On Sunday, Nov. 28, the first night of the eight-day Jewish holiday, thousands attended the 2021 National Hanukkah Menorah lighting ceremony on the Ellipse, just across from the White House in Washington D.C. Hanukkah always begins at sunset on the 25th day of the month of Kislev, according to the Jewish lunar calendar.

Following a seminar held on Nov. 12 in the Meehan School of Business, Professor Emerita of Biology Sheila Barry opened the floor to questions. In compliance with COVID guidelines, attendees were masked throughout the lecture, which focused on Barry’s recent stem cell transplant. Several audience members took advantage of the opportunity to ask about Barry’s experience with myelofibrosis, a bone marrow cancer that disrupts production of blood cells.

My first interaction with the organization Gift of Life, whose purpose is to facilitate bone marrow and blood stem cell donations in hopes of curing blood cancer, was in the winter of 2019 while I was in yeshiva in Israel. A representative from the organization spoke to us one evening about what they do, the importance of swabbing for potential matches and what could potentially happen if someone was a match.

In an effort to help a pair of individuals in need who have connections to Florida State University, the Gift of Life at FSU hosted a donor drive Nov. 18, on Landis Green. With a quick cheek swab, participants joined a public registry and find out if they are a match for patients in need of a life-saving bone marrow transplant. Two members of the FSU family are in search of a match.

It takes five minutes to save a life. For those in need of a bone marrow transplant, those five minutes can mean life or death. On Thursday, The Gift of Life hosted a registration drive at Florida State University to find new bone marrow and stem cell donor matches. It’s an effort to find matches for two of the university’s own community members.

At a campus-wide event in August, Iota Nu Chapter President Casey Sheehan (Florida Atlantic University, 2022) met a representative from Gift of Life, an organization whose mission is to cure blood cancer through cellular therapy.