Adam Levitz, a 44-year-old married father of three, was in liver failure. Things were getting worse, and he knew it. And then, on Dec. 20, he received a new liver and a new lease on life. His donor, Chabad Rabbi Ephraim Simon, is one of only a handful of individuals to have ever donated both a kidney and a liver—a procedure most hospitals won’t even allow.

The two men had never met until just days before the lifesaving surgery, but Simon says that’s exactly what he was looking for.

“As a rabbi, I do a lot of talking about love, doing things for others and altruism,” says the 50-year-old father of nine who co-directs Chabad of Bergen County in Teaneck, N.J., with his wife, Nechamy. “A rabbi’s greatest sermon and a parent’s greatest lecture is the way they live their lives,” says the rabbi, who is still in Cleveland for observation following the surgery. “The Rebbe imbued his Chassidim with Ahavas Yisrael [love for a fellow Jew]. It’s something we all speak about, but how often do we have the opportunity to really set ourselves aside for another? This was my opportunity to do that, and I didn’t want to let it go. Adam allowed me to actually give the gift of life, perhaps the greatest chesed, kindness, I can imagine.”

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The rabbi’s route to donation was not an easy one.

It was a circuitous chain of kindness that involved many, most notably Chaya Lipschutz, a woman from Brooklyn, N.Y., who donated a kidney to a stranger and devoted her life to matching kidney donors and recipients.

Since she had matched him up with the recipient of the kidney he donated in 2009, he approached her again and asked if she was aware of anyone who could make use of his liver.

“Rabbi Simon approached me in 2012 and told me that he wanted to donate a portion of his liver altruistically,” says Lipschutz. “That is unique. It is extremely rare for someone to donate a kidney and then a liver, but he was so very motivated to give this gift to someone.”

While Lipschutz is aware of two individuals who donated kidneys and then went on to donate their livers to children (who require just a small portion of an adult liver), at the time Simon was the only kidney donor she encountered who wanted to give his liver to an adult.

Nechamy Simon and Stefanie Levitz embrace a few days before the surgery.

Through the introduction of Chanie Wilhelm of Chabad of Milford, Conn., Lipschutz had been aware of Levitz, a resident of Long Island whose parents were leading members of Wilhelm’s congregation.

Diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at age 15, Levitz was no stranger to pain and medical complications and managed to live a productive life despite the condition, which has no known cure. However, when the disease affected his liver, things got much worse. Levitz had been working in finance until his health prevented him from continuing. “Around nine years ago, the Crohn’s caused PSC, short for ‘primary sclerosing cholangitis,’ and I was hospitalized numerous times in the past three years.”

Levitz was placed on a donor registry in several places and had even rushed twice to Philadelphia in the hopes of receiving livers from deceased donors, but both times, his hopes were dashed. In one case, the liver wasn’t in good enough condition, and the other was too large.

In retrospect, Levitz reflects, it was all G‑d’s hand since his doctors had advised him that he really needed a liver from a living donor.

In the meantime, Simon had his share of false starts as well, prospective liver recipients who turned out not to be suitable for him. “For years, Rabbi Simon kept on hoping that there was someone out there who could use his liver, and he was so grateful every time we thought we found someone,” says Lipschutz, who has been making donor-recipient matches since 2005. “He just so wanted to help others.”

Through Lipschutz’s networking, the shidduch was made, but things were far from simple.

As a previous donor, Simon was considered by most hospitals to be high-risk, and so they refused to consider him as a candidate. In addition, donors who do not know their recipients are viewed with suspicion and often categorically rejected on those grounds alone.