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When a breast cancer diagnosis knocked me down, a network of Jewish women lifted me up
(JTA) — On the way home from the hospital where I was given my diagnosis of grade 2 invasive lobular breast cancer, I directed my husband, through my tears, to stop at the kosher store.
“I don’t want to see anyone right now,” I said, knowing the inevitability of running into someone we knew in the small Jewish community where we live, “so can you go in?” He pulled into the parking lot. “We need challah,” I reminded him. It was Thursday, after all. The next evening was Shabbat. Time doesn’t stand still for cancer.
My hospital appointment took place two days after the front page of the New York Times declared: “When Should Women Get Regular Mammograms: At 40, U.S. Panel Now Says.” I was 48. Breast cancer has long been the second most common cancer for women, after skin cancer. It is also the most lethal after lung cancer. Statistically, though, most women affected are postmenopausal, so unless there was a specific reason to test early, women were screened regularly from the age of 50. Now, the advice has changed. Breast cancer is rising in younger women. For women in their 40s, the rate of increase between 2015 and 2019 doubled from the previous decade to 2 per cent per year.
Why is this happening? Air pollution? Microplastics? Chemicals in our food? We don’t know.
In the days following my appointment, there was a proliferation of articles about the topic. Importantly, doctors explained that the cancer women are diagnosed with in their 40s tends to be a more aggressive type of cancer. Cancers in premenopausal women grow faster; many breast cancers, like mine, are hormone sensitive. (Got estrogen? Bad luck for you.)
When I posted the news about my diagnosis — on Facebook, because I’m an oversharing type — I was stunned by the number of friends my age, more discreet about their lives, who sent me messages to tell me they had recently gone through the same thing. Everyone had advice. “If you can do a lumpectomy, you’re very lucky. It’s not a major operation, and you’ll preserve your breast.” “Cut it all off! Immediately! Just get rid of all it and you’ll never worry again! Do you want to spend the rest of your life in mammogram scanxiety?” “Ask plastic surgeons for pictures, and pick the cutest new boobs out there. You won’t regret it.” “The radiation burns—that’s something no one ever tells you. Get yourself some Lubriderm and lidocaine, mix into a slurry, slap it on a panty liner, and tuck it in your sports bra.”
I’m not sure why I thought I was immune. Or maybe I didn’t — maybe I just never gave it much thought. Even when I found the lump on my breast, I was dismissive. I went to the doctor, and she asked if anyone in my family had had breast cancer. “Oh, who knows? They were all murdered,” I said blithely. Her eyes bugged. “In the Holocaust,” I added. “Your…mother? Grandmother? Sisters?” “Oh! No, no history of breast cancer in my immediate family.”
Add to that, my mother and sister both tested negative for the BRCA gene mutations, and that’s my Ashkenazi side. The thing is, though, most women who test positive for breast cancer have no family history of it.
But also, I’d done everything right! If you look through the preventative measures, I took all of them. I had three kids by 35, and I breastfed them. I have a healthy, mostly plant-based diet; I walk and cycle everywhere. I’m not a drinker or smoker. I eat so many blueberries!
Several of the articles that have been published in recent days are emphasizing the particular danger for Black women, with good reason: They have twice the mortality rate of white women. But as I did my research, I realized that Jewish women should also be on high alert. We’ve long known that one in forty Ashkenazi women has the BRCA gene mutation, significantly raising the risk of breast cancer (50% of women with the gene mutation will get breast cancer) as well ovarian cancer, which is much harder to detect and far more deadly. So many of my friends who reached out to me to tell me of their breast cancer experiences are Jewish; interestingly, not one has the BRCA mutation. Are these high numbers indicative or anecdotal? Are Jewish women generally more susceptible to breast cancer? This seems to be an important area of future research.
For me, that research will come too late — as did the guidance. For now, I have to accept that this cancer diagnosis is part of my life, that just as I will pick up challah every Thursday, I will wake every morning and take my hormone-blocking Tamoxifen. I will lose sleep every night about which surgery to have until I have the surgery, and then I will lose sleep every night about whether it was fully successful. And there’s plenty more in store for me that isn’t pretty; so it goes.
But here’s a good thing that’s already come out of this diagnosis: When the responses to my Facebook post flooded in, they were not only along the lines of “Refuah shleimah” and “I’ve just been through this too,” but also, “Thank you for sharing! I’m going to book my mammogram right now!”
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BBC Issues Correction After Claiming ‘There Have Been Other Holocausts’ in Response to Complaint
The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been accused of “trying to downplay or deny the horror of the Holocaust” after the broadcaster claimed “there have been other holocausts [sic]” when responding to a complaint by a reader about an online article.
The BBC posted on its website an article about King Charles III and Queen Camilla meeting with survivors of Nazi persecution to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27. According to Jewish News, the article originally stated that Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivor Mala Tribich “became the first holocaust [sic] survivor to address the cabinet,” and she asked ministers: “How, 81 years after the holocaust [sic], can these people once again be targeted in this way?”
