Ten Days of Kindness That Changed a Life: The Remarkable Story of Rabbi Yeshayahu Heber

Rabbanit Rachel Heber, chairwoman of the organization “Matnat Chaim,” who was awarded the Israel Prize, shared a powerful story about her husband, Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Heber of blessed memory.

Ten years ago, Rabbi Yeshayahu Heber was hospitalized after his transplanted kidney was rejected. Because of his sensitive medical condition, he was placed in a ward with fewer infections, the eye department. One day, a medical student peeked into his room, glanced at the medical summary by his bed, and quietly turned to leave. Rabbi Heber sensed that the young man needed something and gently asked if he could help.

A Hesitant Student

The student explained that he was in his third year of medical school and had come to draw blood from a real patient for the first time. During training, students practice on oranges, but now he needed real experience. He had searched for an easier ward and hoped to find a young man with accessible veins. Seeing that Rabbi Heber was a kidney transplant patient, he assumed the case would be too complicated.

Rabbi Heber listened calmly and asked, “Is that all?”

The student admitted that transplant patients often have difficult veins, and since he had no experience, he preferred to look for someone easier.

Turning a Challenge into a Lesson

“Come, sit for a moment,” Rabbi Heber said. Drawing from his background in education, he encouraged the student to practice on him. He explained that learning an important skill sometimes requires facing a challenge, and finding his veins could help the student grow professionally.

Without hesitation, Rabbi Heber rolled up his sleeve and offered his arm. The student prepared his equipment, and after a long hour filled with attempts and bruises, the vial was finally filled. They parted with the promise to meet again the next day.

Ten Days of Patience and Dedication

For ten days, morning and evening, the student returned. Rabbi Heber welcomed him with a smile, extending his arms again and again. Right arm, then left, back to the right, until eventually a vein was found. After leaving the hospital, Rabbi Heber continued wearing long sleeves for weeks so that no one would see the colorful bruises that covered his arms.

Only his wife knew how his arms truly looked beneath the fabric. To her, those marks were like a ticket to Gan Eden, a reflection of his boundless kindness.

During those long sessions, the two spoke, laughed, and shared stories, turning a medical procedure into a human connection.

A Meeting Years Later

Years later, while Rabbi Heber and his wife were visiting a transplant patient at Hadassah Ein Kerem, a doctor stopped them in the elevator and asked if he was recognized. Rabbi Heber did not remember him, but the doctor smiled and revealed that he was the very student who had practiced drawing blood from him for ten days.

He explained that thanks to those experiences, he had become an expert in drawing blood, especially from patients with difficult veins. Yet the greater lesson he carried was not technical skill but humanity.

“In medical school,” the doctor said, “I learned how to be a physician. With you, I learned what it means to be a human being.”