By writer to www.jweekly.com
Eric Steger donates so much — not cash, however components of his physique. And he provides them to folks he doesn’t know.
In 2007, the 50-year-old Sunnyvale man donated bone marrow to a dying lady in Maryland, saving her life.
In 2010, he flew to Israel to donate a kidney to a desperately unwell lady, however he was rejected when docs identified him with hypertension.
Final week, he donated a part of his liver to a rabbi dwelling in Iowa. And that’s after three earlier makes an attempt fell by way of.
“Perhaps I’m a bit loopy, however I’m loopy for the Jewish folks,” mentioned Steger, talking from his hospital mattress on the College of Pittsburgh Medical Heart whereas he was recovering from the Jan. 7 operation (he has since been launched).
Noting that he’s helped non-Jews in addition to Jews — he has donated platelets some 140 occasions on the Stanford Blood Heart — he dismissed options {that a} liver donation is critical enterprise, carrying dangers for the donor in addition to the recipient.
“The chance to the recipient if I do nothing is dying,” he identified.
“Eric is at all times trying to assist folks in a quiet approach,” mentioned Rabbi Yisroel Hecht of Chabad of Sunnyvale, who has identified Steger for greater than a decade. “He was actually centered on the chance to do that, to avoid wasting somebody’s life. That’s the form of man he’s — an actual mensch.”
Steger, who teaches math at Foothill Faculty in Los Altos Hills, grew up Reform in San Jose however wasn’t concerned in Jewish observe till he was launched to a neighborhood Chabad rabbi 12 or 13 years in the past. “We obtained to speaking, and that dialog led to me exhibiting up at a Chabad home on Rosh Hashanah,” he mentioned. Since then he has turn into extra observant, conserving Shabbat and praying day by day, and is a daily at Chabad of Sunnyvale.
One of many Jewish values he took to coronary heart is pikuach nefesh, the commandment to avoid wasting a life, a mitzvah so nice {that a} Jew should break nearly all different commandments to take action.
So, in 2007, working with the Gift of Life Marrow Registry, Steger donated blood marrow to a girl who had leukemia. The 2 exchanged letters afterward, however in step with the muse’s privateness coverage, their names and different figuring out info had been redacted, so he nonetheless doesn’t know who she was.
That doesn’t matter, although. “He’s a really devoted, dedicated, unassuming individual,” Hecht mentioned. “In his thoughts, if I can save one other individual’s life, why wouldn’t I?”
After that first profitable donation, Steger was desperate to do extra. He determined to offer away a kidney — in spite of everything, as he informed reporters following his story, you don’t want each — and started looking for the best avenue. A pal informed him about KidneyMitzvah.org, an organ-matching nonprofit run by Chaya Lipschutz of Brooklyn, New York, who donated her personal kidney in 2005 and encourages different Jews to do the identical.
Lipschutz, who doesn’t cost for her providers, matches donors and recipients in the USA, Israel and all through the English-speaking world, primarily by posting bulletins on Jewish Yahoo teams. She matched Steger with an Israeli mom of a giant household who was on dialysis. In December 2010, Steger flew to Israel, however docs at Tel HaShomer Hospital identified him with hypertension and informed him he was not a viable kidney donor.
“I’m a bit loopy, however I’m loopy for the Jewish folks.”
Along with his typical optimism, Steger discovered the intense facet, telling Israel National News: “As a result of I volunteered to fly all over the world and donate my kidney, they discovered this unnoticed factor that would forestall critical issues for me down the street.”
Lipschutz didn’t hear from Steger for one more eight years. Then, a few yr in the past, he contacted her with one other proposal: He wished to donate a part of his liver.
Lipschutz had solely not too long ago begun doing liver matches. “They’re very uncommon,” she mentioned. In 2017, according to the Mayo Clinic, about 8,000 liver transplants have been carried out within the U.S., however simply 360 concerned dwelling donors. And whereas survival charges are increased with dwelling donors than with cadaver transplants, the risks are grave.
However Lipschutz agreed to assist and the search started. Neither of them anticipated that they might undergo 4 potential recipients in lower than a yr.
The primary was a person in New York. Preparations started, after which the person’s sister supplied her personal liver.
Steger pressed on, so Lipschutz discovered one other man, additionally from New York. The 2 males went for testing on the College of Pittsburgh Medical Heart, a leader in the field of living donor transplants. Steger was cleared for donation, however on the final minute, one of many sick man’s workers stepped ahead as a substitute.
Steger returned dwelling undeterred. The clock was ticking. Testing outcomes are good for a yr, so he wished to discover a recipient earlier than the window closed. Lipschutz discovered a 3rd potential recipient, a person already ready for a liver on the Pittsburgh hospital, and the match was made. The surgical procedure date was set. Then, just a few days earlier than surgical procedure, a cadaver liver turned obtainable.
“I solely had six months left earlier than I’d need to get examined once more, and I informed Chaya, ‘Please discover somebody,’” Steger mentioned. “She was out of recipients with my blood kind. I’m Type A [negative], not the most typical.”
Lipschutz turned once more to her Yahoo teams, posting the provide on Jewish websites in Pittsburgh, Brooklyn and the tri-state space. A girl in Teaneck, New Jersey, noticed the posting and known as her brother, Rabbi Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner.
Kurtz-Lendner, 53, was very unwell with NASH, a extreme type of nonalcoholic fatty liver illness. He had not too long ago left a pulpit place in Florida and had moved to Iowa together with his spouse, Robin Kurtz-Lendner. His illness was progressing quick.
Talking to J. from her husband’s hospital room the day after the transplant (he’s scheduled to be launched in just a few days), Robin was effusive. “Thank God for Eric,” she mentioned. “It’s essentially the most unimaginable reward he’s given. It was simply going to be Jeff going downhill, ready for a cadaver. This angel got here out of nowhere. Who does one thing like this for a stranger?
“Eric is a tremendous human being,” she continued, pausing to weep for a second. “He saved my husband’s life.”
Steger is a really quiet individual, each Lipschutz and Hecht mentioned. A single man who performs chess in his spare time, he isn’t snug with consideration.
“I’m not like a Superman,” he informed J. “I’m only a common man, I do what I can. When you noticed me in shul, you’d see I’m a daily man. I don’t have a halo over my head.”
Pausing for a minute, he fishes one thing out of his pockets. It’s a small card with a photograph of the Lubavitcher rebbe and the phrases, “Put together for Moshiach with acts of goodness and kindness.” Chuckling a bit, Steger says he retains it with him at all times, subsequent to his drivers’ license.
“We have to do what we will to unfold positivity on the earth,” he mentioned. “With all of the damaging issues occurring, we’ve to do the other to counter it. Now we have to unfold life, and unfold hope.”
— to www.jweekly.com
