Avraham Elimelech Firer

Avraham Elimelech Firer was born in 1954 in Bnei Brak

Firer was born in Bnei Brak in 1954, the fifth of nine children in a family of Belz Hasidim. His father, a teacher of religious studies, was born in Galicia, fled to Siberia during World War II and came to Israel in 1948. Firer is married to Feige, a kindergarten teacher.

He began volunteering as a young student at a kollel, after helping a friend obtain an advanced medical device. This led him to set up a service for lending medical equipment, and in 1979 he founded Ezra LeMarpeh. He is an ordained rabbi and has no formal medical education.

Firer advises patients and refers them to doctors and treatments in Israel and abroad, and his organization arranges flights when treatment abroad is needed. The organization runs ambulances, home care for children with cancer and video conferences for medical consultations. Some critics in the medical community say his work harms hospitals in the periphery, and he replied that he advises for the good of the patient.

From 1999 to 2004 he served as a director of the public company Elbit Imaging. He received the Israel Prize in 1997. In April 2020 he was offered to light a torch at the Independence Day ceremony and declined.