my own. And he was smiling. And I knew him from just volunteering there. But he was he didn't mean bad. I I actually think about a lot about him. He's not alive anymore. He was a good person. Like years later, he became very close. We became close friends. But I went I said, "I'll manage without you." And I went ahead and I decided, what's the best innovation we ever invented in Israel? Israel invented many things, but the number one invention we invented was a thing called that was us. That was maybe it's American or Jewish American. Um, and I went ahead and I uh I got my friends to adopt the idea. I had some money left from my bar mitzvah. I was actually traveling to the States. Uh, and I went to a Radio Shack in Brooklyn and I come in there. It was like, this is the place I love the most, the all these walkie-talkies scanners. And and I picked the best two scanners and I bought it. $700 it cost. And uh I had to sneak it into Israel because it would it wasn't allowed. No, it's not allowed. They wouldn't let it through customs. No, they would catch it, take it away. And that's how I started. I had an underground operation center. So you recruited some people to volunteer. And how were you responding? I mean, the book describes it, but how do you at that point responding to calls? What what was the what was the process? So the process is we had volunteers who were we had two walkie-talkies. So we would share the walkie-talkies between theelves. Okay, you'll be on Sunday, you'll be on Monday listening into Mind Vadum's operation uh uh radio. And you would hear an ambulance dispatched to Yafo number 76. Someone's having a stroke. And we would right away send a pager. They had these walkie talk pagers that you actually call a number. you would dial in a number and say an address and the volunteers would hear it. They wouldn't even know what it is for. They would just run and get there. Mostly um mostly, you know, volunteers who came from the firm communities were all from volunteers and they would run right away and some of them were using bicycles, cars and undercover more or less and start treating people. And 2 days after I started becoming, you know, involved with this, uh, everyone got hooked up to it. We had 15 volunteers, very soon 20. But the first emergency that I responded to was a man who was hit by a car right next to my father's bookshop, Sporum shop. Um, my father sold forum since he moved to Israel. He had a bookshop in Vagan, right? In Bagan. Yeah. He sold American books. Uh he sp he sold English books mostly and he sp he sold for him. And I underground I would sit there and listen in my father's basement and I hear a call of a man hit by a car and it was up his 45. I was up his 50 and I ran holding the walkie-talkie. No medical supplies on me. I had zero equipment but I knew what to do. And like like Superman, I run there and people were surrounding this person on the floor and I saw he was injured all over but he was bleeding from his neck and I told everyone anesh I am an EMT and they all moved aside and I I kne down and I I said anyone have a bandage here to stop his bleeding. No one had anything. I didn't have anything. So I took my yamaka off my head and I pushed it in. Wow. into the wound to just put pressure in and to stop his bleeding. Just like this, holding it in as much as I could and slowly slowly he stopped breathing. He stopped bleeding. He was still bleeding on his own, breathing on his own, but the eventually the ambulance arrived and they put a bandage on it with my yamaka on it and they took him to the hospital and I wasn't sure if he'll survive. But two days later I get a phone call. Someone says, "Are you Ellie Beer?" I said, "Yes, this was in my house." He says, "My father was hit by a car and I heard you were the one who came to save him. He woke up this morning in Adasa hospital and he would love to thank you for saving his life." So I started crying. This was like winning the lottery. This was the best feeling in the world, saving a person. It was your your dream. It was my dream. After one and a half years volunteering in the back of the ambulance, I finally saved someone on the street. So I I went to Adasa hospital and he gave me this greatest hug I ever got in my life. Old man. He was around 70. For me it was very old. Today it's like I'm getting close to it soon. But uh he was uh an older guy, very pale, very skinny, and he was injured all over, and he gave me a hug. It was the best feeling in the world. And then he said, "Thank you for saving me." And when he took his hands off me, I saw he had a he had a tattoo here with a few letters and numbers. Wow. Blue tattoo. I will never forget seeing that tattoo for so close and I realized I just saved a Holocaust survivor from Awitz and how easy it was. And then the doctor comes into the room and he says, "Are you the boy who say stopped his bleeding?" I said, "Yes." I was very proud of myself. So he said, "I have two things to tell you. First of all, he was on couadin, which is a blood thinner. And if you didn't stop his bleeding, he would have been dead in two minutes. So, you did the right thing. But he says, "If you want to be a hero, buy bandages. Don't put yamas on people's wounders wounds. Use that for putting it on your head for And I decided maybe I should buy bandages. We only had radios, right?" And that's how it started. And later on, jumping ahead in the story, you made another innovation besides for the idea of creating this volunteer service which ultimately grew and expanded and create