Adam Levitz, a 44-year-old married father of three, was in liver failure. Things were getting worse and he knew it. On Dec. 20, he received a new liver and a new lease on life. His donor, Chabad Rabbi Ephraim Simon, is one of only a handful of individuals to have ever donated both a kidney and a liver, a procedure most hospitals won’t even allow.
“As a rabbi, I do a lot of talking about love, doing things for others and altruism,” says the 50-year-old father of nine who co-directs Chabad of Bergen County in Teaneck, N.J., with his wife, Nechamy.
“A rabbi’s greatest sermon and a parent’s greatest lecture is the way they live their lives,” says the rabbi, who is still in Cleveland for observation following the surgery.
“The Rebbe imbued his chassidim with ahavas Yisrael. It’s something we all speak about, but how often do we have the opportunity to really set ourselves aside for another? This was my opportunity to do that, and I didn’t want to let it go. Adam allowed me to actually give the gift of life, perhaps the greatest chessed, kindness, I can imagine.”
“Rabbi Simon approached me in 2012 and told me that he wanted to donate a portion of his liver altruistically,” says Chaya Lipschutz, a one-time donor who has devoted her life to finding matches. “That is unique. It is extremely rare for someone to donate a kidney and then a liver, but he was so very motivated to give this gift to someone.”
Diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at age 15, Adam Levitz was no stranger to pain and medical complications and managed to live a productive life despite the condition, which has no known cure. However, when the disease affected his liver, things got much worse. “Around nine years ago, the Crohn’s caused PSC, short for ‘primary sclerosing cholangitis,’ and I was hospitalized numerous times in the past three years.”
Levitz was placed on a donor registry in several places and had even rushed twice to Philadelphia in the hopes of receiving livers from deceased donors, but both times, his hopes were dashed. In one case, the liver wasn’t in good enough condition, and the other was too large.
In retrospect, Levitz reflects, it was all G‑d’s hand since his doctors had advised him that he really needed a liver from a living donor.
In the meantime, Simon had his share of false starts as well, prospective liver recipients who turned out not to be suitable for him. “For years, Rabbi Simon kept on hoping that there was someone out there who could use his liver, and he was so grateful every time we thought we found someone,” says Lipschutz, who has been making donor-recipient matches since 2005. “He just so wanted to help others.”
As a previous donor, Simon was considered by most hospitals to be high-risk, and so they refused to consider him as a candidate. In addition, donors who do not know their recipients are viewed with suspicion and often categorically rejected on those grounds alone.
The only place in the country they were able to find that would do the surgery for them was Ohio’s acclaimed Cleveland Clinic, which has a unique philosophy about working with people to save lives at all costs.
The date for the surgery was set for Dec. 20. Before entering into surgery (the two men were operated in adjoining rooms), Simon and Levitz met for the first time, in an experience both described as “emotional.”
However, Simon says the more moving meeting took place two days after the procedure when he was able to see the effect of his gift. “His skin color, the light in his eyes, his movement, everything was new and different,” says the rabbi. “You could tell that he was a new person. He was living again, and G‑d had allowed me to be a part of it.”
