This September 11 marked a solemn anniversary of death for our nation. It also happened to be the day when death finally claimed a young writer who spent his limited days on earth valiantly advocating for life—others’, and his own. Pictured above, Dovie Eisner is proudly holding a physical copy of an article he wrote challenging New York’s proposed assisted suicide legislation. The article was initially published at Unherd, then reprinted in two other papers, including the issue of the New York Post that he holds here. He’s full of smiles, even though the article describes a day he almost died.
For Dovie, who completely relied on a portable ventilator when he wasn’t in bed, going outside was like taking a spacewalk. Since there was nothing he hated more than doing nothing in bed, he took frequent spacewalks. It became a running joke among his friends that whenever he would see a group picture of them on some outing, he would text, “Why wasn’t I invited?”
One day two years ago, his hose became accidentally disconnected while he was at the bodega, and nobody could understand his gasping instructions to fix it. His heart stopped. A passing policeman performed CPR. He was barely saved. Less than a year later, he bravely turned that experience into content, for the very noblest of purposes, as he argued that lives like his were still worth living. It was one of the last things he would ever do. On the same night he was posing with his article, he was asking the close friend who took that picture to also record video instructions, to whom it might concern, if the worst happened again. But his friend was not with him the very next day, when the worst happened again. This time, Dovie never woke up.
Many conservative writers in my online circle have been sharing beautiful tributes to Dovie. I wish I could join them in claiming him as my friend. My only claim to a version of acquaintanceship is that he read some of my stuff with appreciation, and we had friendly interactions on Twitter. Despite his severe disability, he maintained a very active online presence, where he conversed fluently and quick-wittedly on a range of topics theological and political. To show you how readily he would plunge into anything, our last exchange was about whether modern liberal Jews skew progressive as a secondary byproduct of their elite status, or whether there is something intrinsic to modern liberal Judaism that inclines them that way. Dovie was ready to argue for the latter. I looked forward to hearing him unpack this further. I took his conversational presence for granted. Everyone did.
Dovie spoke about his disability, downstream of a recessive genetic neuromuscular condition called nemaline myopathy, with what I can only describe as a forthright vulnerability. He was a Christian, a late-coming Catholic who had counted the painful cost of leaving his family’s ultra-orthodox Jewish faith behind. He believed that his suffering was meaningful and that it would be redeemed in the life to come. Nevertheless, he suffered, physically and spiritually.