you created your own entity, right? Eventually it you you took on a name United and you had to have that registered with the authorities which not an easy process. There were a lot of naysayers, a lot of people who didn't necessarily like what you were doing, right? people felt threatened and things like that but ultimately you created this entity but the innovation that I'm referring to which is somewhat related to the name of the book is the ambio cycle that was really a gamecher was it not definitely I mean one of the the game changer was the idea but the tool to get to the game change was ambcycles and it was so obvious for me I would see as a volunteer in the back of an ambulance I would see motorcycles in line passing us from the right and left delivering pizza. Uri's Pizza had a motorcycle. They would deliver motorcycle deliver. The falafel guy would deliver falafel. We would be stuck in the traffic to go save a child who was in suffocating. But the pizza guys would get there right away in between the cars. Sometimes they would go on the sidewalk just to get there fast. And I said to myself, you know what? If I ever choke, I'm calling for a pizza. They will get there much quicker and the chances of them saving me much higher than an ambulance saving me. And then when this thing started, I told my friends, I said, "Look, we're going to get motorcycles. We're going to get like a pizza box, put all the medical equipment an ambulance has, and we're going to get there much faster. Nothing's going to stop us. Not only we're going to get there fast, we could park right in the entrance to the location. Because when you get there with an ambulance sometimes or a car, you see cars in Bora Park, in Brooklyn, everywhere they park everywhere. Triple park. You don't have you don't even when an ambulance comes, he doesn't have and if when an ambulance comes, sometimes seven cars are before the ambulance can't go through, right? So you can't block the whole road. So having an ambulance cycle, not only you get there quick, you have the medical equipment available in the right place. And that's the idea. So the volunteers of of of Hatella then said to me, Ellie, who's going to authorize this? We need to go to the government. We need to go get permissions. You know, all this all the all the bureaucracy bureaucracy. So I was six I was maybe 18 then 17 18. I was a young young boy. I said, "Listen, I'm going to give the authorization because if we go to the government for ask for permission, I'll be 90 years old before we get the permission." I said, "In Israel, you first do and then ask for forgiveness. You don't ask for permission before you do anything good." And using the idea again, we went ahead and we equipped a motorcycle, made it officially looking. You can see the picture here. And the police didn't even imagine it has no license or anything. Mhm. Now it's of course super organized and we did a revolution here. This is a disruptive organization. We came, no one asked us to do this. No, the government didn't ask us to do this. The ambulance is definitely going to ask us to do this. But it led to millions of people who got help. But not only did you get flacked, there were people who told you that not only aren't you helping, but you're actually putting people in greater danger, right? People who told you that by being this destructive revolutionary force. And I think it's an important lesson for all of us to hear from you. You know, people have ideas, people have innovations, people want to make a difference. And so so often they get just crushed by the naysayers, by the by the criticism. somehow you were able to navigate that and and like you said in Israel it's not an easy place to to come up with a new idea and implement it. Israel is one of the hardest places to implement u monopolies want to keep their power organizations who are alone don't want anyone else to threaten their their you know their kingdom. So when we started we had a problem. The motorcycles were brilliant. We call them ambcycles, right? They were so obvious. It wasn't even a it wasn't like creating a like technology that like you know the today's technology you say how did they do this? This was such a simple idea. So basic so basic it wasn't existing. And when I got the first letter from people who were trying to stop us saying this is going to kill people. You better stop. We're going to go to the police against you. We're going to stop you. We're going to do everything possible. And I got the heads of the unions of Mendo telling me this is not we're not going to allow this. This is done by almost 30 years ago, right? People were telling me we're going to fight against you and everything. When I realized how people getting threatened by it, I realized this is the right thing to do. And I said, "Nothing's going to intimidate us. We're going to do this. We're going to continue doing this and we're going to get more and more of these ambacles." I went around you you you could read the book how I started raising money for it. Sure. Sure. I'm gonna get to the fundraising in a second. It is interesting that in New York. By the way, that wasn't the only only thing. When I brought the first defibrillator to Israel, automatic defibrillator, no one had ambulances. Regular ambulances didn't have defibrillators. Only the intensive care had a big monitor defibrillator. I brought it in. I snuck it into Israel through the customs. And I didn't stop. I didn't want to show anyone. I just brought it in. And I get a I get a call