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Beating
The Odds

Logan Weiss, 4, returns from
a successful bone marrow
transplant as others continue
their recuperation or struggle
to find a match

JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR STAFF WRITER

•

PHOTO BY DANIEL LIPPITT

I

Judaism In Black And White

ogan Weiss' life has not been fair.
At age 4, he has already gone
through more pain than many
adults experience in a lifetime.
Born with the same rare blood disease
that 'killed his older brother, Brandon,
in 1987, Logan returned last week from
the Urtiversity of Minnesota Cancer
Center where he underwent a bone
marrow transplant.
"He has been incredible through this,"
said his mother, Gayle Weiss.
With irrepressible energy and pudgy
cheeks that don't quit, Logan scampers
about his Bloomfield Hills home, scour-
ing the refrigerator for Gatorade and
playing with a toy duck that quacks
`London Bridge Is Falling Down." Aside
from a catheter implanted in his chest,
there is little sign of what he just went
through.
His ordeal began shortly after birth
when a blood platelet count led to the dis-

Children of the Dream pay a visit to Detroit.

PHIL JACOBS EDITOR

hen many of the Ethiopians were Torah services at Young Israel of South-
first airlifted into Israel, the sto- field. On Monday and Tuesday, they vis-
ry has it that they looked at their ited Southfield-Lathrup High School.
"We selected kids who could communi-
new countrymen and women
and wondered where all the Jews were. cate with other kids easily," said their
They had never seen light-skinned Jews chaperon, Babu Yaacov. "We want to show
that there is a connection between these
before.
children and the Jewish kids
When five Israelis, originally
here in Detroit. That connection
from Ethiopia, visited Detroit
this week, a similar reaction oc- Mulaw Yaa cov learns is bigger than the color of a per-
the great American
son's skin."
cm-red, but it came from Amer-
pastime o f thumb
Mr. Yaacov, who preferred to
ican teens — both white and wrestling
fr om Adam be called by his first name, Babu,
black — who had never met a
Cohen, as Kristina
had quite a story of his own to
Jew who was black before.
Johnson I ooks on.
tell. He's been employed by Is-
The Anti-Defamation League
rael Aircraft Industries for 18
was trying to change that image
through its Children of the Dream pro- years. He lives in Lod with his wife and
gram. Four students, along with a chap- four children and is an activist in the
eron, are visiting and interacting with local Ethiopian community.
He came to Israel on his own when he
teens in five area high schools: Berkley,
Renaissance, Oak Park, Southfield-Lath- was just 16. What was even more re-
markable about this was that he came in
nip and West Bloomfield.
Visiting Detroit are Nava (Mintwau) 1971, some 13 years before the Operation
Kebede, 19; Assaf (Yasu) Mola, 17; Yael Moses airlift evacuated a huge portion of
Azala, 17; Mulaw Yaacov, 18; and their the community.
"After the Six-Day War, I saw my par-
chaperon, Babu Yaacov.
Sunday evening, the students were re- ents praying to the God of Israel," he said.
laxing in the home of their hosts, Dr. Bar- "Looking at them pray, I had a wish to be
ry and Barbara Skarf. They were there, to be in Israel."
It would be 15 years before he would see
watching the movie Forrest Gump. The
prior day, they participated in Simchat his pPrents again, before he was able to

W

get them out of Ethiopia to Israel.
When he arrived at the airport in
Israel, he had only $40 in his pock-
et, but his Jewish identity was
strong enough to make him feel
wealthy.
"I told a policewoman, 'I am a
Jew, where am I to go?"
He ended up with friends in Eilat
before moving on to a kibbutz, where he
started his Hebrew and high-school edu-
cation.
That education continued as an Israeli
citizen before and beyond Operation
Moses. At the time of the airlift, Babu was
well-established in his new country.
Even with the publicity given the air-
lift, there are many Jews and gentiles who
know little of the Ethiopian role in Israeli
history. ADL first sponsored a Children
of the Dream program in 1994. Detroit
was one of the few cities in the country
to bring in students.
"The purpose of the program was to
break down the preconceptions about race,
religion and cultural differences," said De-
troit ADL program coordinator H. Adam
Cohen. "It went so well in 1994 that we
decided to do it again. The best thing is
when black kids see that their people can

DREAM page 14

Logan Weiss

plays in his
Bloomfield

Hills home.

coven/ he had amegakary-

outic tiirombocytopenia,
a ram and lethal blood dis-

order. Doctors started him
on a drug treatment that
required his mother to give Logan two
shots a day.
"We would alternate his arms, his
legs or his buttocks," she said " We could
also give him shots in his stomach, but
I couldn't bring myself to do that."
The shots ended when the medica
tion began to fail. Lowered blood counts
forced doctors to try the only other treat-
ment: a bone marrow transplant.
A search of the National Marrow
Donor Registry found someone who
completely matched Logan's blood ant-
gens. On March 3, Logan, his mother
and his father, Art Weiss of West Bloom-

BONE MARROW page 16