When Maryland Rabbi Sholom Raichik got the chance to save a life, he didn’t hesitate. A little more than two weeks ago, he donated a kidney to a woman he’d never met.
“All I know is that she’s a woman in her 70s, and she did send us a very nice note that I got on the day of the donation,” Raichik says. “The kidney has taken well, and, please G‑d, it will continue. She was on dialysis, and if I understand correctly, she no longer is.”
The director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Upper Montgomery County in Gaithersburg, Md., Raichik joined a donor registry in 2019 at a booth hosted by Renewal at the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries. Renewal, founded by Mendy Reiner in 2006, is a New York-based Jewish kidney transplant nonprofit that facilitates some 18 percent of altruistic kidney donations nationwide, setting up community events when someone’s in need of a kidney to seek out potential donors and demystify the kidney donation process.
At the Chabad conference, Raichik had addressed his fellow Chabad emissaries and encouraged them to likewise swab in an effort to find a match for a friend of his, Danny Amar. Six years later, Raichik got a call from Renewal. They told him he’d matched with someone, a woman who was having a very difficult time finding a match.
“They asked if I’d be willing,” the rabbi recalls.“There wasn’t a lot of debate in my mind, going back and forth if I should or if I shouldn’t. Rather, there was ‘Let me make an informed decision about this.’”
Raichik went through all of the additional medical testing, and after receiving the blessing of his doctor and wife, agreed to move forward with the procedure. Seeing others who’ve done it encouraged the rabbi. “It told me that I can do this,” he says.
On May 6, he underwent surgery, with doctors, nurses and a team from Renewal there to provide support for him. The rabbi says he dedicated this mitzvah in honor of his friend Danny, who hasn’t yet found his matcher.
‘We’ll Go to the End of the World to Save a Life’
Altruistic kidney donations like Raichik’s, where the donor doesn’t know the recipient, are few and far between, explains Rabbi Moshe Gewirtz, kidney donor coordinator at Renewal.
“It’s a Jewish value that in so many different ways we’ll go to the end of the world to save a life. There’s this sense of family,” Gewirtz says of those who step up to donate. The organization, which swabs about 2,000 people a year, recently helped facilitate a record nine transplants in one week.
Raichik’s congregants are inspired by what their rabbi has done. On the day of the surgery a group of them recited tehillim [Psalms] for Raichik and the recipient. “This was beyond helping someone else, this was giving life,” says Albert Amar of Gaithersburg. “The rabbi shows us how far we should go for others without expecting anything in return.”
Melinda Chukran, also a member of Chabad of Gaithersburg, has a particular reason to be inspired by her rabbi’s actions: She was once on the other end, receiving a kidney donation from a friend 12.5 years ago.
“It was so beautiful when I heard what Rabbi Raichik was doing, because I knew what the recipient was going to feel, what’s going to happen to her,” Chukran says. “I got to experience my children growing up, I got to experience seeing my grandkids being born, all because of one donor. There are no words to really describe the gift that some other human being can give to another person.”
“To have the opportunity to help someone else out in this way is a gift for me as well,” says Raichik. “It’s more than a gift; it’s a privilege.”
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