Sarah Bavly

Sarah Bavly was born in 1900 in Amsterdam

Sarah Bavly was born in Amsterdam in 1900 to Nathan and Lina-Leah Bavly. She was the youngest of 5 children in a religious Jewish family. All the siblings belonged to a Zionist youth movement and moved to Palestine between 1919 and 1926.

She earned a master's degree in chemistry at the University of Amsterdam in 1925. She then trained for a year in nutrition and economics before moving to Palestine in 1926. Later she earned a master's degree at Columbia University Teachers College and, in 1947, a PhD in nutrition.

She first taught nutrition and chemistry at a WIZO school in Nahalal, then worked as a dietitian at Hadassah in Tel Aviv. At the Hadassah Nursing School in Jerusalem she became the first teacher of nutrition and dietetics in the country. From 1929 she was chief dietitian of the 5 Hadassah hospitals, and from 1930 she ran the Hadassah school lunch program.

In 1939 she published Tzunatenu, an elementary school textbook used for nearly 30 years. She founded the Institute of Nutrition Education, which Hadassah passed to the state in 1952. She was founder and dean of the College of Nutrition and Home Economics in Jerusalem from 1953 to 1965.

After retiring, she continued research and carried out nutrition surveys for the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. She died in 1993.