Barbara Sofer of the Jerusalem Post reports on her Friday night in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia:
Friday night at the home of Rick Hodes in Addis Ababa. There's no Chabad House in the capital of Ethiopia, so visitors from near and far gather in this modest wooden structure with its big front porch …
Dr. Rick, as everyone calls him, blesses the 15 children one by one. And then, in a country where no one manufactures kosher wine or bakes halla, he makes Kiddush and then says the blessing on barley rolls…
These children understand the blessing of bread. They all grew up in African poverty, where a laborer's dollar-a-day wage has to pay for family food and lodgings. Then they lost even that. A smart and funny eight-year-old, for example, arrived in Addis from a village with his father after his mother's death. When the boy looked up from a game of marbles, his father had left too.
Most of the youngsters suffer from serious illnesses. Four have hump backs from congenital malformations or spinal tuberculosis. Others have suffered from rheumatic heart disease, polio and the trauma of warfare. Two teenaged boys have each lost legs to cancer. They're the same size, so they share a pair of sneakers.…
Dr. Rick came to Ethiopia two decades ago after a childhood on Long Island, a university education in Vermont, four years in Alaska, and medical school in Rochester and Baltimore. He'd specialized in internal medicine, and landed a teaching job in Addis Ababa on a Fulbright scholarship. When the Jews of Ethiopia began their exodus to Israel, he returned to work for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and continues to care for Ethiopian Jews and Falash Mura. He's also the volunteer medical adviser to Mother Teresa's Mission for Sick and Dying Destitutes. In addition, he pours his energy and resourcefulness into hundreds of personal rescue missions. Through connections and persuasiveness, he manages to do the impossible: arranging complex surgery for Ethiopian children in the United States, in Israel, in India and Ghana.
Sometimes donors appear with generous gifts; often Dr. Rick signs for the expenses himself. …
Dr. Rick adopted five of the children, moved by their medical needs, and later because he liked being their Dad, making sure they did their school work, gently teasing them through medical procedures and glum days.…
I met Dr. Rick twice in the 1990's. He's a very quiet, unassuming man – one whose deeds speak the volumes he does not. Perhaps if Chabad ever opens a Chabad House in Addis, they will honor him. Although I wouldn't hold your breath.
(Chabad has outposts in Africa, including this one in the Congo. Congo's Jewish population? 300. But they are 300 wealthy Sefardic Jews and Israeli businessmen. Ethiopia has no wealthy Jews, and has a white Jewish population of 100. Chabad refuses to help Ethiopian Jews – please see here for a series of posts on this issue. Read from the bottom of the page upward.)