The Last Address

On the night that Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Haber, founder of Matnas Chaim, passed away, Reb Yitzchok* found himself unable to sleep. He turned from side to side, got out of bed, returned to bed, and still nothing helped. Four hours passed. Then, suddenly, extraordinary force:

Donate a kidney.

Rabbi Haber had devoted his life to helping people receive kidney transplants. Reb Yitzchok decided that he would donate one in Rabbi Haber’s memory. It was four o’clock in the morning, but he immediately called Matnas Chaim and left a message with his information.

Several contacted him. They explained the process and then asked a simple question: “Whom would you like to donate to?”

Reb Yitzchok had one request. “I’m not the type who enjoys all the family pictures, reunion Shabbosos, and becoming part of another family. I’m a quiet person. I just want to donate to a Jew who keeps Shabbos. That’s all.”

They checked their records and found a traditional, Shabbos-observant Jew from Ashkelon who needed a kidney, and the testing process began.

Then Matnas Chaim called again. “We discovered something unusual. You have an extremely rare blood type — one shared by only a tiny number of people in the country. There is a chassidishe man waiting for a kidney of exactly this type. The patient from Ashkelon has a common blood type, and, with Hashem’s help, another donor should be found for him relatively quickly. Would you be willing to donate to this other man instead?”

Reb Yitzchok thought about it. “If this is the way Heaven arranged things,” he said, “then let it be.”

Before the transplant, donor and recipient met. That a thought entered his mind with days later, the organization was when the recipient told him his story.

“This will be my third kidney transplant,” he said. “The first was when I was nine years old. The second when I was seventeen. Now I need another.”

He had met with senior doctors. Their prognosis was devastating. “According to your blood type and medical circumstances,” they told him, “the chances of finding the kidney you need are virtually nonexistent.”

“No chance?” he pressed them.

They explained the statistics. As far as they could determine, there were perhaps five people in the entire country with a kidney compatible with his needs. And the possibility that one of those five would decide to donate a kidney — and that it would somehow reach him — was almost zero.

He had gone to Rabbi Haber. Rabbi Haber listened and responded, “Only five people? Then we will turn over every stone until we find one of them and convince him to donate.”

Time passed. No donor was found.

Dialysis was excruciating, yet the avreich still had one thread of hope. Rabbi Haber would find him a kidney.

Somehow.

Then Rabbi Haber passed away.

“I shattered,” the recipient told Reb Yitzchok. “As long as Rabbi Haber was alive, I thought he would find my kidney. When he died, I felt that my last hope had disappeared.” Then he looked at the man sitting across from him. “They say it used to take Rabbi Haber half an hour to convince someone to donate a kidney. But apparently, he wasn’t going into Gan Eden until he had found me my kidney.”

Sometimes every other address has to disappear before a person discovers the only Address that was ever real. What seems like the last address was, in truth, the first.