Teen starts bone marrow drive for friend

The text message came through on Cobi Friedman’s cell phone early one Sunday morning about two months ago: His close friend Zack Englander had been diagnosed with leukemia.

Friedman, a 19-year-old Torah Academy of Bergen County graduate finishing a year of study at Netiv Aryeh in Jerusalem’s Old City, spent the next three weeks dedicating prayers and Torah study to Englander. Then he learned that Englander was in need of a match for a bone marrow transplant.

“That’s how we got started,” said Friedman. In a two-week period, he and his friends Chezky Kopel of Lawrence, N.Y., and David Steinmetz of Woodmere, N.Y., organized five testing drives among North American yeshiva students in Israel under the auspices of the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation. Three young women organized drives at girls seminaries.

Friedman had befriended Englander, a Long Island “Five Towns” resident, over the course of six summers at Camp Mesorah. The others involved in the testing drives are Five Towns residents, as is Dr. Asher Mansdorf, who flew over to teach them how to administer the test and brought testing kits from Gift of Life.

Cobi Friedman, left, and Chezky Kopel at a bone marrow donor drive in Jerusalem’s Old City.

“Israel has so many kids here from America who have never been tested,” said Friedman, who returned to Teaneck last week and will begin Queens College in the fall. “We contacted yeshiva administrators and asked them to urge their students to do this.”

Friedman and his fellow coordinators instructed potential donors to fill out a form with their names and three forms of contact information. “[The results] stay in the system until you’re 60, and because people move a lot, you have to provide three contacts,” he explained. After checking over the information, he showed participants how to rub the gums in four corners of their mouths with a cotton swab that was then deposited in a packet to be sent to a Gift of Life lab in the United States.

Eligible donors must be between the ages of 18 and 60 and in general good health. Information on organizing a testing is available by calling 800.9.MARROW or emailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

“It costs Gift of Life $54 per test, and they have been getting a lot of donations from the Five Towns area to cover that,” said Friedman, who tested himself at the first drive.

He also asked prominent rabbis to bestow their blessings on his friend. “I’m a pretty outgoing person and I have a lot of connections,” he said. And he continued his own spiritual efforts on behalf of Englander, whom he described as “weak and tired from the chemo, but very optimistic and doing great spiritually.”

“It’s not something where I’ll just sit back and blame God,” said Friedman. “I’m going to learn and pray for Zack and get others to see what they can do, too. There’s been so much learning done for him. No matter who you are, religious or not religious, everybody is affected by this and pitches in. It’s amazing to see, and it makes me think about the fact that even when you’re 19 you can’t take life for granted — you have to live each day like it’s your last, as the Gemara [Talmud] says.”