A reader wrote a complaint about the article using a lowercase “h” in the word “Holocaust” and received a response via email in which the BBC rejected the request to make the change but did not explain why. The reader was also told in the email, “Historically there have been other examples of holocausts [sic] elsewhere,” according to Jewish News. The email was reportedly written by an experienced BBC broadcast journalist.
The BBC has since edited the article to feature an uppercase “H” in the word “Holocaust” and added a note to the online article. “Several references to ‘Holocaust,’ which had been initially spelled in this article with a lower case ‘h,’ have been changed to take an upper case ‘H,’ in accordance with the BBC News style guide,” the BBC wrote. A BBC spokesperson further told Jewish News the email to the reader had been “sent in error.”
“All references to the Holocaust in this article should have been capitalized and we have now updated it accordingly and added a note of correction. We will be writing again to the original correspondent,” the spokesperson noted.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) was outraged by the BBC’s error, and said the incident is another example “of an institutionalized dismissal or even hatred of Jews that permeates the BBC’s increasingly agenda-driven reporting.”
“Why is the BBC effectively joining far-right, far-left, and Islamist propagandists and conspiracists in trying to downplay or deny the horror of the Holocaust?” CAA posted on X. “The BBC is peddling softcore Holocaust denial by trivializing the name of this horrific crime.”
“It is difficult to know where the monumental ignorance of the BBC news and complaints divisions ends and their willful revision of history begins,” the organization added. “The Nazi slaughter of the Jews was so extensive that the word genocide had to be invented to describe it. While that word has since been applied to other attempts to wipe out whole peoples, the older word ‘holocaust’ was newly adapted to this event, with which it is uniquely associated.”
The BBC just recently issued an apology after it failed to mention Jews during some of its coverage of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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‘You Really Saved Me’: Pianist, Former Hamas Hostage Dedicates Performance to Fellow Survivor Eli Sharabi
Former hostage Alon Ohel reacts as he is welcomed home, after he was discharged from the hospital following his release from captivity in Gaza, where he was held after being kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, in Lavon, Israel, Oct. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem
A musician and former Hamas hostage returned to the stage on Monday night in Israel for a performance and dedicated a song to fellow survivor Eli Sharabi, who was his companion in captivity.
Israeli-Serbian pianist Alon Ohel survived 738 days in captivity in the Gaza Strip after being kidnapped when he tried to flee the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He was released more than two years later, on Oct. 13, 2025, along with the last remaining 20 living hostages. Ohel was held for some time in Hamas’s tunnels alongside Sharabi, who was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023, and released last February.
Several Israeli artists performed on Monday evening as part of a concert for Ohel at Hangar 11 in Tel Aviv.
At one point during the event, Ohel went on stage and did a solo performance of “Yesh Li Sikui” (“I Have a Chance”) by singer-songwriter Eviatar Banai. Ohel dedicated the song to Sharabi, who was standing in the audience.
“In a way, you really saved me with your approach to life,” Ohel said to Sharabi from on stage.
The pianist then shared memories of sitting with Sharabi in the terror tunnels. “We had backgammon or some card game. We played and laughed a bit, and joked around, and I remember you mentioned my mother’s name, Idit, and in that moment I fell apart,” he said. “I couldn’t handle it. The longing broke me in an instant. I went aside and cried. I just cried and broke down. A longing that never ends.”
“After you let me fall apart, I remember you came over to me,” Ohel added, still addressing Sharabi. “You told me: ‘Alon, you have to pull yourself together. You have to disconnect. This can’t work like this. You broke down, now that is it, you pick yourself up. You’re a big kid and we have one goal: to return to our families no matter what. It’s okay to break down, but we must never lose hope.’”
Ohel then recalled how after a year and a half of being together in the terror tunnels, during which time the two men were chained to each other, Sharabi was taken away and Ohel was held in captivity alone.
Sharabi’s words helped him get through those lonely days, Ohel admitted. He told Sharabi on Monday night: “I continued with the mantras you taught me, the ones you kept drilling into my head: ‘Be mentally strong and optimistic,’ and I added being calm in soul. This is my opportunity to say thank you.”
Monday night’s concert featured many artists, including Idan Amedi, Shlomi Shaban, Alon Eder, Gal Toren, Guy Levy, and Guy Mazig. All proceeds went toward a rehabilitation fund for Ohel.
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Why Bad Bunny’s halftime show delighted New York Jews of a certain age
Since last month, a TikTok has been floating around, showing arthritic Latino grandmas and grandpas hearing Bad Bunny for the first time, courtesy their bemused grandchildren. On the reel, he samples “Un Verano en Nueva York,” a 50-year-old salsa song about New York City — or “Nueva Yol,” as Bad Bunny calls his update in his echt Puerto Rican accent. He sang “Nueva Yol” at the Super Bowl halftime show. The original dates from the 1970s, when the old folks were young and lithe and out on the town. On TikTok, when they listen to the new version, they perk up, and then they dance, as the kids look on, bemused and delighted.
