TORONTO  — Toronto dentist Richard Nurgitz is an award-winning competitive amateur cyclist who has taken part in fundraising bike rides for the Canadian Cancer Society and Beit Halochem, among other organizations.

Richard Nurgitz, left, with a young patient at the DVI clinic.

He’s also a musician who plays viola with the York Region-based York Symphony Orchestra and once considered a professional career in music.

But the new chair of Canadian Dental Volunteers for Israel (DVI) says that relieving pain for young patients as a volunteer dentist at Jerusalem’s Trudi Birger Dental Clinic, where the DVI program is housed, is “probably the most rewarding experience” he has ever had.

Nurgitz – a Winnipeg native who moved to Toronto with his family at 16 and graduated in dentistry from the University of Toronto in 1973 – visited the DVI clinic for the first time eight years ago. He and his wife, Naomi, were in Israel on a Beth David B’nai Israel Beth Am Synagogue mission at the time.

On a free day, he arranged to visit the clinic, and offered to help if they could use him. He spent the day working there, and was so taken by the experience that he decided to return annually to volunteer for two to three weeks at a stretch.

On a recent trip, Nurgitz treated a young girl who needed such extensive dental work, including multiple root canals, that he didn’t think it could be completed in a timely manner by DVI volunteers.

“Her front teeth were so badly broken down that I felt unless she has teeth that look nice, how’s she going to smile?” he said. “How’s she going to feel good about herself?”

He began to investigate whether it would be possible to bring her to Toronto for an extended stay, to have the work completed here. The logistics were daunting, and he was happy that a colleague in Israel took on her case instead.

But Nurgitz is still thinking about the possibility of extending the DVI program to Toronto for similar cases. In addition to helping kids, he said, it would give local dentists who can’t travel to Israel an opportunity to help Israeli youngsters too.

Among his other ideas for DVI Canada are a charity bike ride and a dental lecture series that can double as a fundraiser and also raise awareness of the program.

DVI Canada is affiliated with the Jewish dental fraternity Alpha Omega (AO), in which Nurgitz has also been active. AO also organizes educational lectures, but is not part of DVI.

Nurgitz, who took over the chairmanship from Irv Petroff in March, said that DVI, together with AO, has raised between $50,000 and $60,000 a year for the clinic, which has an operating capital of $500,000 (US).

The budget is “pretty lean, considering they have 15 to 17 part-time employees and a pediatric dentist who’s in charge,” Nurgitz said.

A staff hygienist educates families about nutrition and oral care, while up to five dentists at a time work on patients. The dental equipment is modern and comparable to what you would find here, he added.

Volunteer dentists from more than 20 countries work at the clinic, which provides free dental care for children in the Jerusalem area whose families cannot afford treatment. The patients, who are referred by the city’s social welfare service, range in age from 5 to 18, and come from a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds.

Last year, just over a dozen of the dentists were from Canada.

“It’s a wonderful program,” said Nurgitz. “We need to promote it more.”