from the head of the health ministry. He says, "We're not going to authorize you. Who let you bring it into Israel? I heard you're having a def who it could burn someone. It could this." I went to meet him was a nice guy. His name is Jacob Barry. He's now he's a good friend of mine. And he said, "I want to see this thing. I want to see." And I he says, "You need to get this permission, that permission, that 35 different organizations should authorize this." I said, "Guess what? it's in the back of our motorcycles. It's going to save lives. And if you want to authorize it, I'll give you a picture of it and you can do the old red tape and everything. And he became a big hassid of the organization. A lot of your naysayers ultimately came around to become your biggest fans because I think they they recognized that you had you really didn't have any agal agenda. You wanted to save lives. You wanted to make the process smoother. I I think and I got other people better thinking about right what we did in United at Sulla not only enabled us to save lives it brought other organizations to start looking at us and saying we can't be staying behind many many years later others started copying the model of the motorcycles the amb I was wondering reading the book why let's say in New York you don't really see the ambu cycle and you would think that in New York especially with the congestion and the traffic. You would think it would it would be a a good innovation, but well, after the 92nd Arts School book, they're going to start having motorcycles in New York, too. They'll bring you down for presentation. Now, you mentioned the fundraising before, which a lot of the book discusses your really when it comes to fundraising. the whole uh chapter with Leonardo Faros, how he was so generous to you and then in Ellie Beer fashion, you just pushed the envelope a little too far and asked him for even more money, which is what you do. You know, when you came up with this idea, you want to save lives, you're going to create an organization, that's one thing. Fundraising is a whole different animal. Not everyone who's good at one thing is necessarily good at another. someone who's good at orchestrating and and and and you have this tremendous motivation to save lives, it's very altruistic, it's an amazing thing. But asking people to give you money is a whole different thing. When when you entered that realm, how did you how do you learn how to do that? Because you're very good at it. First of all, I think I'm doing terrible. [Laughter] I I could do a lot more. Okay. I could lower it down to 60 seconds if I had more money because I really think my goal of 90 seconds is a is too long. If we train more volunteers, if we have more ambles, if we have instead of 6 and a half thousand volunteers, we have 13,000 volunteers. We double that. That means training thousands of more people, buying more defibrillators. Response time will go down and more Jews, more people, more more citizens of Israel will be saved. So, I really think I'm doing a bad job. I have to learn more how to raise money and work harder. I put only 20 hours a day. I should work harder. So, people said, "You're such a great fundraiser." I said, "This is the greatest cause in the world. It should be easier for me." It's not easy. I travel and I have a lot of aggravations, a lot of heartfelt. I I go to people, ask them for money and I get nos once in a while. Give people an idea what what's what's your annual budget now. Well, we started with $1,000 a year. That's how we started with two radios and a few bags of medical equipment. It's grown a little since then. It's grown a little. Look, I'll tell you, we treat 800,000 people every day. Every year. 800,000 people. And that's besides our international operations going to Ukraine and going into disasters, global disasters and other programs that we do with Holocaust survivors and many we have an incredible big organization that treats 800,000 people a year and our budget is only 50 $50 million for that meaning just think about it. And all that has to be fundraised or do you get any money from the government? We don't get any money from the government. This is a non not a scent non-governmental organization run by people that are from all backs of life in in Eritis and we get a little money here and there. I always tell the government I had meetings with every prime minister and every minister and the first thing they said how could you help me? How could I help you? The minister like Laid Yeah. who's not so popular in in Bora Park. Laid said to me, I want to help you. How can I help you? I said, listen, yer, do me a favor. I don't need your help. Just don't bother me. That's the biggest help they could do. When we want to develop new ideas, don't make it hard for us. Money from a government is important and we're slowly getting more now. the new government is much easier to work with uh in terms of finances but but that's not we we don't depend on the government because unfortunately Israel does not have a government for most most of the time last three years we didn't have a government so if we want to go ahead and create Unitedella in a sustainable way we need to depend on ami so I need to go to thousands and thousands of people to get and get them to support Unitedella And that's the idea of United Hatsellah that we don't depend on donation. We don't depend on government. We depend on volunteers and we depend on support from people. So we're talking about fundraising. I encourage everyone to read the