The Ingathering

One kidney at a time

Everything has its season… (Ecclesiastes)

Turn Turn Turn by the Byrds. One of my favorite songs.

An hour before the holiday of Sukkot and still no Sukkah. We could not eat at the neighbors because of Corona —-and because we barely knew them. So we needed a sukkah. The worker wasn’t coming, even though we had asked him to come on Tuesday, nagging him every day since then. Today was Friday and Sukkos was tonight.

The Ramban tells us that the mitzvot are really meant to be kept in Eretz Yisrael. So we should think of America as a temporary dwelling place. Exile. Our sukkah in Beit Shemesh stood empty—“foxes will walk upon it.” ¹ Well, maybe not foxes—cats. In a few months we would go back to Beit Shemesh, but in the meantime, we were here in beautiful Monsey, waiting for this guy to show up and “build” our sukkah—just a few sticks for the frame, 2 x 2 feet.

It was 54 minutes before the holiday, and still no sukkah.

But there are perks to exile: High pine trees reaching to the skies of Monsey, parks and green grass and coffee at Season’s, and of course, the whole reason we were there: My new kidney.

A time to scatter stones…

There is a lot of talk about baseless hatred and how each group hates the next in Am Yisrael. When will Am Yisrael finally merge together to form “aguda echat”, one bundle, to end the endless exile?

In 2014 when the three Israeli boys were kidnapped, people got together for tefilla (prayer) and unity. One evening I went to a gathering which brought all types of the religious and political spectrum together. It was ok. Nothing earth-shattering. We spoke, it was pleasant, and maybe a few dents were made in the barriers between us. I don’t really know.

The next night I attended an evening with Rav Heber z”l from Matnat Chaim. The idea of the event was to encourage people to donate kidneys. Actual achdut! Every kind of Jew giving a life-saving organ to every other kind of Jew.

(Detour: My son was recently invited to a meeting of diverse participants—there was a husband-wife duo, he right wing, she, a leftist. Secular, Dati-leumi, Chareidi—all were in attendance. One man worked in military intelligence; he specialised in finding the location of the hostages in Gaza. One evening he was on his way home late, when a protester stopped his car.

“Bring them home!” The protester shouted in his face.

“I had been trying to do just that,” the man told my son. “But I was exhausted, and I just wanted to get home.”

Sorry for the interruption, but I couldn’t resist).

In the sukkah you are exiled from your house. And on the Yom Tov of Sukkos, the year of Corona, 2020, the world was in exile from itself. Our sukkah was an exile in a country where the Jews are in exile during a plague which exiled the world.

A time to gather stones together—

So when I received a beautiful, shiny, kidney (only slightly used), I was contemplating the amazing fact that kidney donations are the big unifier. It occurred to me that there is a great and wonderful movement for gathering the dispersed sparks: kidney donations!

I have four kidneys altogether—just like the four species: two of my own, one from that amazing lady in Beit Shemesh (which sadly lost its function), and one from another special Jew from Baltimore. Kibbutz galuyot, the gathering of the exiles, inside my torso.

Kidney donations bring Jews together. Every kind of Jew gives kidneys: Chassidish, Litvish, Sephardi, secular, Dati Leumi, Chareidi, etrogim, aravos, hadassim, lulavim. ²

He finally came, the worker. He built a frame with four sticks, and we filled in the walls. We dragged two boards from the garage with the words “For Sale” written on one side. The other side of each board was plain wood, and we had a few pine branches for schach. The sukkah fit exactly two people. Maybe someone could have joined us, standing room only.

Bringing back Klal Yisrael from exile, one kidney at a time.

1. Lamentations 5:18

2. In Israel, live kidney donations bring down the list of recipients, so that everyone benefits. Some individuals still receive kidneys from cadavers, In 2013, I shared a hospital room with an Arab woman (she told me she had come from Egypt because the healthcare was much better in Israel). She had received a kidney from an Arab man who died in a car accident. The Jewish woman who got his other kidney came to visit her. They hugged like long lost sisters.