A 21-year-old soldier, identified as only by his first initial “Aleph,” serving in Gaza, took a short leave from the fighting to donate bone marrow to a five-year-old girl suffering from leukemia on Thursday at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem, the hospital said.

The soldier, who serves in the elite Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, was found to be a rare genetic match through the Eli Alkobi bone marrow donor registry at Hadassah.

On his day of enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces several years earlier, Aleph gave a saliva sample which was then entered into the database, said Eden Dahan, a donation coordinator at Hadassah. The sample is kept in the database for many years, allowing soldiers to “save lives even years after enlistment.”

“If a match is found between a patient suffering from an immune system disease and a donor in the database, the donor is contacted,” Dahan said.

When Aleph was first contacted and told that he was a match for the five-year-old girl, he was on a truck heading out of Gaza after a deployment. He agreed to the procedure after speaking to his father and uncle, who explained that it was a “huge mitzvah,” or good deed, to save someone’s life.

However, the process was delayed for several weeks due to the recipient’s medical condition. While Aleph was redeployed in Gaza, he got another call from the hospital, saying it was time to perform the procedure. His company commander approved his leave.

“Bone marrow donation is a safe procedure,” said Prof. Reuven Or, a hematology specialist and the medical director of the volunteer bone marrow donor pool at Hadassah. In his first meeting with Aleph, Or described the process and the importance of bone marrow donation, “certainly for a little girl who needs it to live.”

The bone marrow was extracted from the soldier’s pelvic bone because of the young age of the recipient.

Now recovering from the procedure, Aleph is in good health.

“I just hope that the transplant will be successful and that she will feel good, that’s the most important thing for me,” Aleph said.