Neurologist Dr. Gil Wolfe leads both at work and throughout Jewish Buffalo.  Among his many volunteer roles include serving on the Buffalo Jewish Federation Board of Governors and Federation’s Partnership 2Gether Leadership Council.  This summer, Gil will succeed Howard Rosenhoch as General Campaign Chair for Federation’s Campaign for Jewish Buffalo.

Originally, from New York City, Gil moved with his family to Dallas, Texas right before his Bar Mitzvah in the mid-1970s. Gil’s mother, who was born in Poland, grew up in Haifa, Israel after the war. As a child, Gil visited Israel frequently and attended summer camp there for many summers with his cousins where he became semi-fluent in Hebrew.  After attending Princeton University, he returned home to do his medical training in Dallas and then came back east to complete his neurology residency and neuromuscular fellowship training at Penn.  After practicing in Dallas where he served on faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School for 18 years, Gil moved to Buffalo to take on his current role as Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology at University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, where he serves as the Irvin and Rosemary Smith Endowed Chair and is a Univ. at Buffalo Distinguished Professor. 

While in Dallas Gil became engaged at the Dallas Federation and the Partnership2Gether program that like Buffalo was connected to the Western Galilee.  Gil worked as an ambassador, helping to organize training exchange programs between doctors in Dallas and those at the Galilee Medical Center (then called the Western Galilee Medical Center) in Nahariya. These exchange programs were ongoing for about five years where doctors would come for 1-2 months at a time, working closely, and learning from fellow physicians. Gil even continued his relationship with one of the Israeli doctors, Chair of Neurology Dr. Bella Gross, with whom he published an article in the Journal of Clinical Neuromuscular Disease (2004). Dr. Gross has since come to visit and work with Dr. Wolfe and his department’s stroke division headed by Dr. Robert Sawyer, here in Buffalo as well.

Since relocation to Buffalo in 2012, Gil has continued to build and deepen his relationship with the Galilee Medical Center, returning to give lectures there as well as for other academic medical centers throughout Israel, including Tel Aviv University, Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba and the Weizman Institute of Science in Rehovot.  Since the Buffalo Jewish Federation became part of the Partnership 2Gether Central Area Consortium four years ago, Gil has been able to continue his involvement with the Western Galilee region and re-establish connections with the various medical communities throughout the Partnership.