The Hasidic Jew Who Convinces People to Give Their Kidneys to Strangers—and Helps Them Do It

After a chance encounter with a person suffering from renal disease, Mendy Reiner placed a few advertisements in Jewish papers seeking someone willing to give a kidney to a stranger. Several people responded, and Reiner succeeded in finding a donor and helped to arrange a transplant. Energized by his success, Reiner founded an organization that pairs kidney donors with those in need. He and his colleagues were facilitating roughly 125 transplants a year on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks largely to these efforts, Orthodox Jews, although they comprise about 0.2 percent of U.S. population, account for some 18 percent of so-called altruistic kidney donations (i.e., those where a living donor gives an organ to a recipient he or she doesn’t know). Reiner discusses his activities, and how they embody the Jewish ideal of ḥesed, or lovingkindness, with Yaakov Langer. (Audio, 72 minutes.)