News
Gift Of Life
By: Melissa Radler
Diaspora
May 7, 2004
With nearly 1,000 saved lives under his belt, Jay Feinberg, founder of the Gift of Life bone marrow registry, was named the first recipient of the $100,000 Charles Bronfman Prize. Feinberg, a young-looking 34-year-old who suffered from leukemia in his early 20s, founded the registry after setting up several transplant drives in an attempt to find his own bone marrow donor to regain his health. In 1995, the last volunteer at Feinberg's last drive, Becky Faibisoff, became his "miracle match." Gift of Life has since saved close to 1,000 people, including dozens in Israel.
"I hope that through my work, you will be proud of the life you saved," Feinberg told Faibisoff at an awards ceremony last week in Manhattan.Aimed at upping the number of Jewish donors on bone marrow registries - which some Ashkenazi Jews, many of whom lack extended family contacts due to the Holocaust, turn to as a last resort after traditional treatments for leukemia, lymphoma and other diseases fail and familial donor matches cannot be found - Feinberg said he plans to use his award to increase registry numbers and initiate campus drives in conjunction with the Jewish campus group Hillel. Additional information on Gift of Life can be found at www.giftoflife.org.
At the ceremony, Bronfman, whose children Ellen and Stephen and son-in-law Andrew Hauptman set up the award in honor of his 70th birthday, described Feinberg as a "young Jewish hero." Among those who nominated Feinberg was the president of Bear Stearns, Warren Spector, whose sister, Ruthie, found a bone marrow donor through the Gift of Life registry in 2000. As Feinberg was accepting his prize, a Gift of Life volunteer was heading to Kennedy Airport to transport bone marrow to a patient in Israel, marking the third Israeli life saved in 2004 by Feinberg's registry.
"Through his endeavors, [Feinberg] truly is an inspiration and a hero to the emerging generation of Jews and indeed to all those seeking to make a difference," Bronfman said.
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