Scott Schonfeld: Saving Lives, Cheek to Cheek

Scott Schonfeld remembers the day clearly. He was 15 years old and had just finished reading a story about Jay Feinberg, whose life was saved through a bone-marrow transplant, and who founded the Gift of Life Jewish bone-marrow registry. That’s when Scott learned that the test to determine bone-marrow compatibility took less than a minute–and all you needed was a simple swab of the cheek.

The idea hit Scott like a lightning bolt. “I said to myself,” he recalls, “why can’t we open this to healthy patients going for checkups in doctors’ offices?”

Scott, then a junior at the Pinecrest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, called Feinberg with his innovative proposal. Feinberg loved the idea, but emphasized the need to obtain funding: While the cheek swabs cost almost nothing, the analysis for each test kit was more than $70. Undaunted, Scott contacted philanthropists and managed to raise several thousand dollars. He spoke to doctors throughout his county, who agreed to make the tests available at their offices. And that’s how Project Chai was born.

“I felt that I had the capacity to do something nobody had done before,” explains Scott. “And to save a life is the ultimate good.”

Bone-marrow transplants can cure people infected with leukemia and other fatal blood-related diseases, but finding a suitable donor is difficult. The bone-marrow has to be genetically compatible, and unless a patient has an identical twin, there is no 100 percent match with any other person. A patient’s best chance of finding a compatible donor lies with those of similar ethnicity. But because of the Holocaust, many Ashkenazi Jews–those of Eastern European descent–had their bloodlines severed, making suitable donors scarce.

“When someone gets sick, Gift of Life arranges huge bone-marrow drives,” notes Scott, explaining that these donors are then entered in a world registry. “But I thought it would be great if we could open it to a much larger forum, where people could be tested at their convenience.”

Now a freshman at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Scott recalls that when he founded Project Chai, he was too young to be tested for bone-marrow compatibility. He registered on the first possible date–his 18th birthday.

“Jewish youth are able to do so much good in this world,” he stresses. “I hope that many more youth will take upon themselves the opportunity to do this ultimate mitzvah.”