“Act as if everything depends on you, Pray as if everything depends on G-d.” This quote summarizes my belief in Judaism, a higher power, and self-efficacy. I grew up donating blood every 2 months with my Dad, so it was a natural fit for me to agree to a cheek swab at a Gift of Life Donor registry at Temple Kol Ami Emmanuel in Plantation, Florida in 2002.
Sharon Steiff was my 8th grade English teacher at Maimonides School in Brookline, MA. She was diagnosed with leukemia during my sophomore year of high school and passed away in January of my junior year after being unable to find a match for a bone marrow transplant.
The beautiful phrase “Gift of Life” has always touched me with its double meaning. For me, as a donor, I was supposedly helping to give another person the gift of another chance at life. But with each passing day, I feel that the title of “donor” gives me too much credit. I was the lucky one. I was the recipient.
This is exactly how I felt every night while walking my old black lab in the stunning moonlight. I'd let a few tears escape, look up at the stars, and plead for some kind of answer to what I am here in this life to do. There had to be more! I knew I desperately wanted to help people, to do Tikkun Olam every chance I got, but how? Where to begin?
When donor Scott Spicer returned to California after he donated his blood stem cells in October 2007, he knew that what he had just experienced in New York was something unique.
She was not the kind of match my mother would have normally approved of. Frankly, wasn’t the kind of match anyone would typically approve of. You see, I had never met this woman before and didn’t even know her name. For all I knew she may have been married with children. read more
Over a decade ago, Marshal Davis, now 31, was a fencer and an aspiring lawyer attending the University of Florida. Two years ago he received a life-altering call from Gift of Life: he was a match for a 5 year old boy.
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