by Ira Axelrod

I was looking forward to a certain yom tov some time ago with more anticipation than usual. An attractive component of the Jewish holidays is having close friends over to share the festive meals. I was particularly excited this time because a family we like very much but didn’t see often was finally able to visit.

A day or two before yom tov, my friend called to say that an old classmate of his, still single, was visiting for the holiday. Could we add a place at the table for this friend?

After my wife and I said yes, my friend added: “I’m glad, Ira, that we can do this. I know you’re a shadchan (matchmaker), and maybe, after you meet my old friend, you can set him up.”

My friend wasn’t through. “It would be a special mitzvah right now to help, because my friend is hurting from a recent rough experience. He had begun to date a girl seriously. Before a firm commitment was made, they went for a blood-test screening and found that they were both carriers of a genetic disease. My friend was aware of the possible problems down the pike, yet he was willing to take the chance. But the girl said that a close relative of hers had gone through the disease, and she didn’t feel she could handle this problem in her offspring. She broke off the relationship, and my friend was heartbroken.

My reaction was that the girl had displayed a lot more common sense than the fellow. Love may conquer a lot of problems, but it is hard to feel sentimental and passionate when you are facing the heart-wrenching daily grind of watching your child suffer through a debilitating illness.

At that moment I said a silent prayer of thanks for Dor Yeshorim, a Brooklyn-based organization that gives each member of a prospective couple the medical information necessary to make an informed decision about marriage. By testing over 100,000 men and women to date, Dor Yeshorim has helped limit the incidence of terrible diseases such as cystic fibrosis, where, after a lifetime of lung infections, the victim who lives past his or her thirties is the exception, not the rule. Then there is Canavan Disease, which causes retardation, disfigurement, and weak muscles, usually leading to death by age three.

Finally there is the dubious champion of Jewish genetic diseases, Tay-Sachs, which is characterized by blindness, retardation, seizures, and paralysis. Tay-Sachs is a guaranteed death sentence, with no known case of survival past early childhood.

The good news is that these diseases can be prevented, because they occur only after a match of recessive genes. Every human being carries two genes for characteristics as benign as hair color and as significant as Tay-Sachs. Each parent passes along one of these two genes to his/her offspring. A disease develops only if the gene contributed by both parents carries it.

To explain the concept of recessive versus dominant genes, let us consider eye color, in which blue is recessive to brown. If a husband has blue eyes while his wife’s eyes are brown, the following conclusions may be drawn. First, whereas brown is the dominant color, so that a person with one brown gene and one blue gene will have brown eyes, the husband must carry two genes for blue eyes. Since brown is dominant, one brown gene would guarantee brown eyes. The wife may have either two genes for brown eyes, or one for brown and one for blue. Because blue is recessive, their children can have blue eyes only if one of the two genes the mother carries is blue. Otherwise, her contribution to the child’s gene pool will be brown eye color, and brown, which is dominant, will win out.

If a husband and wife are both carriers — that is, they are both normal but carry the recessive Tay-Sachs gene — there is a one in four chance that any child of theirs will have Tay-Sachs. The same is true of the other genetic diseases. (It is essential to note that being a carrier for one of these diseases has no relation whatsoever to being a carrier for a different one.)

Statistics do not always play out in the real world. I know one couple who produced nine children, one of whom had a genetic disease. Post facto we know that both parents were carriers; still, although living through the life and very early death of even one child was horrendous for them, they had beaten the odds. Conversely, I know a pair of Tay-Sachs carriers who had seven children, four of whom were struck with the fatal disease.

Until recent times we had no method of identifying a carrier. Fortunately, by blood sample testing, medical science is now able to detect a carrier gene in the blood although it exhibits no symptoms in the individual whose body has been maintaining it. First the gene for Tay-Sachs was isolated. Later came the identifier for cystic fibrosis, and then for Canavan and a few even rarer disorders.

It was Rabbi Yosef Eckstein who decided to utilize this information in service to the Jewish public. Rabbi Eckstein found himself behind the eight ball in the Tay-Sachs numbers game, having lost four out of his ten children to the disease. Rabbi Eckstein understood that if a couple tested for the various carrier genes before getting married, heartache and tragedy could be avoided. When it was discovered that two carriers of the same gene were contemplating marriage, the couple would be dissuaded from marrying. He founded Dor Yeshorim to supervise this testing.

The concept initially met with wide opposition, primarily because it was introduced in a community that is suspicious of outside forces involving themselves in the delicate matters of matchmaking and personal health. Families were especially concerned about being stigmatized.

To resolve this, Dor Yeshorim developed a system of blind testing, so that even those doing the testing do not know the identity of the clients. After testing, each individual is assigned a code number. When he or she seriously contemplates a shidduch, the other party’s number is matched against his or her own. If both parties are carriers for the same disease, they are informed that their prospective union is “not advisable” and are offered counseling. Should there be no carrier match for any specific problem (which is usually the case), they are told to proceed with no further apprehension.

Once the members of the Dor Yeshorim staff perfected this approach, they explained their plan to leading rabbis from almost every corner of Orthodoxy. The positive response was nearly unanimous. Rabbi Shmuel Wosner, shlita, the great halachic authority who lives in Bnei Brak, Israel, sent a letter of endorsement, as did Rabbi Shimon Schwab, zt’l, head of the Breuer’s community in Washington Heights, New York. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, zt’l, our generation’s leading halachic authority, signed on, along with the Debrecziner Rav, zt’l, in Brooklyn, and various representatives of Ger and Lubavitch. Roshei Yeshivah in Lakewood, Mir, Ner Israel, and Yitzchak Elchanan warmly added their endorsements. So did the Vishnitzer, Belzer, Bobover, and Novominsker Rebbes, along with principals from girls’ yeshivos.

Young men and women were encouraged by their schools to get tested before beginning to date. Many in the secular world ask, in singles bars, “What’s your (astrological) sign?” But the traditional Jewish community can now ask, “What’s your Dor Yeshorim number?”

In the Dor Yeshorim system, the client is not told whether he or she is a carrier or is perfectly healthy. The only concern is whether the proposed match is advisable. Some have advocated informing each carrier of his status, but this would create worry for no reason. One recently married young lady, whose carrier parents married long before testing was available and who lost a younger sibling to one of the “Jewish diseases,” told me that she agrees with the present system. Even though there is nothing wrong with a carrier, she said that in her single days she came to realize that having a family “history” of disease diminished her prospects for a shidduch. To this day she does not know if she has perfect genes or if she is a carrier. She is healthy, and her new husband obviously has accepted that fact.

The Orthodox Jewish community is not renowned for an ability to sublimate unfounded suspicions to hard scientific facts. How many individuals, for example, would refuse to shake hands with a cancer patient although that malady is non-contagious? The belief that even being only a carrier of Jewish genetic diseases is somehow “tainted” is a groundless stereotype that will die hard.

Dor Yeshorim has marshaled the latest scientific methodologies in the service of the Jewish community. Other ethnic groups (blacks with sickle cell anemia, for example) have looked to the Jews’ method of dealing with this problem as a model worthy of emulation. The mandate of the Chosen People, to serve as a “light unto the nations,” may now well include the area of modern medical science.

Dor Yeshorim is located at 429 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11211. The phone number is: 718-384-6060.

Ira Axelrod, a veteran writer, appears frequently in The Jewish Homemaker. He invites inquiries for guidance with matchmaking, at no charge. He can be reached at 617-731-8316 between 10 and 11 p.m., EST, Monday through Thursday nights.