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Breast Cancer
Lilith Magazine explores this topic of singular feminist and Jewish interest with care and nuance. This curated collection of Lilith articles looks at breast cancer through the eyes of the survivor, the peace activist, the epidemiologist, the physician, the student, the teenager, and the friends and family of those diagnosed with breast cancer.
This project was made possible with the generous support of the Sherril Ann Siegel Memorial Fund, under the auspices of the Alpha Omega Foundation, initiated by Lily and Neil Starr.
The Other Jewish Women’s Cancer
Winter 2019-2020
Elizabeth Michaelson Monaghan
An important signal for ovarian cancer may be lurking in those BRCA gene mutations.
Mythic Under the Radiation’s Red Eye
Winter 2019-2020
Beth Kanell
If I’m Andromeda bound on the cliff and Perseus is coming to stop the monster, I wish he’d get a move on.
Winter 2019-2020
Ruth Ebenstein
What I learned from Palestinian breast cancer survivors about how to survive “surviving”
A Twist on Doctor-Patient Confidentiality
The Lilith Blog, 2019
Joyce’s story was inspired by the thousands of breast cancer patients I’ve had the honor of caring for. I used my observations to make Joyce’s journey as authentic and emotionally resonant as possible.
Fall 2019
Alicia Ostriker
Looking back at the surgery decades later, the noted poet confesses her survivor’s glee — and guilt.
Bonding: Intimacy During — and After — My Cancer
Fall 2019
Ali Walensky
She chose “kink” sex, for pain she herself could control.
Fall 2019
Elizabeth S. Bennett
New job, new city, new baby, new role as a rabbi’s wife. But the diagnosis outdid the rest.
Information, Support, Restorative Relaxation
Fall 2019
Susan Weidman Schneider
Fall 2019
“Which one of us is it going to be?” Susan Schnur asked the eight women who were sitting around the Lilith editorial table a few years ago.
Planned Parenthood Saved My Life. But the Story Doesn’t End There.
by Ali Walensky
The Lilith Blog, 2017
It’s impossible for me to overstate how much Planned Parenthood has helped me.
What Six Words on a Necklace Meant During My Recovery from Breast Cancer
The Lilith Blog, 2016
It was the beginning of 2009. I had recently finished active treatment for breast cancer; I had also recently reconnected with a dear friend from college, Marla Wallerstein.
Link Roundup: The Susan G Komen Backlash and Workplace Discrimination
The Lilith Blog, 2016
On Tuesday, Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced that it would no longer be funding Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening program due to its new policy that blocks organizations under investigation from receiving grants.
She Didn’t Want Jewish Women to Feel Alone with Breast Cancer: Remembering Rochelle Shoretz
Idit Klein
Winter 2015-2016
At age 28, Rochelle Shoretz was serving as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and was married with two young boys. She had also been diagnosed with breast cancer. While undergoing chemotherapy, she founded Sharsheret.
Laurie H. Rubel
Summer 2015
The killer sweeping through generations of women in her family turns out to be lurking in her own genes too, a revelation with deeply consequential decisions for getting tenure, bearing children and staying alive.
The Lilith Blog, 2014
The world (or in other words, journalists and the blogosphere) is officially disenchanted with Pinktober.
Four (Same-Sex, Half-Jewish) Weddings and a Funeral
by Susan Goldberg
Winter 2009-2010
The author’s unconventional wedding plans get less conventional as she lets her mother, fighting breast cancer, take over the planning.
Strangled by a Pink Ribbon, or: Breast Reconstruction Surgery 101
by Liz Lawler
Lilith Blog, 2010
You have a couple of basic options: implants, or self-harvested reconstruction. The word “harvest” has positive connotations, it conjures up notions of bountiful soil, spilling over and nourishing the farmer. Yum, who doesn’t like a nice harvest? And implants, well, celebrities get those, don’t they?
Breast Cancer Advice Refusenik
By Judith Beth Cohen
The Lilith Blog, 2010
In the wake of the recent controversy and confusion over proposed new guidelines cutting down on how often one should have a mammogram to screen for breast cancer, “Be Vigilant!” seems to be the rallying cry for women. Here, in a Lilith web exclusive, is one contrarian view of some commonly held wisdom.
In case you thought all Jews were safely in the pro-choice camp…
The Lilith Blog, 2010
In Shifra’s Arms puts out inaccurate information about abortion risks, including reiterating the utterly disproven hypothesis that abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer.
