Another way CPI has found to save lives and make a kiddush Hashem at the same time
Recently, I came to an additional understanding of Chazal’s statement, “Mitzvah goreres mitzvah — one mitzvah leads to another” (Pirkei Avos 4:2 ). The pleasure of doing a mitzvah ben adam l’chaveiro that benefits others is so great that one immediately begins looking for additional ways to help.
That insight was the result of a recent discussion with Mordy Serle, one of the three founders of the Covid Plasma Initiative (CPI), together with Chaim Lebovits and Abba Swiatycki.
I first “met” Serle nearly a year ago, while writing a Mishpacha feature (“Gift of Life,” Issue #807, April 22, 2020) on the Covid Plasma Initiative, a remarkable grassroots project utilizing the blood plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients in the chareidi community. When Serle reached out to me recently, I assumed it was to update me how the CPI had developed over the past year. But I was wrong.
To be sure, all the dedicated volunteers involved in CPI would have had a great deal to be proud of, had they done nothing more than loose the wellsprings of the chareidi community’s generosity in terms of blood plasma donorship. Every week, 20,000 units of blood plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients are still being shipped around the United States, about 400,000 units in all since the start of the pandemic. Of that figure, some 90,000, over 22 percent of the national total, were contributed by chareidi Jews. And in the initial months of the use of blood plasma, the percentage contributed by chareidim was closer to 50 percent.
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