Sender Trovitz

Sender Trovitz (Hebrew: סנדר טרוביץ) was a merchant, civic leader and philanthropist in Safed in the 1900s. He was a founder and trustee of Safed’s first modern hospital. He represented Jewish community interests to the Ottoman Empire and British Mandate authorities.

Early life and emigration to Safed Sender Trovitz was born in 1877. His parents, Rabbi Natan and Leah Trovitz, lived in Uman, then part of the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine), the birthplace of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and the center of their Breslov Hasidic community. When he was two months old, his parents undertook a six-month journey to make Aliyah to Safed, then part of the Ottoman Empire.

The Rothschild Hospital opened in 1912, just as the Scottish hospital closed its doors. During World War I, the hospital served the residents of Safed and surrounding communities as local battles, typhus epidemics, and severe food shortages impacted the Northern Galilee. The Hadassah organization assumed responsibility for the hospital’s operation from the end of World War I through the 1948 War of Independence, until the Rothschild-Hadassah Hospital was replaced by Safed’s Ziv Medical Center and Regional Hospital in 1973.

Life and the later years in Safed The Trovitz Family in Safed, c. 1906. Sender Trovitz (29) on the right with his wife Feiga (seated). His father Natan and mother Leah (seated). Sender and Feiga's children Chana Rahel, Menachem, Esther and Devorah (on Feiga's lap). Trovitz formed an alliance between the merchant leaders and the Religious Zionists of Safed to develop the future state of Israel by building new communities around Safed and the Northern Galilee. His main religious partner was Nachum Etrog, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Safed, who was close friends and a Religious Zionist political ally of Abraham Isaac Kook, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine during the British Mandate.

He and his wife Feiga raised seven children. The Trovitz home by the Kikar Miginim ("Defenders Square") and the Ari Ashkenazi Synagogue served as a guest house, community meeting place, and early Breslov Hasidic synagogue. He died in 1940, during World War II. He was buried with Feiga and his parents in Safed’s historic cemetery.

In 2009, a permanent exhibit with archives on the Etrog - Trovitz family was opened at the Beit Hameiri Historical Museum in Safed. Trovitz was selected for inclusion in the Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel.