When Alexandra Rothenberg was a child, she wanted to be a veterinarian.
“I was always into helping the wounded and injured, wherever they may be,” she said.
But as she got older, she developed a strong interest in community service — not surprising, since her father is Alan Rothenberg, a former president of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and longtime Jewish community activist.
In college, she spent a year in Safed, specifically, with the program Livnot U’Lehibanot. The program is community-service minded, and that only piqued her interests further.
And then she got interested in alternative forms of healing, midwifery and massage. And while she considered a variety of career paths — like becoming a midwife, or a practitioner of Breema, a kind of bodywork in which she’s certified — she ultimately decided to go to medical school.
And though she applied to 15 schools, she chose Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, which has a medical school for international health, that it runs cooperatively with Columbia University.
Rothenberg, 27, spoke to j. about her experiences in Beersheva during her Passover break, during which she was at home with her family in San Francisco. She is in her first year of the three-year program.
“What excited me about Ben-Gurion was getting a first-rate medical education with a wide variety of populations from all over the world,” she said. “Of course you get an international perspective even in the U.S. these days, but at the hospital we have Bedouins, Ethiopians, Moroccans and Russians. Knowing Hebrew isn’t enough to get you by, and that was thrilling to me.”
She continued that moreover, “I was excited by Ben-Gurion’s aim to raise doctors with a global conscience. It was not me forcing that from a program, but rather a program created for my interests.”
In fact, at the Physician’s Oath Ceremony, which marked the beginning of medical school, Rothenberg was the student speaker, and she said of her classmates, “Few of us are here to simply get a medical degree. We are here to be of service, whether it be to God, to other people, or simply to serve the earth.”
The program at Ben-Gurion was launched in 1996. Rothenberg said that in her class there are 19 women and six men, and all of them spent the majority of their lives in North America, though a few were born elsewhere, including India. Students in past classes have been of Tibetan and African origin.
About two-thirds are ethnically Jewish, though they range in their backgrounds, from totally assimilated to Orthodox. Of the non-Jews, some are quite religious Christians, including the daughter of a minister. And their political views span the spectrum as well. The discussions the students have had among themselves have been “incredibly eye-opening,” she said, because they discuss things like how their religious differences will affect them in their practice of medicine.
“We adore each other, and it’s been like that from the second we stepped foot in the classroom,” she said. “We’re all excited by each other, and to learn together.”
So far her studies have been composed mostly of reviewing what she learned in pre-med courses, but the students are now beginning to study anatomy.
Additionally, “one morning a week, people come to talk to us about international health care,” said Rothenberg. “Last month, we had a speaker come from Doctors for Human Rights to talk about the situation in the [Palestinian] territories,” and then heard from a minister of health on the same topic. “We’re getting different perspectives while not ignoring what’s going on in our own back yard.”
Rothenberg is getting married this summer in Colorado, to Kevin Johnson, whom she met at Burning Man, an annual arts festival that takes place in the Nevada desert.
Johnson — who plans to study herbal medicine and nutrition — is moving to Israel next year to be with her, and they will return to the United States for Rothenberg’s residency. After that, they hope to work in a clinic in a developing country, and then, eventually, open their own.
“I want to be a ob-gyn,” said Rothenberg, who not only hopes to be involved in the birthing process, but in helping women make the right choices in raising healthy children. “I want to help women to be able to be good mothers, and help them support their children.”