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