Several LAS students joined Together Educating All Children in Hospitals (TEACH), a program initiated by Yeshiva University students that organizes twice-monthly science-themed hospital visits.

LAS student Rachel Leah Frimerman is the Teach Project Lead at Maimonides Hospital and works with the hospital’s pediatric department to organize the visits.

“It does more for the volunteers than the kids themselves,” stated Frimerman, who recently returned from a six-month stint working at a lab in the University of Barcelona in Spain. “The kids have taught us something we wouldn’t have been able to learn. You have this incredibly rewarding feeling after spending two hours with children at the hospital and giving them a way to not think about their medical conditions.”

Projects that the volunteers have run include showing the patients different stages of matter, displaying an endothermic reaction with baking soda and shaving cream and teaching the kids how the rain cycle works in a project called “Rain in a Cup.”

“You’re able to teach kids something you’re passionate about,” said LAS student Moshe Baitelman.

Volunteer Rochelle Rubinstein, who will be attending New York Medical College in the fall, cited the Jewish mitzvah of bikur cholim, visiting the sick as a factor in her volunteering work.

“Bikur cholim is a big thing for us,” said Rubinstein. “We’re able to go on Erev Shabbat. Some of the families will be stuck there for the weekend so we’re able to distract them a bit.”

Several of the students who are part of the program are planning on attending medical school when they graduate LAS and said that their visits inform their perception of the world of healthcare.

“Healthcare is about helping people, no matter what their political, social or economic level,” said Frimerman.

“Medicine isn’t just about treating a single illness,” added Baitelman. “It’s holistic and a patient’s experience in a hospital can have an effect. When you interact with these kids in really tough situations—their parents are tired—and they finally get a chance to meet with some people who are energetic it really uplifts them and takes them out of the funk.”