Baptist and Wolfson to Celebrate Hanukkah Starting Dec. 21

Jacksonville, Florida, December 19, 2008 -- On Sunday, December 21, 2008, Baptist Medical Center and Wolfson Children's Hospital will begin their annual celebration of the eight nights of Hanukkah with Jewish patients, their families and staff.

The celebration is coordinated every year by Laura Cagan and Dodi Kress. "This began when my daughter was in Wolfson Children's Hospital with a serious eye infection in December 13 years ago," says Cagan. "Because of our experience at Wolfson, we established this tradition to help Jewish patients celebrate this time of miracles. We wanted to provide an inclusive feeling for all patients in the hospital."

The celebration begins with the decoration of the Wolfson and Baptist lobbies for Hanukkah. Jewish families and organizations from through Northeast Florida; special guest Jaxson de Ville; former Wolfson board chairman Karen Wolfson; and her husband, former Atlantic Beach Mayor Don Wolfson, will bring gifts and Hanukkah gelt (chocolate coins) to Jewish patients at both hospitals every night of The Festival of Lights, as Hanukkah is also known. Each patient also will receive a Menorah, some festive decorations and our visitors will say Hanukkah prayers with the patient if he or she wishes.

"Our whole family will be there," says Karen Wolfson, past president of The Women's Board of Wolfson Children's Hospital. "It's just a very exciting time to visit the Jewish patients and their families, sing Hanukkah songs, and leave gifts with them. It's absolutely wonderful. The visits really brighten up the patients' faces and ours, too! Don and I have the warmest of memories from visiting patients during Hanukkah."

"Doing this every year has been so very rewarding," agrees Cagan. "Particularly for elderly Jewish patients, it oftentimes brings them back to their childhood. For someone to visit them for Hanukkah, it makes them smile and recall fond memories. They appreciate being thought of and prayed for during this time."

The annual Hanukkah celebration at Wolfson and Baptist honors Morris David Wolfson, who wrote a letter to his sons in 1946 asking them to establish a children’s clinic in Jacksonville in their family's name that would serve all children, regardless of their ethnic, religious, cultural or socioeconomic background. The children's hospital opened in 1955 and continues to serve thousands of patients each year.

"Mr. Wolfson was an orthodox Jew persecuted in his native Lithuania for his beliefs who emigrated to the United States seeking religious freedom," says Scott Brooks Cope, senior chaplain at Wolfson Children's Hospital. "We are proud to honor his memory and the traditions he came from, as well as to honor the diversity we represent as a health system."

Cope, who has participated in the Hanukkah celebration since he joined the Wolfson staff as a chaplain in 1999, enjoys visiting Jewish patients and participating in this tradition. "Patients love it!" he says. "It gives me great joy to be part of the celebration!"