By Avigayil Kadesh

 

Tom Peled is a 24-year-old Israeli who lost his father to an eight-year battle with cancer last year. To help channel his grief, Peled embarked on a 3,000-mile summer bike trip through six European countries. This summer, he’s cycling across the United States to benefit the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF).

 

The Bike for the Fight (BFF) initiative started rolling with a June 1 Tel Aviv ride organized by the Interdisciplinary Center-Herzliya (IDC), the college where Peled is a freshman. On June 4, BFF supporters biked to “Save A Life Day” health fairs throughout Israel, hosted by the Rothschild Foundation.

 

Peled’s Los Angeles-to-New York trip is scheduled for August 1 to October 24. Microsoft Israel developed a Facebook and smartphone app for him, where donors can “buy” sections of Peled’s route and track his progress. Microsoft has pledged to match the amount raised through the app.

 

 

Peled will make presentations along the way in Jewish community centers, summer camps, college campuses and at Maccabiah Games in cities such as Las Vegas, Houston, Memphis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and New York. He aims to encourage people to join his cause by contributing or even accompanying him on a part of the route.

 

What began as a very personal healing journey has become a very public philanthropic mission.

“The more I progressed in Europe, the more I felt what it was doing for me in a positive way, and the effect on people I met on the way, who connected to my story and invited me to sleep and eat in their homes,” says Peled.

 

“I didn’t wake up one day and decide to do BFF – it was more like a puzzle, where every day and every experience convinced me to take what this journey did for me and spread the word, to harness the amazing energy that was around me all the time in Europe. The thing I most connected to was cancer, and the place to raise the most was the United States.”

 

 

Taking a page from Tour de France cyclist Lance Armstrong, whose Livestrong foundation has raised money for cancer survivors since 1997 and is distinguished by its yellow wristbands, Peled is peddling blue Bike for the Fight bracelets.

Maccabi World Union and Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life will help Peled coordinate speaking events, and he has support from the Israel Embassy, El-Al Israel Airlines, the JCC Association, the Reform Movement and Tzofim, the Israel Scouts. Israeli President Shimon Peres has given the project his personal blessing.

 

 

Many of these doors were opened by friends of his late father, who was a career military man and took his wife and three kids to New Jersey for three years to serve as an Israeli emissary when Tom was in grade school. That, and two summers working at a Jewish summer camp in California, gave him an excellent command of English.

 

“How an idea turned into reality in seven or eight months, I would never have imagined,” Peled says at the brink of his project. “And we haven’t even started. Who knows what crazy and amazing things will happen? In that way, I feel I have already succeeded.”

 

 

More than anything, Peled is hoping to further the search for a cure through the Israel Cancer Research Fund. Since 1975, this American-based non-profit has provided more than $40 million to support cancer research studies in Israel. That would be his greatest tribute to his dad, Ramy, who died in January 2011 from a rare, incurable form of the disease.

 

Peled felt he could best work through his bereavement by getting out of his comfort zone and challenging himself physically and mentally.

 

Through the website Couchsurfing.com, he found a young woman in Berlin who offered to host him his first night. He made no other advance arrangements.

 

“I flew without any gear or maps. I wanted to start from scratch and keep it really cheap – I kept to a budget of 20 euros a day -- because that would make me improvise,” Peled explains.

 

He bought a simple but sturdy touring bike for $1,000 euros and equipped it with saddlebags. He is using the same bike for BFF.

 

“Sponsors contacted me about riding with their [company’s] bike, and from a business point of view that may have been smarter, but the whole amazing thing about this project is the spirit behind it,” he says. “I knew this bike did a good job and as long as I can still use it, I prefer it.”

 

Peled, who lives in Kfar Achim between Ashdod and Ashkelon, hopes to make Bike for the Fight a brand, “like the Livestrong for the Jewish world.” He wants to encourage others to follow his lead.

“I think everyone at a certain point needs to do something like this,” says Peled. “We live in such a hectic world, always running after the next thing. It was good for me to disconnect a bit and think about what’s important in life and what’s not. We put so much time and money into how we look and dress -- the externals -- and we don’t sit by ourselves, being 100% free. You don’t need to do a two-year around-the-world voyage to accomplish that.”

 

Even so, taking off for another three-month jaunt can hardly be easy for his mother, Tamar, especially since her younger son is starting the army around the same time and her daughter is heading to Berlin.

 

“She understands; she feels this is me doing something important that my father would be proud of,” says Peled. “She’s an amazing woman for her attitude, and she sacrificed a lot of herself for us. It’s important to her that we take advantage of opportunities that open up to us.”