Link Roundup: Breast Cancer Awareness
The Lilith Blog, 2010
Everyday, we come across interesting articles and wonderful resources for Jewish feminists. Now we are bringing them directly to you in a new feature of the Lilith blog, our weekly Link Roundup.
Strangled by a Pink Ribbon Or: Breast Reconstruction Surgery 101
by Liz Lawler
The Lilith Blog, 2010
I recently took a teacher training program to learn to teach yoga to cancer survivors (if you are so inclined, this is the one to take, IMHO). Tari devoted a large portion of the program to the challenges posed by the “reconstructive surgery” process. It turns out that, in an effort to return women to “femininity” and “normalcy” (not my words), we end up limiting their range of motion.
From Gossip Girl to the Real World
by Gabrielle Birkner
Fall 2008
Consider the prophylactic mastectomy.
TV’s “I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy”
by Melanie Weiss
Winter 2006-2007
The Lifetime movie “Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy,” based on the autobiographical Geralyn Lucas book by the same name, may be on its way to remaking the genre of the “breast cancer movie.”
by Shala Erlich
Winter 2004-2005
Erlich, a physician, introduces us to “pre-vivors,” young women wrestling with a family legacy they never expected.
by Rachel Kranson
Fall 2001
Like many women, Bonnie Zaben, a 42-year-old doctoral student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, examines her breasts each month. But unlike many, she has managed to transform this anxiety-provoking routine from an unpleasant necessity into a spiritual occasion.
by S.L. Wisenberg
Fall 2008
Wisenberg’s known for her fiction. Here, reality, with frank journal entries on hair loss, her mother, her mastectomy camisole, and the secret behind nervous laughter.
One in Eight: Breast Cancer Roulette
by Eleanor J. Bader
Winter 2006-2007
When long-time Middle East peace activist Janice Fine was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer at age 32, she started asking questions. For one, why has the incidence of breast cancer grown by approximately one percent a year since the 1940s? Is it simply that we have better detectors, or is something in the environment causing this groundswell?
Jewish Women and Breast Cancer: An Update
by Alice Sparberg Alexiou
Winter 2003-2004
A study recently published in the journal Science indicates that women who carry one of the two BRCA mutations have a high risk of developing breast cancer even if they have no family history of the disease. This finding negates a previous assumption that women with the mutation but no family history were not high-risk. The study also says that women with the mutations have a 20 to 50 per cent lifetime risk of developing ovarian cancer.
Fall 2002
by Ann Jackowitz
In 1995, a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy (having both healthy breasts removed) was psychologist Janet Reibstein’s choice for survival. Staying Alive (Bloomsbury, $24.95) is Reibstein’s family memoir, told as both a personal journey and a history of current breast-cancer knowledge, treatments and women’s attitudes. In this book we learn how and why she arrived at her dramatic decision.
by Susannah Jaffe
Fall 1999
Teenage girls are the unlikely target audience of the Hadassah Check It Out program. Every discussion is staffed by a volunteer speaker from Hadassah, a breast cancer survivor, and at least one registered nurse. The idea goes beyond breast cancer prevention: the survivors provide a powerful incentive for girls to take care of themselves.
Jewish Women and Breast Cancer —We’re in “a Purgatorial Period”
by Susan Weidman Schneider
Summer 1996
Everything worth knowing about the Commission for Women’s Equality’s “First Leadership Conference on Jewish Women’s Health Issues,” a stellar day-long gathering on “Understanding the Genetics of Breast Cancer: Implications for Treatment, Policy and Advocacy.”
Breast Cancer: The Tough Cure for Racism?
by Amy Stone
Summer 1996
Sisterhood is powerful, but not always powerful enough to unite women across race and class lines. The life threatening reality of breast cancer may be bringing women together in a way that no other issue has.
Mastectomy: Twelve Months After Surgery
by Jerilyn Goodman
Fall 1995
The author commemorates the first anniversary of her mastectomy with a mikveh immersion ceremony. (Ceremony included.)
by Yael Green
Spring 1994
Epidemiologists look at breast cancer; Jewish demographers look at statistics about Jewish women… but who’s putting both sets of facts together? Only LILITH.
by Leslie Margulies
Fall 1993
Artist Leah Lynn Rosen of “Yetzirah Pottery” thought, after losing a dear friend to breast cancer, “about areas that need our blessings and protection.” The breast plates memorialize the struggle against AIDS, homophobia and breast cancer.
Orthodox Nurses Teach Breast Exam
Spring 1987
by JTA
The Nurses Section of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists (AOJS) has initiated a campaign to teach Jewish women the technique of breast self-examination.