Inspired by the story of an American rabbi who gave one of his kidneys to an ailing man he never met, Toronto’s Jewish community has rallied behind a fellow member desperately in need of a transplant.
More than 450 people attended an April 29 reception at the Lubavitch Centre of Toronto, where they heard Rabbi Ephraim Simon of Teaneck, N.J., detail his thoughts and experiences in donating his kidney nearly one year ago. The gathering, entitled “Stranger Than Kindness,” benefitted Renewal Toronto, a non-profit organization that acts as a comprehensive resource for kidney donors and potential recipients within the Jewish community, and a local 24-year-old searching for a donor.
After the event, 17 people immediately signed up with Renewal Toronto as kidney donors, said Pauline Pioro, who worked with the network of Chabad Houses in the greater Toronto area in organizing the gathering.
“The goal of this event was to raise awareness about kidney disease within the Toronto Jewish community and also help this young man,” she stated.
The man, a member of Toronto’s close-knit Chabad community, was diagnosed with kidney disease at the age of 17 after a routine checkup.
Doctors originally thought his kidneys would hold out 20 to 25 years, he said, but the disease was aggressive. After a mere four years, he was forced to begin dialysis, a painful procedure he now undergoes five times a week.
When he was diagnosed, he scrapped plans to move to Israel, but since then, he’s managed to work. For a while, he was involved in real estate; he currently owns a small water filtration business.
His life, though, has been far from normal.
“The past few years, I’ve gone through a lot of procedures and had a lot of complications,” he said. “I’ve had many days and weeks in bed on heavy medications.”
He said that while he can get by on dialysis, if the iron in his blood drops too low, it could lead to heart disease. He needs a kidney transplant, but his spot on an Ontario waiting list could mean he has seven to 10 more years of waiting.
He’s turned to Renewal Toronto, which John Shlomo Anhang founded last year, to speed things up.
“I realized there are Jews in the area who desperately need a kidney, and there are Jews here who are willing to give, but don’t know how to give,” said Anhang. “My objective is that any Jew who needs a kidney should be able to get one within six months. If anyone is sick and on dialysis, we should be able to find someone else with a heart of gold in the community to help that person. No one should have to wait.”
Waiting for the Gift of Life
At the Markham event, Simon, co-director of Lubavitch of Bergen County, spoke about being a living example of the values people instill in their children. It was the first time he told such a large crowd about his experience.
In an interview several months after donating his kidney, he said that his family supported him every step of the way.
“I told my children that G‑d could have made me ill, and I would have been the recipient,” said the rabbi. “Thank G‑d, I was blessed with a healthy family. What better way to thank Him than to use my own health for somebody else?”
Among the points covered by the event were the overall need for organs, the failure of the current donor pool to meet that need, and the relative ease of live donations.
Statistics paint a grim picture of kidney disease’s current landscape: In the United States, according to the Dept. of Health and Human Services, more than 80,000 people are waiting for a kidney, and approximately 5,000 die annually because they didn’t get one fast enough.
But the risks of kidney donation are on par with most major surgeries; donors can expect a recovery time of four to six days in the hospital. According to the National Kidney Foundation, most donors report the experience as positive, and more than 80 percent say that in retrospect, they’d make the same decision again.
To further encourage donation, organizations like Renewal take care of the lost wages, transportation, food, lodging and other costs not typically covered by health insurance.
The Toronto man in need of a kidney said that he has high hopes that a donor will be found.
“People are making efforts in the Jewish community,” he said, “and it would help if someone came forward.”
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