To Life!
Havdallah Re-Plugged
Adat Shalom draws a young adult crowd for ritual and party.
STAFF PHOTOGRAPHY BY
BRETT MOUNTAIN
hen Shabbat ends, Adat
Shalom Synagogue has
been jumping, at least on
two Saturday nights in June and July.
Rabbi Shere catches the dripping wax from the Havdallah candle while
accompanied by her husband, Dan, Adat Shaloms music director.
Cantor seeks help in receiving life-saving surgery.
Staff Writer
F
TN
7/21
2005
34
or many years, Cantor Usher
Adler of the Isaac Agree
Downtown Synagogue in
Detroit has battled kidney disease.
Now he is in dire need of a new kid-
ney — for the second time.
"The kidney that was transplanted
seven years ago has now gone into
failure," said Cantor Adler, who lives
in Oak Park with his wife, Sandra,
and daughter Julie, 11.
"My husband is very, very weak,"
Sandra Adler said. "We knew the
transplanted kidney wouldn't last
forever. He started to get ill again
about seven months ago, and now
the kidney isn't working anymore."
Hospitalized at William Beaumont
Hospital in Royal Oak, the cantor
undergoes dialysis treatments three
times a week.
"We know people can be on a
transplant list for years," Sandra
Adler said of those who wait for
organs of deceased donors.
The cantor's only hope may be in
receiving the kidney of a living
donor, which the International
Association of Living Organ Donors
(IALOD) lists as a significantly
quicker way for recipients to receive
necessary organs.
"While we have issued a statement
against directing the organ of loved
one who passed away to a specific
recipient, there is no such statement
against public solicitation for living
organ donation," said Annie Moore,
spokesperson for United Network
for Organ Sharing.
"Most living donors have an exist-
ing relationship to the patient, but
there is a small percentage who come
forward for those who they don't
know. The individual transplant cen-
❑
— Alan Hitsky, associate editor
Rabbi Rachel Shere lights a table candle while Rachel Rose and Scott
Froom, both of Ann Arbor, read from the Havdallah Re-Plugged manual.
A Gift Of Life
SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
The synagogue's Havdallah Re-
Plugged program has drawn young
adults at 10 p.m. on selected Saturdays
for the Havdallah ceremony that ends
Shabbat and begins the new week,
plus a festive party.
Cantor Usher Adler
ter involved then makes the determi-
nation of who is an acceptable donor
based on psychological and medical
testing."
Because of a lack of available
donors in the United States, Moore
said 3,823 kidney patients died last
year while waiting for a transplant.
She said because Cantor Adler's
blood type is A-negative, "he would
be able to receive a kidney from a
donor who has either A-negative or
0-negative blood type."
According to the IALOD Web
site, www.livingdonorsonline.org
kidney transplantation is very suc-
cessful and has been shown to be less
costly than dialysis in the long run.
It also states that living donation has
little, if any, long-term effect on the
donor.
In addition, the Web site says liv-
ing kidney donation is emerging as
the preferred means of donation
because organs from living donors
are superior in quality to those from
donors who are deceased, the time
between procurement of the organ
and transplantation is shorter, there
is a lesser incidence of rejection and
fewer or lower doses of anti-rejection
drugs are needed. ❑
Cantor Usher Adler may be con-
tacted through Shelli Dorfman at
(248) 351-5141 or
sdorfman@thejewishnews.com .
7/21