Alter Mordechai Morel wasn’t supposed to live to his first birthday. But for the next 36 years, he defied the odds. Knowing any day could be his last, he made every minute count

Photos: Family Archives
Illustration: Menachem Weinreb

The young couple was in the process of redoing their bathroom, and as often happens with construction, things were not going quite as planned. “It’s so annoying,” the wife complained to her husband. “The vanity didn’t come out right, and the whole project is costing so much more than we expected.”

The husband was contemplative. “Is either of us sick?” he asked. “Is either of us in the hospital? Then we don’t get upset about this.”

For any other young couple, the husband’s words might have been a high-minded, but largely futile, attempt at diffusing his wife’s frustration through philosophical reasoning. But for this particular couple, Alter Mordechai and Rivky Morel, these words were no mere platitudes, since both had been seriously ill all their lives — he with a heart condition, she with cystic fibrosis.

Alter Mordechai knew, better than anyone else, that any day could be his last. And that, perhaps, is why he enjoyed every day of his life so much.

Five-Percent Chance

Back in 1985, when little Mordechai Morel was a baby, the doctors in Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children didn’t think he would ever make it to adulthood, much less finish Shas, get married, hold down a job, and enjoy a full, vibrant life. Diagnosed at the age of four months with multiple congenital heart defects — hypoplastic left heart syndrome, transposition of the great arteries, coarctation of the aorta, and subaortic stenosis — he was given a five-percent chance of surviving until his first birthday.

For his parents, Avrohom and Joyce Morel, this diagnosis marked the beginning of an epic 36-year battle to keep their son alive — and to ensure that his life would be one worth living. When he was about half a year old, he became septic, and his temperature dropped. His parents added the name “Alter,” after which his condition stabilized and his temperature returned to normal. The Morels also received a brachah from the Manchester Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Yehuda Zev Segal ztz”l, that they would merit to walk their son to the chuppah.

By the time he was two, feisty, redheaded Alter Mordechai had already undergone four major heart surgeries and required a pacemaker to keep his heart functioning, a feeding tube to ensure he received adequate nutrition, and multiple medications to treat his congestive heart failure. At the age of two, he suffered a stroke that affected the right side of his body, but as would happen countless times throughout his life, he quickly rebounded — this time, by becoming a lefty.

When Alter was three, his parents brought him to Toronto’s Yeshiva Yesodei HaTorah for his pre-cheder interview, and his mother informed Rabbi Asher Bornstein, the menahel, that Alter Mordechai took diuretics, wore diapers, and might never be toilet trained.

Rabbi Bornstein replied, “So what?”

That response set the tone for Alter Mordechai’s chinuch, in school as well as at home: He was a regular kid. This, even though he looked very obviously ill: His hands and feet were always blue due to poor blood oxygenation and circulation, and he was markedly smaller and weaker than his peers.

By the time Alter was ten, his heart was failing, and he urgently required a heart transplant. Despite his young age, he fully understood the ramifications of having his heart removed and replaced with another. When he was informed that a heart had been found for him, just before his 11th birthday, he asked, tentatively, “Was the other person niftar yet?” And when the doctors requested his consent for the procedure, he told them, “I’m too scared. You’ll need to get consent from my mother.”

During Alter’s transplant — and every other procedure Alter underwent at SickKids — hospital chaplain Gittie Edery was a steady, reassuring presence at his parents’ side. In fact, Alter referred to her as “Auntie Gittie” for the rest of his life.

Joyce, who’d always had an interest in medicine but had shelved her dream of becoming a doctor in favor of caring for her family, was constantly at Alter’s side throughout his every medical crisis. Even before she finally became a doctor at the age of 42, she often knew better than the hospital staff what Alter needed, and on many occasions she prevented them from giving him the wrong treatment, or overdosing him by giving him more medication than his undersized body could handle.

A Good Thing I’m Not Perfect

After Alter’s heart transplant, the antirejection drugs he was on caused his previously cherubic face to sprout abundant facial hair, even though he was barely 11. Once, when another kid spotted the short-statured Alter, whose face was covered with red hair, he loudly announced, “Baruch atah Hashem Elokeinu melech ha’olam — meshaneh habrios.”

“Amen!” Alter replied.

“People would often stop and stare as Alter passed them, and then turn around and watch him from behind,” Joyce recalls. “But he would tell me, ‘That’s their problem.’ ”

Alter confided to Ari Ullman, his childhood buddy who suffered from kidney disease and spent much time in the hospital with him (see sidebar), that it did bother him when people stared; he just chose not to let it get to him. He possessed unusual self-esteem that neither his appearance nor his physical limitations could dampen.

“Alter would joke that it was a good thing Hashem hadn’t created him perfect,” says Ari Ullman. “Because then, he said, the world wouldn’t have been able to handle his brilliance.”

