“It is not up to you to finish the job... but neither are you free to disengage from it”

The view of Jerusalem is breathtaking from Har Hamenuchot, the cemetery in Givat Shaul.

I take a quick breath. My daughter looks at me, surprised that I am already crying. We just got here.

It is the third yahrtzeit of Rav Avraham Yeshayahu Heber z”l, the founder and director of Matnat Chaim, the organization that finds transplants for people suffering from kidney disease. Kidney donors, kidney recipients, and news media are all gathered here. I look around and see familiar faces. Perhaps they are from the hospital where I receive my checkups. Not only did Rav Heber help facilitate my first transplant, but he was my Kosel. I cried on the phone to him more than once.

I look up toward the speaker, who is standing above Rav Heber’s grave, overlooking Jerusalem. He is telling us that many years ago, he donated a kidney. After two weeks, to everyone’s great sorrow, the recipient’s body rejected the new kidney. Eventually, the person received a kidney from someone else, but Rav Heber always told this donor that he had done a pure mitzvah, chesed shel emes; he did the mitzvah, but did not merit the satisfaction that donors feel when they see their kidneys save someone else’s life. As it says in Pirkei Avos: “It is not up to you to finish the job... but neither are you free to disengage from it.”