chapter on Leonardo when you ended up in Europe and he wanted to give that gentleman 250 million euro and the guy didn't want to accept it. That chapter is off the charts. But you have great fundraising stories. Tell me one that just stands out in your mind. Well, if you want to learn the tricks about fundraising, you could learn read the book, but it's not really fundraising is really something that you have to have love to what you're doing. If I didn't love Unitedella so much, I would probably not be able to raise one dollar. If you ask me to fundra for anything, I probably don't know how to do it. And you need to love what you're doing. If people don't connect to your love and your passion you have for the for the organization, for the cause, you're probably not going to do well, right? And I think this is really the essence of everything. I met people and told them the needs and my experience being involved in saving people's lives and just said to them straight into the eyes, I need you to support this. Could you donate $1,000? Could you donate 10,000? Could you donate a million? and that's it. And then be quiet, wait for them for a response. And I was shocked to see that people want to support. I didn't know this. I never learned fundraising. I grew up as a regular little LA Beer, you know, right? And uh you'll see my story with my father-in-law when I was a young boy, just married, and I asked my father-in-law about an ambulance. And I didn't ask him for money. I just told him that we need an ambulance without telling him, could you donate an ambulance? And you learn over time that people give people. It's not really organizations. So more than more than techniques, it's it's about your passion for the for the project, whatever it is that you're fundraising for. Yes. But I could annoy people, too. You'll see how many people I annoyed in this book. My good friend Bob Book, I love him very much. He's uh he's one of a kind. And I annoyed him and Leonardo and many others and I thought somehow you don't always know where to stop. You just keep pushing and the more someone gives you the more you push them. And yeah, and I think that's the right thing to do. I do the same thing to volunteers. Volunteer that goes out 30 calls a month. I say, could you push for 40 calls a month? You know what? If people know you need them, they will do it. Mhm. Now the book talks about this and then it was very well publicized at the time during co you had your own battle and you were welcomed back in in grand fashion. Talk about that. That's a you know a very very prominent episode in your life I would call it. Well this well this happened exactly three years ago. I was uh traveling. I I I travel 200 days a year. Um my kids don't see me. My kids actually call me Aino Shabbashim. Um and I was traveling to Apac March 3rd, big Apac convention in Washington, and 17,000 Jews were hugging me. I was hugging them. We weren't we weren't shaking hands. We were going like this. Right. That was March 2020. Yeah. right at right at the start of co no one really knew what CO was then and uh when I got to uh Washington I was everything was more or less normal and then I had to fly to London for a weekend to speak over in Ashul in London and they shut down Israel for I mean didn't shut it down yet but it was saying quarantine for anyone who's coming from APAC I said how could I stay two weeks in my house I will go Crazy. So I decided to fly to Washington to to Miami, the good friend's bar mitzvah, J. Shan's grandson's bar mitzvah. And I said, "Okay, I'll go there instead." And when I got to Miami, I went to Shul spent Shul by Rabbi Lipker in Bell Harbor. It was wonderful, great suda. And then somehow I felt dizzy. I didn't feel well. I ended up a few days into isolating myself. I couldn't breathe. I was looking for oxygen everywhere and I couldn't I couldn't handle it. I was looking I was going to the porch trying to breathe and I couldn't absorb the oxygen and uh I was the first person in ICU. Actually, Rabbi Lipker and myself were both in the ICU in in in Miami. And uh a few days later, I had to say goodbye to my children. They told me that they have to intubate me, put me in a coma, and uh they said I asked the doctor, "What's my chances of survival?" And he says, "Probably 5%." And uh I called my kids. My kids were crying. I asked all my children, "Just be good Jews. Be good people. do if you want me to be saved, the only thing you could do is do and if I'm not if I don't survive, I said u continue doing like your grandfather, like your parents, my wife Kitty, huge Bakassid and I'm I'm very privileged that I have kids who love helping people and uh you know, no one in my kids are going to be Raan Kfki, but they're going to be Balid. And I that's what I was worried about. Get my kids to do good. And I said, "That's what you should focus on." And I went to sleep for a month. Wow. I wasn't sure I'll ever wake up. And then one day I'm like, it took me two days or three days to realize I'm alive because even when I was waking up, I didn't know where I was. I was in I delusions. I talk about it. It was very funny. I I thought I was kidnapped by terrorists and if they know I'm Jewish, they're going to kill me. And it was I right. It was another world that I woke into. When I woke up, I didn't know they shut down everywhere. They shut down shoes. They shut down hotels. You woke up to a different world. And here you are in America. Your family's in Israel. They're checking up on you every day. But but you no one could be with