H EADLINES
Dentists Continued from Page 1
forced to close for nearly three
months with the exception of
emergency procedures.

Barnett said his clinic stayed
open during the shutdown
to help patients with dental
emergencies and prevent them
from relying on overburdened
emergency rooms.

Dr. Louis
Rossman’s practice, Rossman Endo-
dontics, was also only open for
emergencies. Rossman special-
izes in root canal treatment,
and he treats infections created
by diseased tissue inside teeth,
which can be life-threatening.

Like many businesses,
dental offi ces also struggled to
fi nd enough personal protec-
tive equipment during the
spring shortages. Rossman said
many continue to face price
gouging while buying items to
protect themselves and their
staff .

He saw the writing on the
wall in February and put in
an order of personal protec-
tive equipment then, so he
was able to keep his practice
equipped during the worst of
the shortage.

He said dentistry as a
fi eld was able to use cleaning
practices and patient protec-
tion techniques from an
earlier era.

“We took practices that
were very clean, very sterile
and made them even more so.

Dentistry learned a lot during
HIV about putting in layers
of protection for the patient,”
he said.

His safety precautions are
already designed to protect
him from aerosols produced
by working with open mouths.

“As an endodontist, I put a
latex drape around the tooth
that I work on. And then I
wipe the tooth with sodium
hypochlorite, which is a
Clorox-type product. So that
destroys bacteria and viruses,”
he said.

Now that the offi ce is open
again, Rossman arrives at 6:15
a.m. and wipes down every
surface that may have been
touched the night before. He
had air handlers installed to
circulate air fi ve times per
hour. Patients are not allowed
to come into contact with each
other and must come into the
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Dr. Frederic Barnett
Photos by Wesley Hilton
offi ce one at a time.

Even when stay-at-home
orders were lift ed, Rossman
and Barnett both said appoint-
ments remained low due to
patients’ fears about being in
medical settings, especially
ones where uncovered mouths
and noses were present.

Other dentists have reported
being busier due to pent-up
demand. Dr. Ernest Dellheim was
surprised to fi nd the hygiene
schedule at his practice,
Main Line Center for Dental
Excellence, booked solid
when the offi ce was allowed to
open again.

“Everyone wants to get their
teeth cleaned, which is great.

Th at’s the way it should be,”
he said. “Gum disease, gum
infl ammation or tooth decay
does aff ect your dental health
so it’s nice to see that patients
appreciate that.”
Barnett, Rossman and
Dellheim also have noticed an
increase in a specifi c type of
dental damage this year: tooth
fractures. “I wouldn’t say it’s an
epidemic, but we’re certainly
noticing more teeth that have
chips and cracks, and most of it
is stress related,” Barnett said.

Rossman and Dellheim
agreed that the stress of the
pandemic, along with the
recent election, is causing more
people to clench and grind
their teeth, a condition known
as bruxism. Th e pressure from
JEWISH EXPONENT
A dental offi ce at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia
this behavior can lead to jaw
discomfort, headaches and
tooth damage. Barnett said
the pain can sometimes mimic
that of a root canal, but it can
be treated with the use of a
mouth guard.

Accessing dental care this
year is especially complicated
for seniors, who must weigh
the increased health risk of
virus exposure with the risk
of untreated dental problems.

Barnett is planning to sign up
his department for volunteer
work with the Alpha Omega-
Henry Schein Cares Holocaust
Survivors Oral
Health Program, which provides pro
bono dental care to Holocaust
survivors. Th is program was created in
2015 in response to then-Vice
President Joe Biden’s advocacy
for public-private partnerships
to meet the needs of Holocaust
survivors. A spokesperson for the
program said staff at the health
care products and services
company Henry Schein, Inc.

learned that many Holocaust
survivors were living in poverty,
contending with serious pain
and unable to speak or eat due
to severe dental issues and lack
of access to dental care. Th ey
worked with Alpha Omega
International Dental Society,
a Jewish dental fraternity, to
start the program in nine North
American cities, including
Philadelphia. Th ey have since
expanded to 22 cities.

Th e spokesperson also said
the program has provided
care for nearly 1,600 patients
and delivered care valued at
more than $3.5 million since
its inception. It has continued
to serve these patients this
year, although numbers are
down slightly from previous
years due to the pandemic.

One dentist even saw a patient
in her kitchen because she
couldn’t leave her house.

Dellheim has treated
patients through the initiative
for three years.

“It’s been an incredible
program. People’s stories, as you
can imagine, like any Holocaust
survivor, are amazing and, by
virtue of what they’ve been
through, their dental condi-
tion is horrifi c — badly broken
down, many missing teeth or
all their teeth missing from all
those years when they had no
care. So it is amazing and it’s
really gratifying to treat them,
and they’re a delight to treat,”
he said.

Having seen the impact of
stress and neglect on patients’
teeth this year, Barnett hopes
that dental care will be viewed
diff erently if more shutdowns
are needed during the
pandemic. “Th is time around, we’ll
be considered — or we really
should be considered —
essential,” he said. ●
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H EADLINES
Archives Continued from Page 1
modern-day Mikveh Israel are
the synagogue board meeting
minutes. Reading minutes
from a 1782 board meeting,
Gabbai came across a familiar
mixture of camaraderie and
rancor, serious discussion and
idle chatter.

