Friend Jay Feinberg, Save A Life

Jay Feinberg: His Gift of Life’s new Web application seeks an increase in the 2,000 transplants it has facilitated since 1991.

by Sharon Udasin

In these days of tracking Tweets and finding Facebook friends, one organization is using the social media craze to try to save lives, through the click of a mouse.

The Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation is launching a new Web application this week (www.giftoflife.org)  to recruit new donors to their 130,000-member database, hoping for a rapid increase in the over 2,000 transplants already facilitated by the organization since 1991. And in the face of economic struggle — Gift of Life lost more than $2 million in the Bernard Madoff scandal — it is asking people to create accounts, to spread the word and most of all, to pay for their own $54 cheek swab tests. Continue reading…

Israel Posts Pope Status Updates

by Sharon Udasin

As Pope Benedict XVI paid his first official visit to the Jewish state, the Consulate General of Israel in New York launched a Facebook application geared particularly toward Christian audiences, which employs photographs and multiple-choice quiz questions to test users’ knowledge of Israel. Through “Holy Land Trivia: From Creation to Creativity,” the Consulate hopes to expose people to Israel’s historical gems, from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to the Bahai Gardens in Haifa and the Bauhaus architecture of Tel Aviv. At the end of the quizzes, users receive their tabulated scores and have the opportunity to share the application with their Facebook friends and view further information about the places. This project is just one of many efforts of the Consulate to bolster Israel’s public image through social networking and other online mechanisms.

“The Pope’s visit gives us the opportunity to expose people to Israel’s historic locations as well as the modern Israel and all its many important sites,” said David Saranga, consul for Media and Public Affairs.  “Many people hear about Israel and the Holy Land in an abstract sense and we want to help develop their connection to the real place.”

The application is available through the Consulate’s Facebook page at www.israelfm.org/facebook.

Strength In Numbers

Elana Silber, Sharsheret executive director, left, and the group’s founder, Rochelle Shoretz, herself battling breast cancer. “What young women need is the ability to connect with young women with the same experience,” Shoretz says.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

When Sarah tested positive for the BRCA1 breast cancer gene five years ago, her decision to have both her breasts removed was a simple one ‹ her mother had died of the disease at the devastatingly young age of 42 and her grandmother at 49.

 Luckily, Sarah discovered a network of young Jewish women who had tested positive for the same gene, had gone through the same prophylactic double mastectomy procedure and had made it through the grueling recovery period with young children at their sides.

Through a New Jersey-based national organization called Sharsheret, she and thousands of other women have found valuable genetic counseling and personal connections, as they go through the hardest moments of their lives. Continue reading…