FROM THE HEART I asked if Dr. Starzl would do the surgery and when. His response: “Can you have her here tomorrow?” He never mentioned money; he simply wanted to help my mother

R arely do you hear the expression “Baruch Dayan HaEmes” or “ztz”l” outside of our community. But the passing last month of liver transplant pioneer Dr. Thomas E. Starzl left me with those exact thoughts.

Thirty-some years ago my mother Chava Golding a"h was very ill. The liver specialists in Mount Sinai Hospital had given up hope for her. It seemed a bit incongruous as our mother had spent most of her waking days accompanying Mrs. Kahn the malach of Mount Sinai in her acts of bikur cholim throughout those very halls.

Nevertheless Dr. Barry Salky who eventually became a chief surgeon at Mount Sinai pulled me aside and said the following words: “There is nothing more we can do for your mother here. But there’s a doctor in Pittsburgh by the name of Starzl who might be able to help. Try to get an appointment with him at Presbyterian University Hospital [now UPMC Presbyterian] and bring your mother’s scans with you.”

I was a bit dizzy that morning when I reached my office at Agudath Israel of America wondering how I would or could procure an appointment with the renowned Dr. Thomas Starzl who had performed the world’s first successful liver transplant on a human patient in 1967 and was known as “the father of modern transplantation.”

So I wandered into Rabbi Moshe Sherer’s office and asked him if he had any ideas for me. He leaned over his intercom and buzzed his dedicated secretary. “Debby… get me Rabbi Abraham Twerski on the phone.” Less than a minute later Rabbi Dr. Twerski was on the phone. Rabbi Sherer asked him if he knew this Dr. Starzl. He answered in the affirmative saying they were co-heads of departments — psychiatry and hepatology — in the same hospital.