October 10, 2009
Rabbi gives kidney to father of 10Bob Groves
MCT News Service
Even before Rabbi Ephraim Simon of Teaneck, N.J., gave one of his kidneys to a total stranger from Brooklyn, N.Y., he felt they would be a good match.
"This was a father of 10, I'm a father of nine - we matched already," Simon said.
Both men are also Hasidic Jews, though of different sects: Simon is Chabad and his kidney recipient is Satmar.
The surgery last month at Cornell Medical Center was successful. Simon, 41, says he and the 51-year-old organ recipient, who declined to be interviewed, are both doing well.
Simon was moved to donate a vital organ last year when he heard about the plight of a desperately ill 12-year-old girl. He learned about the child from Chaya Lipschutz, a kidney donor from Brooklyn who has become something of a kidney matchmaker through her e-mails about people in need.
"I have a 12-year-old girl. If it was my daughter, I'd call someone to step up," Simon said. "So I called Chaya and said 'I'll do it.' "
The girl found another donor and is reportedly doing well. But Simon stayed on Lipschutz's list. In the following months, he volunteered to donate a kidney to a woman with two children and to an Israeli man - but tests showed he was incompatible for both.
In March, Simon learned of the Brooklyn man who was facing dialysis unless he found a kidney donor. The two men met briefly in a hospital hallway before being tested.
"Are you the donor?" the man asked Simon.
"I said, 'God willing,' " Simon recalled. " 'It's all in the hands of God. Hopefully, we'll match, and if we match, you have my word, I'll be there.' "
Donating a kidney filled a broader spiritual need for Simon.
"It's an obligation of love and helping your fellow man," he explained. "I certainly felt the incredible awesomeness of saving or improving a life."
Some potential donors are put off by fear of pain or of living life without a spare kidney in case the other goes bad, Simon said. But pain can be controlled by medication, Simon said. The risks of losing a remaining kidney are "extremely negligible," and donors "move to the top of the (recipients) list," if they need a transplant, he said.
A little more than a third of the 14,000 kidney transplants performed each year in the United States are from live donors, according to federal health data. A live donor is a better source for a kidney than a cadaver. "There is always some injury (to the organ) involving a deceased donor," said Dr. Stuart Greenstein, a kidney transplant surgeon at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
For Jewish donors, giving a kidney is not only a mitzvah - a good deed performed out of religious duty - but also "an act of kindness and goodness, like charity giving," Greenstein said.
As part of donor screening, a psychiatrist asked Simon about his motivation. Simon took out a photo of his family.
"I had two motivations," he said. "One is to save a life, if I can give a father of 10 back to his children, and a husband back to his wife. And, as a rabbi and a father, I wanted to teach children how to sacrifice for others. God didn't put us here for ourselves, but to make the world a better place."
Donating a kidney was as awesome as the birth of his nine children, Simon said. In a sense, the donated organ was like a 10th child.
"It's doing its job, filtering impurities and toxins," he said. "I'm so proud of my kidney. I did such a good job of raising it. Now I sent it off to live in another home."
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20091010/LIFE04/910100307/1079/LIFE..........
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