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Spring Valley man does mitzvah by donating kidney

By JANE LERNER
THE JOURNAL
NEWS

(Original publication: July 7, 2007)

SPRING VALLEY - A small ad in a newsletter from his youngest child's yeshiva
caught David Wiener's attention.

"Kidney needed," it said.

Wiener, a Spring Valley father of nine, knew nothing more. But he was
intrigued.

He discussed with his wife, then his doctor, the idea of donating one of his
kidneys to a stranger. Then Wiener broached the topic with another important
person in his life: his rabbi.

What Wiener learned surprised him and reflected the changing attitudes about
organ donation among Jews.

"I feel that it's very important for everyone - Jewish or not - to understand
how important it is to give," he said. "It's so easy to save someone's life."

Many Jews have long been under the impression that Jewish law forbids organ
donation after death because it is considered defiling the body.

But that attitude is changing - due in part to writing by an internationally
respected Monsey rabbi.

Moses David Tendler, a professor of medical ethics and biology at Yeshiva
University, has written extensively about Jewish law and organ donation.

Jewish law does not forbid organ donation after death, though there is still
some disagreement on when death occurs in someone who is brain dead, Tendler
said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem, where he is spending the summer.

In fact, some believe there is an obligation under Jewish law to donate
organs in order to save a life.

"Saving a life takes precedence over all other laws," Tendler said. "You have
a duty to save a life."

Most religions support organ donation after death, said Martin J. Woolf,
spokesman for the New York Organ Donor Network, a nonprofit group that works to
encourage donation throughout the state.

"But there is a misperception that it is not allowed," he said. "Or it could
be that it's an easy excuse not to do it."

The organization tries to reassure potential donors that their religion
allows - even encourages - donation, he said.

Pope Benedict XVI carries with him a signed organ donor card, Woolf said.

Islamic leaders also have written religious opinions in favor of organ
donation, according to the New York Organ Donor Network, which has on its Web
site teachings from many of the world's religions about the topic.

It can be hard to change long-held beliefs.

"When it comes to death, superstition takes over rather than religion for
Jews and non-Jews alike," Tendler said. "It takes time to educate and change
attitudes."

There is some evidence that opposition is decreasing.

Last year, 600 families were approached after a death and asked if their
loved one would serve as a donor. For the first time, more than half - 319, or
56 percent -said yes, Woolf said.

The issue of a live donation - the kind that Wiener was contemplating - is
more complicated.

Under Jewish law, such donations are considered optional as long as they
don't endanger the life of the person volunteering to give an organ, Tendler
said.

"It's a wonderful thing - a great mitzvah," said Tendler, a member of the
Halachic Organ Donor Society, a group that encourages Jews to donate. "But there
is no obligation."

That's what Wiener's rabbi told him as he struggled with the decision to give
one of his kidneys to a stranger in need.

Wiener, 57, an actuary for a Nyack insurance company, felt the odds were in
his favor.

"The chance of dying is statistically very small," he said.

He notified the principal of Yeshiva of Spring Valley in June 2006 that he
would be willing to donate one of his kidneys to a man who also had a child at
the school.

Others had stepped forward to donate to the man, who also lives in Ramapo.

About three months later, Wiener was contacted by officials at Montefiore
Medical Center in the Bronx, where the man was undergoing dialysis.

None of the other potential donors was a match. But Wiener was.

Over the next months, Wiener visited the hospital for tests nine times. At
each visit, he was reminded that he still had the option of backing out.

He never did.

Just days before the April 25 operation, Wiener was at the hospital for a
preoperative screening when he noticed another couple in a room with him.

It was the man who was about to receive his kidney and his wife.

"He didn't look very good," Wiener recalled. "We talked for a few minutes and
that was it."

The operation took place days later.

It took a little more than three hours for doctors to remove one of Wiener's
kidneys and seven hours for the organ to be transplanted into the body of the
recipient.

Wiener was in pain when he woke several hours later.

But he left the hospital just two days later.

"I made sure I had painkillers before I left," he said.

He was a little surprised at the length of time it took him to recover fully.

For several months, he was unable to attend his regular synagogue on
Saturdays, when observant Jews don't drive, because it is a mile away up a hill.
He went to a synagogue just two blocks from his home instead.

He was out of work for six weeks.

Wiener is especially grateful that his employer, Presidential Life of Nyack,
paid his salary while he was recuperating.

Wiener hasn't had much contact with the recipient, but he heard through the
hospital that he was doing well.

"Sometimes I think that maybe my kidney will write his kidney a letter," he
joked.

But the experience of being a donor and saving a stranger's life has filled
him with gratitude, he said.

"I am very appreciative that he gave the opportunity to help someone in such
a fashion and to such an extent," he said.

"Without his request in the school newspaper, I never would have thought to
do such a thing. It's something more people should do."

Reach Jane Lerner at [email-masked] or 845-578-2458.

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Vincent
DiSalvio/The Journal News

David
Wiener of Monsey received a Gift of Life Medal of Honor for donating a kidney to
a stranger.

Vincent
DiSalvio/The Journal News

David
Wiener's employers, Donald Barnes, left, president of Presidential Life in
Nyack, and Jerrold Scher, the company's senior vice president, gave Wiener six
weeks off with pay to recover after he donated a kidney.

On the Web

For
information about Jewish law and organ donation, go to the Halachic Organ Donor
Society at http://www.hods.org/.

Organ donation

For
more information about organ donation contact the New York Organ Donor Network
at 800-443-8469 or http://www.donatelifeny.org/.

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