Helena Kagan, a pioneer of pediatric medicine in pre-State Palestine, is known to this day as the children’s doctor of Jerusalem, the city where she settled following her Lit. "ascent." A "calling up" to the Torah during its reading in the synagogue.aliyah in 1914. Kagan tended to generations of children—Jews, Muslims and Christians—saving many of them from sickness and death. She devoted her life to improving welfare services and living conditions. In her memoirs, she wrote: “Throughout my career, I tried to uphold my two great loves: the love of children and the love of Jerusalem. I sought to instill in the Arab residents the sense that we—the Jews returning to our homeland—are sincerely interested in peace and friendly relations with all residents of the Holy City.”

In an interview conducted towards the end of her life, she stated: “The thought that I have lived a long life and succeeded in bringing health to generations of children is what gives me the strength to keep on hoping that I will be privileged to witness the peace that we so long for.” Children’s health, love of Jerusalem and the hope for peace between Jews and Arabs were the three central themes of her life.

Kagan was born on September 25, 1889, in Tashkent, capital of Turkestan (later Uzbekistan) in Russia. Her family consisted of her mother Miriam, a native of Riga; her father Moshe (d. 1912), from Latvia; and a brother, Noah (b. 1885). Kagan’s father, a descendant of the famed Vilna Head of the Torah academies of Sura and Pumbedita in 6th to 11th c. Babylonia.Gaon, studied in yeshiva in Warsaw and at the Institute of Technology in St. Petersburg. As a chemical engineer, he was sent to establish and supervise the construction of glass-manufacturing plants in Tashkent; there, Kagan was born, grew up, and completed her studies. In early 1905, Noah left Russia to study medicine in Breslau, Germany, while Kagan traveled to Switzerland to study piano at the Bern Conservatory. At the same time, she commenced premedical studies as an external student, but it was only two years later that she received permission to be examined on the course material. Her success in the examinations paved the way for her to enter the medical school as a regular student.

In 1910, she completed her basic medical studies, going on to specialize in pediatrics. Upon completing her studies, Kagan accepted an offer to join the research staff of the Medical Faculty’s Department of Physiology, but first she traveled to Russia to see her family. Her father, who lay on his deathbed, implored his children to go to Palestine, so that they might see with their own eyes “the land the Jewish people lost but have never forgotten.”

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In 1924 Kagan set up a children’s home in the Sha’arei Hessed neighborhood of Jerusalem for orphaned and abandoned children and infants from impoverished neighborhoods, where they could receive shelter and devoted care. Kagan served as the institution’s medical director, guided by the belief that it is the infancy and preschool years that determine the future physical and emotional development of the child. In keeping with this approach, she began working in 1925 at the Infants Home for Arab Children in the Old City of Jerusalem, where she served as medical director until 1948, when Jews were barred from that section of the city. Throughout she was an active member of WIZO. In 1936 she established Bikur Holim Hospital’s pediatrics department, which she headed until 1975. Kagan also established a special rheumatic fever division, combining it with her pediatrics department. She later served as chairwoman of the Israel Medical Association’s medical advisory committee on rheumatic fever. In July 1965 she founded a residential facility for asthmatic children in conjunction with the WIZO Baby Home in Jerusalem.

During Israel’s War of Independence, when Jerusalem was under siege, Kagan was appointed director of the medical department of the Jewish community of Jerusalem, a position which she also filled on the Central Medical Council. Assigned the task of running all medical and sanitary services in the city, her work included tending to refugees from the Arab neighborhoods and people confined to bomb shelters. But the bulk of her energy was devoted to rescuing infants and she took babies from dangerous areas to stay at the WIZO Baby Home.

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Kagan became a legend in her own time, receiving numerous awards. In 1958 she was granted the title of Honorary Citizen of Jerusalem in recognition of her unique contribution to society and the community in the field of communal activity. This was followed in 1963 by an award from the La Rabida Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases of the University of Chicago for her contribution to research on rheumatic fever and in 1967, at an historic ceremony on Mt. Scopus, by an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University, together with then-Chief of General Staff Yitzhak Rabin and President of Israel Zalman Shazar. In 1975, in honor of International Women’s Year, she was awarded the Israel Prize for her service to the community.

Kagan broke new ground in the fight against rheumatic fever, malnutrition and asthma in children. She published studies on rheumatic fever and infant anemia and participated in international conferences on pediatric medicine that brought her world renown in the field.

As a token of appreciation for Kagan’s work in caring for disadvantaged adolescents in Jerusalem’s poorer neighborhoods, British WIZO (Federation of Women Zionists) established the Helena Kagan Community Center in the deprived Katamon Tet quarter to mark her eightieth birthday. In keeping with her belief that juvenile delinquency can be prevented through education and direction, Kagan expressed her desire that the Center provide not only rehabilitative and social services for adolescents but also advice and guidance in solving problems within their families.

In her later years Kagan continued to treat patients in her home and to engage in communal work. In her memoirs, entitled The Voice That Called (1978) and in Hebrew Reshit Darki bi-Yerushalayim (1982), she writes: “For me, there is nothing greater in life than to see children and young people healthy and full of life, learning and working in a beautiful, flourishing Jerusalem.” The work is an important historical resource for the study of life in Palestine in the late Ottoman and early Mandatory periods.

In 1936 Kagan married Emil Hauser (1893–1978), a gifted violinist who in 1933 founded the Palestine Conservatory of Music in Jerusalem, which he directed for many years and of which Kagan herself served as honorary secretary from 1938 to 1946. The couple’s home was a center of music and culture, serving as a gathering place for concerts and meetings with local and international Zionist leaders.

Helena Kagan died childless on August 22, 1978, after a rich life filled with accomplishments.