Hatzalah asks: What’s your number? Having one, and lighting it up, can save your life

Hatzalah responds quickly to the scene of medical emergencies, but if the responders can’t find your house they may end up circling your block while a member of your household dies.

That’s the message driven home Sunday night by Rabbi Elozer Kanner, coordinator of Hatzalah of the Rockaways and Nassau County, who told 1,500 Hatzalah supporters that “as you pull into your driveway tonight, look at your address numbers — if you have any — and their illumination — if you have. And ask yourselves if, chas v’shalom, Hatzalah would come to my house tonight, would they be able to find me.”

The advice was delivered amid a celebration of Hatzalah’s good work and as recognization was bestowed on the volunteer organization’s workers and supporters at its 35th annual BBQ Dinner, at The Sands Atlantic Beach.

Rabbi Yaakov Bender, a Hatzalah founder and rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway, presented an award to long-time volunteer Rabbi Moshe Lerer for having “given mesiras nefesh to the organization.”

“When young chevras see someone of that nature, a person of stature, no matter how old they are, running on calls, it’s an incredible chizuk for the organization,” Rabbi Bender said. “When the kitanim follow the gedolim, and the gedolim are special, then we have a great organization.”

“You can’t understand the feeling we have that we saved a life,” said Rabbi Lerer, who lived and served for many years in Belle Harbor and is now in Far Rockaway.

He described a call that came some years ago on the first day of Pesach just before the second seder was to begin.

When he arrived at the home of a man in distress — a generous benefactor of the community, a big tzadik who had come over from Europe — he was having major cardiac arrest. The man refused to ride to the hospital.

In Yiddish he repeatedly insisted that he would not ride on yom tov.

Rabbi Lerer pleaded with the man, arguing from the standpoint of “both yarmulkas — my rabbi yarmulka and my Hatzalah yarmulka,” to no avail.