Gourmet Glatt hosts first local kidney donation benefit

Gourmet Glatt, the popular Cedarhurst kosher supermarket was closed to shoppers on Tuesday night, with its aisles transformed into a catering hall. Candlelit tables offered chocolate samples as violists played. Between the tables, posters highlighted the cause of the evening.
Renewal, the Borough Park-based nonprofit that coordinates kidney donations in the Jewish community. “This is our first event in the Five Towns,” said Renewal founder Mendel Reiner. The effort began six years ago when Reiner’s friend Eli was diagnosed with kidney failure. “He needed a transplant and he needed it fast. 60 percent of dialysis patients don’t survive three years.”
Reiner put an ad in Jewish Press, seeking a Blood Type O donor for a father of five. “We received over 30 phone calls, more than we expected,” Reiner said, describing how Renewal began. Since then, it assisted in 126 transplants in New york, Canada and Israel.
Part of the success is spreading the message that donating a kidney is relatively harmless, saving a life being the ultimate reward. “I heard of a father of twelve in New Jersey who donated his kidney through Renewal,” said Brooklyn resident Rabbi Boruch Wolf. “If he undertook it, then it’s not a high risk thing and I was not fazed by the surgery” Describing his procedure as painless, Rabbi Wolf recovered after a couple of days in the hospital. “A true sacrifice is something you are uncomfortable doing, but for me it was not a big deal.”
The waiting list for Renewal totals nearly 150 people, including Dix Hills resident Irwin Doben, 67, who attended the event to thank the financial and physical donors. “I found out about Renewal through my dialysis technician. The waiting list is endless and it is healthier to receive a live kidney,” Doben said. “It’s an amazing thing that people are doing this.”
Through endorsements of leading rabbinical figures, the stigma associated with giving up an organ is dissipating, and the average wait for Renewal clients is only nine months, compared to seven years nationally. Chaim Alter Berger, a member Renewal’s board of directors and himself a donor, recalled asking Rabbi Binyomin Eisenberger about the procedure. “You should go to the mikvah and make sure to recite the parsha of the akeida three times,” he recalled his rabbi instructing. Speaking before the crowd, Rabbi Shneur Zalman Wolowik cited mention of the kidney in the Torah and Gemara. “The kidney enhances pleasure in food and in life,” Rabbi Wolowik said. “When one gives up a part of something we enjoy so much, it means the person is sacrificing himself.”
The annual budget for Renewal’s work is nearly $500,000, mainly related to matching donors, awareness campaigns, counseling, and paying for the donors’ expenses, such as lost wages during a surgery. “These donors submit themselves to months of tests, the daily routines and lives in disarray all in their quests to save a life,” Reiner said. “True chesed, that’s what Renewal’s donors are all about.”

Those in need of a kidney transplant and suitable kidney donors and supporters may contact Renewal at 718-431-9831 or by logging on to www.Renewal.org. The public is also encouraged to daven for Renewal kidney recipient Yitzchok ben Kamera, who is undergoing surgery this week.