The following article appeared in today’s Journal News: 

Miriam Alexander still remembers the night six years ago when she was taken by ambulance from her Monsey home to a New York City hospital.

Her daughter, then 19, accompanied her and wanted to stay overnight once she learned that her mother needed immediate surgery.

“How could I let her stay?” Alexander recalled. “There was no place for her to pray, no prayer books, no food, nothing.”

Alexander vowed that if she lived through her bout of cancer she would create a place within the hospital where observant Jews visiting family and friends could pray, have food and, most importantly, relax.

“I knocked on doors. I called people. I begged,” she said. “This was something I had to do.”

The first Yehuda Center Hospitality Suite was opened in St. Vincent’s Hospital three years later.

It was so well received that Alexander went on to open more of the centers, including one last month at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital.

Now observant Jews from the Lower Hudson Valley and other places who visit New York City hospitals can find lounges in five hospitals.

“I think God gave me cancer so I would recover and do this,” the 60-year-old mother and grandmother said as she surveyed the newest room at the Roosevelt campus of St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. “It’s become my mission.”

It hasn’t always been easy to persuade hospital administrators to give space for the lounge.

But when Alexander sees the need, she persists until the hospital relents. As a result, she has been able to expand the project from the hospital where it started to other facilities.

“She doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” said Sister Miriam Phillips, a member of the Sisters of Charity of New York and senior vice president for mission at St. Vincent’s Hospital. “Miriam Alexander saw a need and she was determined to do something about it.”

Until recently, the tiny room at St. Luke’s was used to store medical equipment. Now it boasts a couch that can be used as a recliner, a small table, a bookshelf filled with Hebrew prayer books and holy texts, a refrigerator, two microwave ovens – in keeping with Jewish dietary law, one for meat and one for dairy – a small pantry stocked with kosher snacks and a computer.

Many people who use the rooms express their gratitude in a guest book.

A woman at St. Vincent’s Hospital wrote that it was a pleasure to walk into a room with a genuine Jewish feel. Another woman expressed her relief and gratitude at having the room available when her daughter went into labor on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews.

Each room costs $8,000 or so to furnish. It costs an additional $40 or $50 weekly to keep the rooms stocked with food.

Alexander and her family raised much of the money for the first room. To do so, she formed the Yehuda Memorial Center, a volunteer group named in memory of Alexander’s father, a Holocaust survivor who taught his two children the importance of doing good for others.

Alexander, who was born and raised in Israel, recalls that her father was a community leader who was often called upon to help other people.

Even though she has lived in Rockland for more than 30 years, Alexander said she isn’t going to bring her project to the Lower Hudson Valley because other organizations already fill a similar need.

Bikur Cholim, a social-service organization headquartered in Monsey, has facilities in several local hospitals to accommodate the needs of observant Jews.

The organization operates a house adjacent to Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern where family members can spend the Sabbath, a time when observant Jews do not travel in cars or operate machinery.

Bikur Cholim has a room at Nyack Hospital and one at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla that serve the same purpose.

[Click HERE to read the extended article on the Journal News website.]