NOVANEWS
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Renewal Only Gives Kidneys to Jews. And That’s Okay.
This week, an excellent Forward story by Paul Berger presents an ultra-Orthodox charity called Renewal — which works to find kidney donors for people who desperately need them — and a surgeon who hopes to replicate its success in his Black church.
Renewal is successful. According to Berger’s calculation, the group facilitated as many as 17% of the live kidney donations to strangers in the United States in 2014. This, despite the fact that ultra-Orthodox Jews make up only 0.2% of the American population. The average wait time to receive a kidney from Renewal is years shorter than the national average.
Just one catch: Renewal’s donors are, pretty much, only giving to Jewish recipients. As Berger puts it, “Renewal’s ultra-Orthodox donors are willing to give a kidney to the young and the old, to men and women. In most cases, the only criterion is that the recipient be Jewish.”
Only one of the dozens of the transplants that Renewal has facilitated went to a non-Jew.
How should we feel about this situation, these people? On the one hand, we’re talking about folks who are donating their kidneys to strangers. On the other hand, is there something a bit discomforting about the fact that they are giving only to Jews?
