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Rahr was in Jerusalem recently to attend a dedication ceremony, where 12 ambucycles were handed over to the emergency medical service.
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Stewart Rahr / Getty
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Stewart Rahr, known for the generosity as well as the originality of his philanthropic deeds, has taken on one of his most interesting and significant challenges. Rahr was in Jerusalem last where he stated his intention to United Hatzalah, an emergency medical service, manned almost entirely by volunteers, to reach their important goal of doubling their ambucycle fleet from its existing figure of 300 to 600.
By increasing their fleet, United Hatzalah will be able to significantly cut down on their response times, as well as spreading their services more comprehensively across the country, saving human suffering and lives.
At the dedication ceremony, held on an uncommonly warm day for Jerusalem in January, Rahr made a commitment to match all and any donations made to increase the fleet of scooters, that are custom equipped with the most effective and up to date emergency assistance equipment.
Stewart Rahr’s pledge brought an immediate response, and as a result an additional 50 50 ambucycles, worth an estimated $1.3 million, will be added to the United Hatzalah fleet in the very near future.
Rahr first got to know about the fine work that United Hatzalah are doing in Israel, when he was introduced to Eli Beer who founded the organization in 2006.
Stewart Rahr graduated with a B.A. from New York University later going on to study for his masters in law at the New York University Law School.
Rahr decided to put his studies on the legal profession on hold, preferring to help his family run the expanding family business, involved in the retailing and distribution of pharmaceutics.
Stewart Rahr was particularly interested in developing the distribution and wholesaling division of the business, which acted as a supplier for a number of other pharmacies in and around New York.
Rahr enjoyed tremendous success in the business world, eventually establishing a separate company to deal with the family’s now considerable wholesale operation, which traded under the name of Kinray Inc.
By 2010, Rahr had grown Kinray Inc to such a level that they had a client base that numbering 4000 pharmacies situated in the North Eastern seaboard of the United States, with the company graduating an annual turnover of more than $5 billion.
Kinray Inc had become such a force in the pharmaceutical distribution industry, that they captured the attention of pharmaceutical giants Cardinal Health who acquired the company for $1.3 billion in 2010.
Even before selling his company, Stewart Rahr has always been a very active philanthropist, providing rare generosity to a number of worthy causes.
In 2012, Rahr donated the sum of $640, 000 the Israel Cancer Research Fund, making for the single largest source of private funds for cancer research ever made in Israel, and just a few weeks ago reportedly paid more than $600, 000 to charter two planes to specially fly 64 members of the Knesset as well as 30 holocaust survivors from Israel to a ceremony at Auschwitz, Poland on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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