While Alter did experience frustration and disappointment, he got over these feelings quickly. “He expected to grow taller after his heart transplant,” Avrohom Morel recalls, “but he didn’t, and the doctor told him he wouldn’t, even though he was only 11. When he heard that, he was very upset, but within a few days he was back to himself, ready to take on the world.”

“He never asked ‘why me,’ ” adds Joyce. “He accepted that this was the life Hashem had given him.”

Alter’s transplanted heart failed when he was 18, necessitating a second heart transplant. Still, determined to live a normal life, he followed his older brother, Yitzchak, to Eretz Yisrael, where he learned in Rav Tzvi Kaplan’s yeshivah and then in the Mir.

Each of Alter’s siblings — Hadassa, Esther, Yitzchak, and Baruch Meir — settled in Eretz Yisrael after they got married, and, in 2012, Avrohom and Joyce made aliyah as well. Alter remained with his family in Eretz Yisrael for several years, until he was diagnosed with post-transplant lymphoma, a form of cancer common in immunosuppressed transplant recipients, at which point he returned to Toronto for treatment.

In Toronto, Alter landed a job working at Cambridge Mercantile, a foreign currency trading company owned by Mr. Benzion Heitner, the father of his friend Yerachmiel. He was hosted by many families in Toronto, often spending months at a time at their homes. He was particularly close with Shmuel and Leah Yunger, old family friends who’d supported the Morels through many of Alter’s medical ordeals — Joyce called Leah “Alter’s mother on this side of the ocean.” Alter also developed a close connection with his cousins in Monsey, Avrohom and Leah Rovner and their children, who became his surrogate family.

Made in Heaven

As the years went by, Alter’s friends all got married — including Ari Ullman, who had undergone multiple kidney transplants. “My getting married gave Alter hope,” Ari explains. “If I got married, so could he.”

“Alter never doubted that he would get married,” his mother adds. “For him, it was a question of when, not if.”

Buoyed by the brachah of the Manchester rosh yeshivah, Avrohom and Joyce, too, were confident that Alter would find his zivug. But who would be willing to marry a survivor of two heart transplants and cancer who stood four-foot-seven-inches tall?

In a match that could only have been made in heaven, Alter was introduced to Rivky Plaut of the Five Towns. They both recognized they were meant for each other, but considering how complicated a shidduch this was, it took two years until they could finally become engaged.

During his engagement, Alter met a friend of his mother’s, and confessed to her that he was stressed over his upcoming wedding. His and Rivky’s was no ordinary shidduch, and their respective medical conditions placed some unusual obstacles before their path to the chuppah.

“Well,” his mother’s friend responded, “you’re no stranger to stress.”

“No,” Alter replied. “I never have stress.”

And he meant that.

“Alter lived in the present,” explains Leah Yunger. “He didn’t worry about the future, and he always looked at the positive and found a way to enjoy life. He liked to say, ‘If life gives you lemons, drink beer.’ ”

When Alter underwent hip replacement surgery in 2016, due to medication-induced osteoporosis, the surgical team didn’t have the size hip he needed, and the one they inserted left him with a permanent limp. “I was so upset when he told me about this,” Leah recalls, “but he laughed it off. To him, it was a nonissue — it wasn’t going to limit him from living his life, so it was good.”

Before Alter’s wedding, Ari Ullman offered him some brotherly advice. Knowing that Alter had spent much of his life at the receiving end of people’s favors and consequently had no trouble asking people to help him out — “He didn’t mind calling the whole world to get a ride a block and a half” — Ari was concerned that his kallah would feel imposed upon by his needs. “If you pull this shtick with her, telling her to butter your bagel and do this and that for you,” he warned Alter, “she’s not going to stand for it.”

Alter had no plans of imposing on Rivky, though. He wanted her to feel that he was her protector and hero, not to feel that she had married a sick, needy person.

“He always liked to do things for me,” Rivky says. “For him, every day was a reason to celebrate.”

When Alter would offer to take Rivky out to eat on a random day, Rivky would ask him, “But why?”

“Because we’re alive!” he would declare.

“He felt he had to do whatever he could today,” Rivky explains, “because we didn’t know what would be tomorrow.”

When a cousin from Los Angeles celebrated his bar mitzvah, Alter wanted to attend, even though he had needed a cane to get around, due to his wrong-sized hip. Another cousin, Goldy Fein, thought it was absurd that Alter was even entertaining the idea of traveling to the bar mitzvah, considering his medical condition. But Alter told her, “If I have an opportunity to be at a simchah, why wouldn’t I? And if I have the opportunity to go see the world, why wouldn’t I?”

“Not only did Alter and Rivky go to the bar mitzvah,” Goldy adds, “they trekked all across California — and sampled any kosher food there was to be had along the way.”