I imagine that something similar happened to countless aging Jewish salsa music freaks like myself when they saw the halftime show. I’m 75 now, and I got up and danced, remembering those years during Jimmy Carter’s presidency when I donned high heels and tight skirts to dance away my Saturdays nights at venues like Casino 14 — catorce, it was pronounced — on 14th Street right by Union Square. I’d had a Jewish boyfriend whose mom, a Bell telephone operator, had danced mambo in the 1950s and taught her son the moves. He taught me the cha-cha and rhumba; other friends my age, many of them Jews, loved the music too and knew the steps and clubbed along with me. All this seemed no more remarkable to us than knowing how to say the prayer over the bread on Friday nights.
The Jewish love affair with Latin music began back in the 1950s and, since then, Jews have played it as musicians, produced it as record company owners, and DJed it in clubs and on the radio. Scholars have tried to explain the affinity, and why it has been such a comfortable fit for both ethnic groups. Some speculate that the music of both cultures tends to minor scales. Others point out that, as Jewish neighborhoods such as East Harlem were transitioning in the 1950s to Puerto Rican enclaves, the two groups lived side by side. (Working-class Jews even shared factory spaces with Puerto Rican laborers, especially in the garment industry.)
And there was the Borscht Belt. Starting in the 1950s, the big hotels typically maintained two house bands: one for mainstream pop, and the other for all Latin — the tummlers taught mambo lessons around the swimming pool. By the 1930s, Puerto Rico had been thoroughly colonized by the U.S. and was thoroughly poverty stricken. A vast exit began to the mainland: Puerto Ricans, after all, were American citizens. Many moved to the Bronx. By the 1960s, many of the kids had grown up to be musicians. Some had big bands and a big-band sound. They played regular gigs at places like Kutscher’s in the Catskills. You can still hear Tito Puente in 1959 playing “Grossinger’s Cha Cha Cha.”
Some of the musicians were Jews — for example, Larry Harlow, a classically trained pianist whose grandfather was a cantor and father a Latin music bandleader in the Catskills. Harlow’s actual family name was Kahn; his nickname among musicians and audiences was “El Judio Maravilloso,” the Marvelous Jew. His cousin Lewis Kahn was a salsa violinist and trombonist who’d studied at Julliard; he was “El Segundo Judio Maravilloso.” Once, I gave Lewis a lift back to his hotel post-concert, after I saw him shambling down the street alone. Painfully shy and bespectacled, he seemed more like a member of the Frankfurt School than someone in a band with matching suits and screaming brass.
My foreign language in high school had been Spanish. My conversational skills were good but still stilted. I didn’t get better — didn’t pick up the rhythms and slang and everyday spoken beauty of the language until the 1970s. I began listening then, over and over and over, to my growing collection of LPs from the salsa label Fania, copying the words and learning how they mashed together. Based in New York City, Fania even had a fan magazine. New York also had the annual Puerto Rican parade, and I vividly recall running into impromptu conga circles on street corners, where young people sang not just in Spanish but also in Lucumi, the deeply spiritual language of the Afro-Caribbean Yoruba and Santeria religions. They’d picked up the words from the same records I listened to. Their devotion to the musical aspects of their heritage reminded me of my fascination with cantorial music, which was also available on vintage LPs and even on low-watt radio in Brooklyn.
Twenty-five years ago I went to Columbia one summer to study Yiddish. In class I learned that Molly Picon had sung in Yiddish in the 1940s on the Forward-owned radio station WEVD. Her show was followed by one in Spanish with mambo bands like La Sonora Matancera. How many Jews kept listening after the Picon program signed off? Were Sholem Aleichem and Uriel Weinreich the salseros of their own culture? I got bat mitzvahed at age 71 at a shul in Brooklyn. I had kosher food at the after-party. And we danced to a mambo band, led by Benjamin Lapidus, a fellow synagogue member.
Bad Bunny’s “Nueva Yol” couldn’t be more New York. It talks about going to Bear Mountain in the summer. About the Yankees and the Mets. The 4th of July. About Willie Colon, the beloved salsa trumpeter from the Bronx who ran (unsuccessfully) for Congress in 1994 and for Public Advocate in 2001.
Bad Bunny’s halftime performance of “Nueva Yol” also celebrated a Brooklyn matriarch named Maria Antonia Cay, aka Toñita. She runs an intimate social club for Puerto Ricans in Williamsburg where she cooks traditional food, serves it, and tends bar at age 85. She made a cameo appearance at halftime, as Bad Bunny sang lyrics about conflict and anxiety, featuring his signature tic, the phrase “Uuy, uuy!” Go forward in the mouth just a bit and you’re at Yiddish “Oy oy!” At one point he jumped into a joyful mosh pit of dancers. They hoisted him up and paraded him around. It could have been the reception, in any borough, of any Jewish wedding.
There’s a lot of talk these days about Diaspora Jews versus Israel Jews. It’s a topic that’s been fraught for years and inspires endless discussion. There’s not so much talk about Diaspora Puerto Ricans: the people who settled and struggled here decades ago and whose lives became cultural cross-over when Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein — all Jews — created West Side Story. Today, the New York boroughs, with about a million Jews, constitute the biggest Jewish city in the world after Tel Aviv. And New York City has more Puerto Ricans than San Juan. Bad Bunny’s halftime show reminded us of our shared diaspora. It did so as our bodies grooved, even if they were geriatric bodies grooving slower than before.
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