A Sacred Gift Saves a Life: Or Ami Comes Together for Scott Sorrentino

There was hardly a dry eye in the room.

Or Ami Founding Member Laurie Keleman stood on Congregation Or Ami’s bimah, in a sanctuary packed with people and told a story every parent hopes never to tell.

Years ago, her son Adam needed a kidney. It was life or death. She remembers the fear. The uncertainty. The prayers.

Then Laurie did what loving parents do. She gave of herself so her child could live. Literally. She donated one of her kidneys to Adam.

As Laurie told her story, many of us found ourselves imagining what that decision must have felt like: Deciding to give away a part of your body. Finding the courage to walk into surgery knowing your child is counting on you. Yet every parent in the room understood.

Because love has a way of making extraordinary decisions feel inevitable.

What made Laurie’s story even more powerful was that it did not end with that transplant. A decade later, Adam again found himself needing another donor. So her search began anew. The waiting returned. So did the uncertainty. Eventually, she found him another donor. 

By the time Laurie finished speaking, many of us were quietly wiping away our tears. 

That’s love. The love that leads a parent to help a child or a friend to help a friend. And the kindness that causes strangers to help a person they never met. Each begins with the same decision: Someone else’s life matters.

You could feel the chesed (lovingkindness) from the moment people began arriving for this Kidney Donation Awareness and Swab Drive on behalf of Scott Sorrentino.

Scott urgently needs a kidney donor. 

To know Scott is to love Scott: a devoted husband, proud father, loyal friend, the kind of person people call when they need help. Now we are asking others to show up for him.

His daughter Sophia has become one of his fiercest advocates, helping lead the search for someone who can give her father something priceless: more time. More holidays and family dinners. More laughter. New memories still waiting to be made.

In a moving essay, Manifesting a Miracle: Racing Against Time to Save My Dad’s Life, Sophia describes the family’s journey and their determination to keep believing that a miracle was possible. (Read it here.) That same hope filled Or Ami’s sanctuary all night long.

Like for Adam years earlier, Scott’s future depends upon someone else’s willingness to step forward. And people did. More than one hundred guests were swabbed that evening, each taking the first step toward seeing whether they might be able to save a life.

Some came because they know Scott. Others because they know his in-laws, Or Ami congregants Jim and Susie Gottfurcht. Still others simply came because another human being needed help. 

Throughout the evening, we heard from kidney donors and transplant recipients who spoke about surgeries, recoveries, fears, hopes, and second chances. We also learned about Renewal.org, the remarkable organization that has helped facilitate thousands of life-saving kidney transplants by guiding donors and recipients through every step of the journey.

Early in the evening, I posed a question I had never thought to ask: Why did God create us with two kidneys? If one healthy kidney is enough for us to live a full and healthy life, why two?

I shared an original story, recalling God’s creation of the human body (read it here). The story culminates with God’s simple but powerful answer:

“So I will give them two kidneys. Most will never need both. But one day, love will need one.”

The sanctuary grew quiet. A few people wiped away tears. Many simply nodded. Because on that evening, kidney donation ceased being an abstract medical concept. It became a story about human beings saying henaynu (we are here), about showing up for one another.

Or Ami President Susie Gruber reflected on the evening: “As my rabbi suggested, perhaps God gave us two kidneys because one was meant for us and one was meant to give life to another.” 

She then spoke of her friend Laurie Keleman, calling her a living example of the highest form of the Jewish value chesed (lovingkindness). “As our rabbi teaches, in Judaism to save a life is as if one has saved the world. Laurie did the ultimate mitzvah in saving the world while saving her son Adam. Laurie gave the most precious of gifts, her kidney.”

Susie also captured something else many of us were feeling: Congregation Or Ami is a place where “we turn compassion into action and caring into meaning.” Where people are willing to consider giving a part of themselves so someone else might live.

When the formal program ended at a late hour, people didn’t rush home. We lingered. We asked questions. So many of us stood in line to be swabbed. 

Afterward, Scott’s daughter Sophia shared her gratitude: “Thank you to our friends, family, and colleagues who came together to help find Scott a kidney. We are blown away by your love and support and are filled with so much hope.”

Driving home, reflecting on that evening, one word kept coming to mind: Tikvah (hope). Tikvah, through the stories and in the hugs. Hope, in how the line of people waited to be swabbed. The fervent belief that somewhere among those gathered may be the person who can help save Scott’s life.

As Susie Gruber reminded us, Jewish tradition teaches: “Whoever saves a single life, it is as if they have saved an entire world.”

On one summer evening, more than one hundred people stepped forward to see if they might do exactly that.

Perhaps that person is you.

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You can help!

If Scott Sorrentino’s story has touched your heart, and you would like to learn more about kidney donation or be swabbed to see if you might be a potential match, please email RN26976@renewal.org. You may also call Renewal at 718-431-9831 or reach out directly to Scott’s wife, Lisa Sorrentino, at 818-355-4751.

And to learn more about Renewal and its life-saving work, visit renewal.org.