Jewish doctor in Ethiopia hailed in new book, film

For years, Dr. Rick Hodes has been going about his lifesaving work in Ethiopia with little fanfare but with a loyal following.

From medical specialists scattered about the United States who offer free consults and sometimes free surgeries for his patients, to the volunteers who have done rounds with him at Mother Teresa’s mission for the dying and destitute in Addis Ababa, Hodes long has been regarded as a lifesaver for otherwise hopeless, sick children in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Two-and-a-half years ago, Hodes, who works for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, had his work thrust into the spotlight when CNN selected him as a finalist to be a CNN Hero. A year earlier, Hodes had been the subject of an award-winning 2006 profile story by JTA.

Now the subject of a new HBO film and book, Hodes again finds himself in the limelight. With any luck, some very sick Ethiopians with diseases like cancer, rheumatic heart disease and tuberculosis of the spine will benefit.

Already, according to Hodes, donors in California and New Jersey have contacted him about sponsoring surgery for a spinal patient—at a cost of about $13,000 per person at the hospital in Ghana that Hodes uses, compared to about $250,000 for the surgery in the United States.

But Hodes is not letting the fuss about his work get to his head.

For one thing, he claims he hasn’t even read his biography, “This Is a Soul: The Mission of Rick Hodes,” by Marilyn Berger (Harper Collins, $29.95), which was published in April.

“I can’t read anything about myself,” Hodes told JTA in an interview this week. “Is it any good?”

The book chronicles the work and journey that Hodes, an assimilated Jew from Long Island, took to arrive at his present station: doctor in Ethiopia, Orthodox Jew and father to a gaggle of Ethiopian children whom he adopted when they were sick or neglected, nursed back to health, and gave a life of opportunities virtually unknown in Ethiopia.

The 25-minute documentary by Susan Cohn Rockefeller, “Making the Crooked Straight,” which debuted April 14 on HBO and is available on HBO On Demand until May 15, offers glimpses of this world on film. The documentary is given over entirely to Hodes’ voice.

One scene shows the Hodes household during a typical Shabbat dinner: Everyone, from the one-legged Muslim cancer patient who lives there and calls Hodes Dad, to the Orthodox Christian sons he has formally adopted, joins hands to sing “If I had a Hammer” and talk about what they were thankful for that week. Then Hodes pushes back his glasses, holds an ArtScroll siddur to his face and recites Kiddush. Shabbat dinner is the only coercive religious ceremony in Hodes’ multifaith household.

Hodes’ family is an unlikely assemblage. Aside from Mohammed, whose chemotherapy after a leg amputation for bone cancer began on Hodes’ front porch, there is Mesfin, an abandoned orphan with growth hormone deficiency. Bayelign, a former child soldier who at 13 became a professional killer, is now a registered nurse and soft-spoken elder brother to the children in Hodes’ household. Bewoket, whom Hodes met in a crowded Ethiopian hospital room when Bewoket could barely breathe, had a heart twice the normal size and was expected to live no more than a couple of months, is now a healthy young man. Adissu, Bewoket’s brother, once a shoeless, illiterate boy from a tiny rural village, is now a college-bound 12th-grader at a Quaker boarding school in Ohio.

Today, more than 20 people live in Hodes’ three homes in Addis Ababa. Hodes has formally adopted five children, the legal limit in Ethiopia.

Hundreds more Ethiopians owe their lives to Hodes, who spends much of his scant spare time e-mailing photographs and data about his unusual patients to doctors around the world in a bid to find the right specialists, treatments and funding. He also manages the JDC’s clinics in the Ethiopian city of Gondar for thousands of would-be immigrants trying to reach Israel, and he has started a project to build schools and dig wells in rural Ethiopia.

Hodes ascribes to God the tremendous good fortune he has had getting world-renowned specialists to join in on his cases.