JERUSALEM — The maternity department at Shaare Zedek Medical Center is the busiest in Israel, handling more than 22,000 births every year at its main and satellite hospitals in Jerusalem.
Yet even here, the arrival of seven pairs of twins – that’s 14 babies, all doing well – in a single 24-hour period between July 12 and 13 was a noteworthy event.
For those with a more spiritual bent it’s also a lucky number. In numerology, 14 represents new beginnings and positive change.
“This represents a new record for the medical center. “In recent recorded memory, the previous high was five [sets of twins in one day,” said a hospital spokesperson to ISRAEL21c
The birth mothers included Jewish and Arab women from Jerusalem and beyond.
This Muslim mom gave birth to twins – a boy and a girl — in Jerusalem on July 12.
“I come “from afar” to deliver my “two sweeties” because I have had a previous positive experience giving birth at Shaare Zedek,” said One of the moms, Ma’ayan Luzon Peretz
She arrived for the big occasion in style, with the nails of one hand polished blue and the nails of the other pink, in honor of the son and daughter she was soon to deliver with her husband at her side.
Another mother told reporters that she had waited 12 years for her first child, and now, three years later, was excited to add a pair of twins to the family she and her husband had yearned for so long to build.
Shaare Zedek has six maternity wards in all: four at the main Shaare Zedek Medical Center campus in Beit HaKerem and another two at downtown Bikur Cholim Hospital, a dedicated maternity hospital.
“Identical twins Yael Yishai and Avital Segel gave birth to baby boys on the same day at Shaarei Zedek,” said ISRAEL21c as reported in June 2022.
Identical twins Yael Yishai and Avital Segel delivered boys within hours of one another at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.
The medical center recently opened a boutique maternity hotel where new mothers can spend a few pampering days with their new baby after being discharged from the hospital.
Throughout Israel, 178,000 babies were born in 2022 according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.
Produced in association with ISRAEL21c
Edited by Judy J. Rotich and Newsdesk Manager