“It’s a mirror of today,”
Gabbai said.

Th e project, entitled “Digitizing
the Records of Philadelphia’s
Historic Congregations: Providing
Documentation for the Political,
Social and Cultural Developments
in Philadelphia,” kicked off with a
$385,205 grant from the Council
on Library and Information
Resources to the Christ Church
Preservation Trust in 2018.

It is concerned with the
digitizing and transcribing the
records of Christ Church, St.

George’s Methodist Church,
Gloria Dei, African Episcopal
Church of St. Th omas, Episcopal
Dioceses Archives, Presbyterian
Historical Society, St. Peter’s
Episcopal Church, American
Baptist Historical Society and
Mikveh Israel. Th e documents
collected within the archive of
each house of worship span the
early 18th century to the late
19th century.

Within the records that
concern Mikveh Israel, scanned
documents include a 300-page
seating ledger covering 1857-1866,
letters from Rebecca Gratz, nearly
500 pages of charitable contribu-
tion receipts and even meeting
minutes from 1782-1791, which
records the synagogue’s founding.

Some of the documents have
been transcribed in full, some
are being chipped away at and
others remain untouched. Christ
Church Preservation Trust seeks
to digitize and transcribe just
over 41,000 pages.

Th e goal, according to Carol
Smith, an archivist at the trust,
is to provide an easily acces-
sible resource to scholars and
the public alike, each of whom
may fi nd their own interest
piqued by, say, where Haym
Solomon sat in Mikveh Israel,
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM or what’s contained in George
Washington’s letter to the
synagogue. Some could even use
the archive to add detail to their
understanding of their ancestors.

That the project is an
ecumenical undertaking, Smith
said, is a deliberate refl ection
of the character of the archives
that she and her colleagues are
seeking to make accessible.

Smith said. Th at community
has only grown during quaran-
tine, as the number of people
with enough time on their
hands to try and parse two
century-old handwriting has
risen. About 3,000 pages have
been transcribed since March
by volunteers from across the
country. Still, much remains to be
centuries about social hierar-
chies of the day.

Margolis Chesner said the
fact that diff erent languages
are used by diff erent record-
keepers — English, Hebrew
and even Dutch — can tell
researchers something about
the community’s makeup.

“What are the tensions that
are going on? Are there tensions
What are the tensions that are going on? Are there tensions because
people are coming from all over the place? Are there tensions because
some people want to move toward a more progressive practice, or more
toward a religious practice? It really gives you a snapshot into the
religious life of the community.”
MICHELLE MARGOLIS CHESNER
“We know that Benjamin
Levy [a prominent Mikveh
Israel congregant of its early
period] contributed to the
building of the steeple of Christ
Church,” Smith said. “I want
to see if we can’t try to fi nd
more of those cross references
between the congregations.”
The archives of each
individual congregation are
too great for a small team
to digitize and transcribe
on their own and, thus, the
project farms out some of
the transcription to a “robust
community” of volunteers,
transcribed. According to scholars in the
fi eld of American Jewish history
familiar with the project, such a
rich, detailed archive of a single
community like Mikveh Israel
can yield important fi ndings
for researchers. Knowing where
community members rented
their seats within the synagogue,
according to Michelle Margolis
Chesner, Norman E. Alexander
Librarian for Jewish Studies at
Columbia University, is more
than a matter of one’s preferred
sight line to the bimah. It can
send a signal through the
University of Pennsylvania’s
Herbert D. Katz Center for
Advanced Judaic Studies, fi nds
much to consider in the records
of Mikveh Israel’s confl icts, but
plenty in its mundanities, too.

Membership structures and
seating arrangements are a rich
vein for contemporary histo-
rians grasping to understand
the social dynamics at play in a
bygone era.

“It’s a really incredible social
history that’s not only inter-
esting to social historians or
religious historians,” Kiron said,
“but to people interested in the
history of their community —
genealogists, family historians.”
Smith, like Kiron, believes
that the archive has much to
off er the general public. She
said that her team hopes to
produce lesson plans that will
guide students and teachers
through the archive.

Gabbai, too, believes that
the archive has utility to his
congregation, distinct from
what it provides researchers.

Th e synagogue’s history, he said,
is “one of its very important
assets.” “If we did not have that
history,” Gabbai said, “we’d be
like any other synagogue.” ●
because people are coming from
all over the place? Are there
tensions because some people
want to move toward a more
progressive practice, or more
toward a religious practice? It
really gives you a snapshot into
the religious life of the commu-
nity,” Margolis Chesner said.

And she added the one important
takeaway from any synagogue
archive, Mikveh Israel included:
“You realize, fi rst, that synagogue
confl ict is eternal.”
Arthur Kiron,
the Schottenstein-Jesselson Curator jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
of Judaica Collections at the 215-832-0740
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