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This Week's Top Stories

B'nai David Moves
Into A New Home

Congregation B'nai David dedicates
a new home on Maple Road.

ALAN HITSKY ASSOCIATE EDITOR

A Healer With Faith

Dr. Richard Hodes "hung his shingle" at a refugee camp
and lives were saved as a result.

PHIL JACOBS EDITOR

r. Richard Hodes' grandmother once asked
him, "When are you going to be a normal doc-
tor?"
Not being "normal" has meant the lives of
countless people in the horrible human storm known
as Goma, Zaire, have been saved.
Dr. Hodes, 41, from Long Island and the direc-
tor for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Com-
mittee's medical program in Ethiopia, made a quick
visit to Detroit on Sunday, speaking before Federa-

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tion's Maimonides Society at
Dr. Richard Hodes
Congregation Beth Abraham
administers care in
the Kibumba Refugee
Hillel Moses.
Camp in Zaire.
For four years he had been
treating the cholera and other
Third World diseases afflicting Ethiopian Jews when
he was asked to lead a medical team in the summer
of 1994 to the Kibumba Refugee Camp in Zaire.
There, 200,000 Hutus, driven from Rwandan civil
war, were looking for any ounce of humanity they
could find. In Dr. Hodes' words, priorities for a
refugee camp member are food, water, medi-
cine and firewood.
No words can describe the degree of human
suffering he witnessed. Thousands of bodies,
some babies who died just hours after birth,
were picked up each day, victims of cholera and
other diseases.
Even while resting at the Huntington Woods
home of Dr. Dan and Cheryl Guyer, Dr. Hodes,
41, carried his experiences with him.
He said he is one of 50 Jews in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, and the only Orthodox Jew there. In
the refugee camps, his faith stood in contrast to
what was happening around him.
He wastes little words in answering ques-
tions, talking in matter-of-fact terms. There was
the time he had to wait 36 hours in the Entebbe,
Uganda, airport before leaving for Zaire. He
slept on a concrete floor not 300 feet from where
the famous 1976 Israeli raid occurred. The hulks
of Russian MIGs destroyed in the operation
were still on the sides of the runways.
There was the time he arranged for an ex-
pensive anti-cancer drug and chemotherapy to
save the life of a 3-year-old with lymphoma. The
child's father thought that Dr. Hodes, who wears

HEALER page 10

PHOTOS BY BIL L HAN SEN

M

oses took the road construction at Farming-
children of Is- ton Road.
The festive procession past
rael for a 40-
year walk Orchard Lake Road shopping
through the centers included a portable chup-
pah and Cantor Barry. Ulrych
desert.
Congregation B'nai David leading Hebrew songs.
At the dedication event, some
doesn't believe it has reached the
Promised Land yet, but it is well 75 members heard Dr. Beren-
on the way after carrying three holz's father, Gustav, a B'nai
Torah scrolls along Orchard David past president, issue a
Lake and Maple roads Sunday challenge: "Every one of us must
morning and dedicating its new add a brick to rebuild the glori-
ous 103-year history of B'nai
building.
B'nai David took possession David."
Rabbi Milton Arin, - the con-
last week of Temple Shir
Shalom's former home on Maple gregation's new spiritual leader,
Road east of Orchard Lake. B'nai recalled the Prophet Haggai
2,300 years ago after the de-
David purchased the
9,000-square-foot facility
that Shir Shalom had
leased for seven years.
Shir Shalom moved last
month to its new sanctu-
ary at Orchard Lake and
Walnut Lake roads.
"This was just another
building (to us) until to-
day," said B'nai David
President Dr. Joseph
Berenholz at Sunday's
dedication ceremonies.
"We have transplanted a
faint heartbeat from the
Jewish Community Cen-
ter. Now we have brought
our Torahs here and giv-
en this building a soul."
B'nai David has used
the JCC for the last 1 1/2
years since it completed
the sale of its Southfield
Road home to the city of
Southfield.
Dr. Berenholz said the Dr. Joseph Berenholz
congregation's heartbeat
is "louder and stronger now," but struction of the first Temple in
called the former Shir Shalom Jerusalem. "People saw this
facility "a way station on our house (the Temple) in its first
journey to our destiny and glory, but now it is nothing," the
rabbi quoted. "But rebuilt, it will
Promised Land."
He said after the program outshine the first."
Dr. Berenholz said the con-
that the congregation wants to
grow and strengthen, and hopes gregation is completing negoti-
to build in the future on land ations with a teacher so that it
owned by members of the con- can soon open a half-day kinder-
gregation on Maple near Halst- garten. 'We will have both morn-
ing and afternoon sessions," he
ed.
Several dozen B'nai David said. He also plans a preschool
members carried the Torahs on to open in the coming months.
"We have to provide for
an abbreviated route from the
West Bloomfield Post Office. The younger couples," he said. "A
original plan calling for a Maple synagogue is more than just re-
Road procession was blocked by B'NAI DAVID page 10