Jay Feinberg and his bone marrow
donor, Becky Faibisoff, a teacher
from SAR School in Riverdale, N.Y. |
Gathering of
Heroes
Giving Gift of Life
By Tim Boxer
 ON
RIFKIN has a problem. He’s afraid of speaking extemporaneously
before large audiences. But give him a script and send him out on
stage, and he’s terrific.
“There are two groups of
actors,” he said.
“One group is terrific
and can speak in front of any gathering. Second group is terrified
unless they’re playing a character. I am of the second group.”
After that confession he
went on to serve admirably as emcee of the third annual Gift of Life
gala at the Hilton New York.
“This dinner has raised
one million dollars,” Rifkin announced. “If that’s not enough,
dinner chairman Warren Spector says he’ll match anyone for
more.”
Jay Feinberg founded
the organization, which tests thousands of organ donors to match up
with individual recipients.
Howard Jonas and Pat Robertson |
Spector, president and
co-chief operating officer of Bear Stearns, is the brother of Dr. Ruth
Spector, a transplant recipient who met her donor, Josh
Hoffman, at the gala. Both are from Long Island, N.Y.
Dr. Spector thanked
Feinberg: “You have given me life. It changed my life. I now
choose carefully the fights with my husband.”
Dan
Brown, a potential transplant recipient who suffers from
leukemia, told a Mae West story to make a point:
Cindy was wrapped in a
gorgeous fur coat as she made her entrance into the bar to meet her
friend Mae West. “I met a man with a thousand dollars,” she
said.
Months later they meet
again, and this time Mae West is wearing a beautiful fur coat.
“Oh, Mae, did you meet a
man with a thousand dollars?”
“No, Cindy, I met a
thousand men with one dollar each.”
“Sometimes,” Brown
explained, “it takes a thousand people to have the impact on a
single individual.”
Lois Lautenberg, a Gift of Life
supporter, with Jay Feinberg and
Warren Spector |
“What an extraordinary
group of people we have in this room,” Rabbi Avi Weiss
said. “You don’t strap yourselves with explosive belts and take
life—you give life.”
“This is the best dinner
I’ve ever been at,” IDT chairman Howard Jonas remarked.
“I’ve been in this room with total heroes. I cry at movies. I
definitely don’t cry at dinners. At this dinner I cried.”
Dr. Pat Robertson,
founding chairman of the Christian
Broadcasting Network and a personal friend of Jonas, revealed
that last year he suffered from prostate cancer. An Israeli
urologist operated on him and now the noted evangelist is cancer
free. |
