The lives of 28-year-old Aliza Eliyahu, a nurse at Hadassah Medical Center’s Oncology Department, and Bezalel Kandel, also 28, changed thanks to a chance encounter at the hospital, where Eliyahu treated Kandel’s grandfather three years ago.
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At the time, Kandel arrived at the hospital to visit his grandfather, Albert Cohen. "I was working the Saturday shift when Bezalel entered his grandfather’s room. I thought he looked nice from the moment I saw him,” Aliza recounts. Though Cohen has since passed away, the meeting changed the couple’s lives.
"I've been a nurse in Hadassah Medical Center’s Oncology Department for six years. It's an amazing department and the staff are very close with their patients. I noticed Bezalel entering my patient’s room. I followed since I had to give Albert his medicine. He was awake, so we started talking,” Aliza says.
The potential the two had was not lost on Grandpa Cohen. “He asked me if I was married. When I answered I wasn’t, he winked at Bezalel and pushed him to make the first move, and the rest is history,” she recounts.
"I had just returned from a trip and moved to a new apartment in Ariel, looking for love," Bezalel says. The two spoke in the hospital, and Bezalel asked Aliza for her phone number. Shortly after, he sent her a message, and they went on their first date. "On our second date, I already knew he was the one," Aliza says.
"I've been on plenty of dates, friends introduced me to their friends, but we didn’t fit well. I always knew that I'd find my match through my work rather than dating, and that's how it happened. When treating our patients at the department, we get to know them and their families closely, so I don’t think it’s surprising I found my other half through my work,” she explains.
The couple’s relationship quickly blossomed, and after a year and a half, they got engaged. Today, the couple lives in Givat Ze'ev. Albert Cohen passed away two months after they met and didn't get to see them getting married.
"For me, working in this special department makes me see things in proportion and allows me to give everything I have to others. And my work also gave me Bezalel," Aliza says.
"It's not easy accompanying your grandfather in the Oncology Department,” Bezalel says. “But there were silver linings during that period – an amazing team that wanted to do everything, and then there was Aliza, of course. Love comes from the most unexpected places.”
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