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Dr. Rick Hodes could have had a comfortable life practicing medicine in the United States, but instead chose a less conventional place to establish his medical practice -- Ethiopia.

Hodes is the subject of an HBO2 documentary that will be released April 14 called "Making the Crooked Straight," which depicts the internist's work in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, where he examines patients, many with spinal deformities resulting from untreated tuberculosis, and treats them.

The impoverished East African nation has a population of over 79 million, according to an estimate from 2008, but there are only a few thousand doctors in the entire country. Hodes' access to cheap generic drugs, support from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and an extensive international network of doctors gets Ethiopians crucial health care, from something as simple as pills to something as complicated as open-heart surgery.

"I wanted to do international health, even though I was not quite sure how to get into it," Hodes told The Jewish State in a phone interview from Ethiopia March 16. "It's not like it's an established career track, and it's not like there's a lot of ways to support yourself. There are very few of us who do this for long periods of time, and I'm one of them."

Hodes got his start in international medicine while at medical school at the University of Rochester. He spent a summer in Bangladesh, and a winter in south India, that inspired him to put his medical training to work in a country that needed it. He got his start in Ethiopia in 1984 while completing his residence at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. After his experience there, he wanted to teach in Africa for a year, so he applied for a Fullbright fellowship. When they saw that Hodes had spent time in Ethiopia, they sent him back, and Hodes has been involved in the area ever since.

"I'm not sure I made the permanent decision; I take it one day at a time, and I have all these people who depend on me so I can't up and leave," Hodes said. "Now, I'm making some success, so I'm able to do a lot of things that can help a lot of people."

Along the way, Hodes has picked up a surprising network of support -- in addition to the medical work that he does with the financial assistance of the JDC, he has a network of doctors in India and Ghana who perform cardiac and spinal surgeries when necessary.

"Two summers ago, I made a trip to India, shopping for hospitals," Hodes said. "I spent two weeks and I went to seven or eight different hospitals to see which would be able to work with us, how much it would cost, what quality was like, and who I felt comfortable working with. I chose a hospital in Cochin, in southern India. It's a Hindu hospital and they have operated on 20 of my patients. The most expensive operation we've ever done was $6,000. That gives you an idea (of how cheap surgery is overseas)."

Another doctor in New York City nicknamed "Dr. Boachie," an internationally recognized spinal surgeon of Ghanian origin, has an organization called FOCOS (Foundation of Orthopedics and Complex Spine) based in Ghana for spinal surgery, which Hodes sends some of his most severe cases to for the necessary operations. "He goes back to Ghana twice a year and he operates there at no cost," Hodes said. "I still have to pay the Ghanian doctors and hospitals, but it ends up costing me about $12,000 to $13,000 for each spine that I send to Ghana. This is 7 percent the cost of the same surgery in the United States. I sent 60 people to Ghana, and I have another 15 that we're preparing to go in May."

Hodes has not only built a medical network, but a Jewish network as well. His house morphed into what he referred to as "the Chabad of Ethiopia"; he is a resource for Jewish and Israeli medical students and doctors who come from around the world to provide medical care for Ethiopians.

"Many people come to my house for Shabbos," Hodes said. "They're contacting me that they'll be there in Passover. For example, there are Israeli med students who are going to be in Ethiopia for Pesach, and they will be by me."

The frequent guests are only a fraction of the people in Hodes' full house -- he has taken nearly 20 sick and orphaned Ethiopian children under his wing since he arrived there, starting with two orphaned children who needed spinal surgery under his medical insurance.

"Several years ago, I came across these two boys with tuberculosis of the spine -- one of them had a 90 degree angle, one had a 120 degree angle," Hodes said. Tuberculosis, a disease mostly eradicated in the modernized world, goes untreated in many cases in Ethiopia, and the virus settles in the spine, deforming it in a similar fashion as a severe case of scoliosis would. "I couldn't get them free surgery, so I ended up adopting them and adding them to my health insurance, then brought them to Dallas, where they had spine surgery. I wasn't even trying to adopt kids, but I adopted them to help them medically. But I knew I would be their dad. We work wonderfully together."

Those two children are now in schools in America, and the documentary shows the other children that have since taken residence in Hodes' home, although not officially adopted, where they go to a private school that costs $1 a day, and where the younger children receive emotional support from the older ones who have all had similar illnesses, surgeries, and experiences.

And none of the children who live with him is Jewish. Although the Ethiopian Jewish population gets a lot of attention because of their mass immigration to Israel (Hodes also serves as the official doctor of the Ethiopian Jewish community that wishes to immigrate to Israel), they make up way under 1 percent of the population. Just over half of Ethiopia is made up of Coptic Christians; around one-third are Muslim; 18 percent are Protestant; and less than 1 percent are Catholic. Most of the children in Hodes' home are Coptic Christians.

"The adopted kids and non-adopted kids all know exactly what I do," Hodes said. "I walk around in the morning [in phylacteries] and nobody bats an eyelash. They know it's something Jewish people do. They love Shabbos because it's a time where we all eat together and hang out together, and there are a lot of guests who talk to them. Everyone looks forward to Shabbos."

Despite living in an overtly Jewish house -- there are mezuzahs on all the doorposts and many decorations in the house are of a Jewish nature -- each child attends his own church or mosque and eats meat outside the Hodes household.

"I want [strictly kosher] people to eat here, so the house has no meat in it," Hodes said. "It's a meatless house and that's it. Even though they're welcome to practice their religion, they all eat meat outside the house."

A microcosm of Ethiopian society can be seen within Hodes' house; he told The Jewish State that Ethiopia is a place where Christians, Muslims, and Jews have lived peacefully side-by-side for centuries.

"Its' a country where Jews and Christians and Muslims have lived together in peace for a long time," Hodes said. "For Jewish life, it's not a problem at all to be a religious Jew to the extent that I am a religious Jew. I put on tefillin every day and I pray three times a day."

In fact, daily life seems to be more difficult than maintaining a Jewish lifestyle.

"In everyday life, nothing is easy," Hodes said. "Internet access is slow dial-up. Sometimes there's no water, electricity goes on and off, sometimes there are gasoline shortages, sometimes there's a shortage of cooking gas. Nothing is very easy. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of not allowing one to get bothered."

But for all the frustrations that come along with the job, Hodes is content and he carries with him a sense of fulfillment.

"What keeps me going is that I'm saving the lives of people that nobody else has any interest in," Hodes said. "I'm not looking for movement. In every sense of the word, I'm not looking to leave. In every sense of this, I can't think of anything better to do."

Photograph by J. Kyle Keener/HBO