me. And I was all alone. All alone. And incredible people all over the world were were fighting for me everywhere. And people were dominating for me and doing for me. I told everyone if you want me to be saved do good deed. That means a lot. That ding is important. You need d and you need to say to but doing an act of for someone could go a long way. And uh I am 100% sure that the had saved my life and I talk about the story when I woke up and uh I was so I was so disappoint like I was so I was broken heart I I didn't want to continue being in Nutella. I wanted to resign because I woke up 35 40 pounds less. I wasn't myself. I couldn't talk. I I was so sick and I just said enough is enough. I don't want to continue. And uh and I didn't want to even answer the phones. And then Ellie Paul calls me from Israel, the CEO of he says Ellie, you need to come back. We did because of you. You asked us to do extraid. And now that we all we did all this stuff for you, you don't want to even come back. And Miriam adding me offering a plane. Everyone's calling and offering planes. And I said, "I don't want any planes. I'm I'm not even coming back. So I said, "What did you do for me?" He says, "You know what we did? We opened another department in Atsalah. Besides heart attacks and strokes and COVID patients and everything else, we're also doing now. People calling us to go shop for them. People calling to buy medicine for them. We are we have thousands of new volunteers who joined just for this and we're dispatching them from United's com command center with our technology like Uber. We have very sophisticated technology and that operation is still still still working still doing today. during the whole co time we were helping. When he called me up he said 60,000 people got help from us during the time you were in a coma and we were continued doing it and it's all because of you. You asked us to do it. So I told him give me one story of the 60,000 one story and he says a woman called five minutes before Pesak and I was in a coma and she says I need help save my life. They said what's your emergency? She said, "I don't have candles to light for Pesak. I live in Batyam. I'm 95 years old. Help me send someone to get give me candles." So, they sent out the call. And the first volunteer who responded to the call was an Arab volunteer by the name of Ibrahim Aayuti. And the story is beautiful story. And he got on his ambicycle. He bought in a little mollet, a little bodega. He bought a box of candles and a bouquet of flowers. He put in the back next to the defibrillator. He drove over to her. He was there in 5 minutes, not 90 seconds. But he brought over the candles. And she she said to him, "You saved my life." And he said, "I want to spend two and a half." He spent two and a half hours with her. He wants to spend the sed night. He's saying for the first time in his life. He's Muslim. He saying, he said, And after she asked him after the seder she asked him, he asked her, "Why did you say I saved your life? I just brought you candles." And she said, "Even when I was a little kid in Europe, I never missed a week lighting candles. During the war, I lit a piece of paper every week. I never missed a week lighting candles for Shabas, for Yantov. And after the war, when I came to Israel, when I came to Palestine, I decided to light candles for every member of my family who perished. And I lived every week without never missing a week. This is the first time. I didn't go shopping for a month. I couldn't go shopping. And good people left food next to my door. But I realized I don't have enough candles to light. And I said, "If I'm not lighting enough candles and I have to light a piece of paper to fill in for the candles missing, I will not survive this and I will die." And I said, "Last time, I didn't feel well. I called at you guys came right away. And now you came and saved my life." Arab volunteer. And I started crying when I heard this story. Ibrahim was crying when he saw he helped a Holocaust survivor. Ibrahim. And I love this man. And I came to Israel after saying I'm coming back flying to Israel. And when I landed, I saw thousands of volunteers waiting for me. Pictures and videos went out. People were people were so taken by the welcome that you got. Really a hero's welcome. But I was asking where is Ibrahim? And they brought him over, right? And I and I I gave him a hug. Was you No one's allowed to touch each other then. It was all isolated. You weren't I said give me a hug. I gave him a hug. I said, "You saved my life." Because he gave you the inspiration to carry on. Yeah. I said, "Even an Arab guy was inspired by United Hatsella to go help a Holocaust survivor and save her life by giving her candles." He told me that all the emergencies he responded to ever in his life, this was the most meaningful Autela emergency that he went to. How long was it till you really felt like you were back to yourself? came back to Israel, you were still suffering from the after effects of COVID. You had lost a lot of weight. When was it that you said, "You know what? I'm back." Bar Hashem really miraculously. Well, look, my wife told me, "I can't travel for two years." Uhhuh. I told her, "Gi, give me two months. I'm on the plane back to travel." She was laughing like you are. Two months later, I was on the plane flying. People didn't want to People were scared to meet me. No, I'm a co. I said, "I'm the most secured guy you can meet. No one better than me to meet now. I done with it. I don't have I have co already." And