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I see in Israel there are United Hatzolah, Hatzolah without Borders, a chardi unit of MDA, in the US there are Shomrim and Shimira, chavarim and chavivim.
Are they duplicating each other or do they serve a different niche?They all serve the same purpose, to tell you they serve in hatzolah.
They each have different services they provide that makes them different than both being the same although they might both offer safety and security for their community one might offer for home residential areas while the other might do community areas like shuls and shopping areas etc….
Same with the other volunteer services even if they do the same class of services they still have their differences in extras they offer or different categories etc …
I can’t speak about Hatzalah in Israel as I’m not sure.
But Shomrim/Shmira & Chaverim/Chavivim are duplicates. This is a problem which has plagued Yidden since time immemorial.
It’s either a member of an org who thinks he should be in charge that leaves & creates his own copycat service or a group that was rejected by the org so they create their own. Sadly, they often spend more time fighting each other or even calling the cops on each other instead of helping the community. There are videos out there of this happening.
The latest is in the Lakewood area they’re creating a new ambulance service like Hatzalah. There’s so much Lashon Hara going around there that you can’t know who to believe.Each organization overlaps with the others, slightly, and each serves a unique purpose.
United Hatzalah is the main body of “Hatzalah” as we in the US and UK know it. They unified most local branches of Haztalah into a single body. Their primary goal is to get onto the scene as quickly and possible and provide initial lifesaving support in the field. In many/most situations, they work together with Magen David Adom (MADA) for emergency transportation, but they also have transportation ambulances in some areas. This is why United Hatzalah has a lot more bikes and ambucycles, with fewer ambulances. United Hatzalah consults with the chareidi gedolim on all issues, has halacha courses mandated for all volunteers and includes volunteers from all walks of Israeli life.
There are local branches of Hatzalah that for different reasons prefer to remain separate from the national body under HaTsadik Eli Beer. No tainas on them, and this doesn’t reflect poorly on United Hatzalah either.
Magen David Adom (MADA) primarily serves as emergency medical transportation team with emergency response capabilities. MADA is run as a semi-government-run, semi-volunteer organization. They also now have some ambucycles for emergency response.
In the past there were politics. Nowadays, nearly all of them collaborate on most calls. When we called Hatzalah, they arrived within 2 minutes. They call in MADA, who came 8-10 minutes later for the transport. They are all worthy tsedakas.
It was interesting that in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attacks, many large law firms and financial firms offered to match employee donations to the victims of the attack and suggested the International Red Cross be the vehicle for assistance. When made aware of how tone deaf this was considering the historic animosity of the IRC to EY and Magen David Adom, many quickly pivoted and offered to match donations to both IRC and MDA but also added United Hatzalah as a donation vehicle.
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