My Personal Prayers and My Personal Request

Reb Nachman of Bratslav taught that the world is a very narrow bridge and the most important thing is to not be afraid. He knew, like all of us know, that life can be scary. Like a tightrope walker, rather than thinking about the things that can go wrong, we simply need to focus on the path before us.

Over the past five months I have celebrated so many of our congregants’ simchas with true joy in my heart, but when I am alone, a sadness has filled my soul, for my twin brother’s five month old baby, Alexander Jack Schindler (we call him Jax), has liver disease and is getting sicker as he awaits a transplant. As Reb Nachman recommends, I have spent a lot of time focusing on the present rather than fearing the future, and I have spent a lot of time praying. At first I concluded that in the face of a sick child, this is all I could do. And so I wrote and sent many prayers to be taped to my nephew’s crib, to be saved on my brother’s blackberry, or folded up in my sister-in-law’s purse.

But when his diagnosis was conclusive, I knew there was one more thing I could do. I could speak up for the cause of organ donation. Desperately needed organs do not materialize from thin air; they need to be donated. And my baby nephew is not alone; he is only one of 70,000 Americans currently waiting for the miracle of a transplant. With Terry Schiavo’s case in the recent memory of our minds, we need to consider not only when and how we want our lives to end in the event of a tragic accident, but we need to also consider what to do with our bodies.

For some reason, the majority of Jews have misconceptions about organ donation. We think that it is a desecration of our bodies after death, or that if such a thing as resurrection exists, our missing organs will prevent us from returning. Yet these are all fallacies. Delaying burial to donate an organ is not a desecration of our bodies, but a holy act. While most Reform Jews do not believe in a physical resurrection, if there is to be such a thing, then our sages teach that God, who created the world from nothing, can surely recreate those organs which we have given to save others.

All four streams of Judaism encourage us to be organ donors upon our death. It is viewed as a mitzvah – the only mitzvah we can do when our breath ceases. In becoming donors, we not only save the lives of those who are sick, but we keep out of harm’s way the family members who will undergo serious surgeries to donate part of their own bodies to those they love.

The Talmud teaches that when one saves a life, it is as if they have saved the world. I pray that we will all live long and healthy lives. But if that is not part of God’s plan, then I pray that with our deaths, we can give life to others.