I got people to meet me. It was amazing because people were not meeting anyone, right? And it was unbelievable. Hashem put me through this for a reason and many reasons. It's all in the book. It's inspiring. Now you decided to take your life story which is fascinating in itself and have Rabbi Seltzer who always does a magnificent job and he did an unbelievable job putting your story into this book. What was you and your wife you decided to kind of open up open up you know your your private life as well and put it out there for the public and you had a reason for doing so. What was that? The reason is I want United to tell us sustainable. I want the continuation of this organization for many generations after. It's not my organization. I started it with a reason. I had a reason. But to have so many thousands of children who grow up like me, kids who have a dream and so many dreams are dismissed, right? Because someone said something to them, "No, it's stupid. Don't do it. It's this and that." Gdalia met me. Rabbi Gdalia Zladawitz met me a year ago. I didn't want to do a book. I got a lot of offers to do books. We were we spended a weekend together in a in a he said, "Ellie, you should do a book." And I said, "Yeah, I heard that and I don't know how to write. I could hardly read. You want me to write?" He said, "I have a great writer for you, Rabbi Nakman Selza. He wrote 50 books. He's going to make a beautiful story that will inspire the next generations of volunteers. When I said that, when I heard that, I said, you know what? So many thousands of people, especially young people who read this book are going to get inspired to do something good in their life. Whatever it is, they'll do another idea, another organization, a business. When you have a dream to do something, don't let other people stop you. If it's a good thing, of course, and you learn that you if you really believe in something, it could happen. I do believe that there are going to be people going to read this book, young and old, everyone in between, there are going to be people who are going to read it and be inspired to chase their dreams. I don't think it's an exaggeration because they see they're going to see that you did it. you you you did what people told you is impossible. You did what people told you you shouldn't do or you're stepping on other people's toes and all the other reasons and ultimately you followed through and thousands of lives later you're here to tell the tale. That's in addition to all the other fascinating components of your life. your your your challenge with health a few years ago, your fundraising stories and tips and insights and your your ability to connect with people. You have that ability to connect with people. You do. People see that you mean it. It's coming from your heart and that comes through in this book. They see how genuine you are. You don't mind being vulnerable. You don't mind being honest because you know you're just people meet you. Ellie Beer is Ellie Beer. There's no facade when people meet you. I know from when when I I was privileged to meet you and I saw that right away and I think that's what people are going to see in this book and I hope people go out and buy it just because it's going to infuse them with that belief that they can do what they put their mind and heart to do. And on that note, any final message? Well, last night I went for dinner and I met the Berber family in a restaurant here in New York. Uh, no do I'm eating there and a little boy from the Urb family. He's maybe 8 years old. He told me that he saved his sister's life because of me. And they came to visit the Unitedella Center a few years ago. They donated an ambicycle and they were there and I taught the little boy when he was maybe four. I taught him CPR, not CPR, himless, how to save someone from choking. And he was a kid, very smart kid. And I have a doll that I teach it. And and he said two years ago, his sister choked from food. She was eating and he saw her choke and no one knew what to do. They called for Atella right away. They called Atella. He ran over. He was six years old. And he said, "I did the himuk maneuver." Wow. And I did it a few times like you taught me and I saved her life. And he told us last night. Really? Wow. That kid was inspired by me by learning CPR. I hope this will inspire a lot of people. And I I recommend you buy this book for yourself, but also buy it for all your friends. Sure. Give it away for Pesa. For a gift for Pes. Sure. It's a message that's that's universal. Whoever reads it is is going to be very very besides that it's entertaining. It's pure entertainment. But this it's funny, too. We have a lot of fun. It's funny. You're funny. Your is funny. The way you deal with people and the way Ribn portrays it in such a very human way. So, it's it's it's really a great read and we hope people read it. And Rebelli, thank you for all you've done for Claus. You've united people. You've you've portrayed us in such a a positive light. You've brought out the beauty of Claus in a very unique way. You've been there for so many people. I just offer my humble braha. You should continue. You should have the health and the strength together with your wife, your whole family to continue being there for other people. Continue inspiring, innovating until Mashiach comes. Should continue. You want to I want to continue after Mashia. After Mashiach also should never stop. Thank you. Thank you again for being here. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you. [Music]