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Jenessa Schwartz, Bay Area day school teacher and cancer ‘thriver,’ dies at 41
SAN FRANCISCO (J., the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California via JTA) — Jenessa Schwartz wore many hats: wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend and educator at Yavneh Day School in Los Gatos, California. Many also knew and admired her as a courageous, self-described “cancer thriver” determined to spread awareness of the disease through her unflinchingly honest blog “My Colon Cancer: Semicolon, Not Full Stop.”
“When life gives you cancer, make a punctuation pun,” she joked on the site. Humor infused her posts, even those that exposed her rawest, most painful struggles.
Schwartz succumbed to the illness on Nov. 1, a month after making the difficult decision to stop all treatment and enter hospice, and less than two weeks after standing on the bimah as her daughter, Ramona, became a bat mitzvah, a celebration Schwartz was determined to attend in person. Schwartz was just 41, though she lived longer than predicted early on by her doctors, who told her it was unlikely she’d live to see 36.
“She didn’t do anything just because,” said Jamie Zimmer, director of Jewish life and learning at Yavneh. “It came with meaning. It came with resolve to make the world a better place.”
A native of the South Bay area of Northern California, Schwartz grew up in Congregation Beth David in Saratoga, California. She was active in her local BBYO chapter and graduated from Yavneh in 1993. She returned to the Jewish school as an employee in 2015, serving first as a middle-school language arts teacher and then as the middle school’s dean.
“There’s not a kid who wasn’t in awe of the kind of teacher that she was,” said Zimmer. “She meant every single word she said, and she took her passion for grammar and language and building confident writers and musical theater and imbued it in every student, and inspired her colleagues, too.”
She also excelled as a Jewish educator, Zimmer said. In 2022, Schwartz won the Ruby Award from the San Francisco-based Jewish Learning Works for excellence in Jewish youth education and engagement.
Her Jewish identity “came from her kishkes. Her Judaism came from a place of heart,” Zimmer said. Prior to working at Yavneh, Schwartz served as director of Jewish life at the Addison-Penzak JCC, next door to the school.
It was at Yavneh that Schwartz met her husband, Trevor Davis, who taught physics there at the time. The two shared a close friendship before becoming a couple shortly after Schwartz was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in March 2017, when she was just 34.
Schwartz and Davis wed in their San Jose backyard a few years later, in a small ceremony held at the height of the pandemic and streamed over Zoom. The bride and groom wore blue, for colon cancer awareness, as did Ramona and son Solly, her children from a previous marriage.
“It’s going to sound trite and a little cliche, but I’ve cultivated this seize-the-day attitude,” she told CNET before the wedding. “We decided we can’t put off joy.”
Though colon cancer can strike at any age, it typically impacts older adults. Schwartz noticed irregular bowel habits, fatigue, nausea and anemia, but initially attributed the symptoms to her pregnancies: In addition to her two kids, she carried twins as a surrogate for a gay couple, Israeli natives Gil Shlamovitz and Tomer Mendelson.
“She’s the most amazing, loving, compassionate woman we know,” Shlamovitz said. He and Mendelson, who live in Los Angeles, stayed in close contact with Schwartz after Ben and Maya were born in 2015, generally seeing her twice a year. The twins refer to her as their birth mom.
“She’s a super important and meaningful person in their life story,” Shlamovitz said. “She gave many gifts to the world. Ben and Maya are just two examples.”
Another is the way she shared her colon cancer journey publicly in hopes others could get diagnosed, and treated, sooner than she did. The disease is on the rise among people under 50.
“Her writing helped her students, family, community and countless others learn how to live life fully and with compassion,” Yavneh said in its online memorial.
Schwartz wanted to document her experience “partly because I’m a middle child and need the attention, but mostly because colon cancer deserves some air time,” she wrote in an introduction to her blog. “It is incredibly treatable when caught early, but devastating once metastasized.”
Schwartz knew that devastation all too well. She wrote about enduring more than 100 rounds of chemotherapy, several surgeries and clinical trials. Her decision to enroll in hospice followed scans that showed extensive new tumor growth in her liver and lungs, a progression that led to her being released from a medication trial she considered her last hope.
“I’m bloodied, I’m bruised, but no one can say I lost my battle with cancer,” she wrote in her final post on Oct. 1. “I get to choose how things end, and that sounds like winning to me.”
Yavneh Day School closed on Friday, Nov. 3 so members of the Yavneh community could attend her morning funeral at the JCC and grieve for their friend, colleague and teacher.
Schwartz previously asked that donations in her memory be made to Yavneh.
Schwartz is survived by her children, Ramona and Solly; her husband, Trevor; parents Allan Schwartz, Cyndi Sherman and Stephen Schleimer; siblings Jon (Brittany) and Josh (Danielle) Schwartz, cousin Quelise Schroeder, and aunts Jodi Sherman (Ed Markowitz) and Suzie Sherman (Emily Saltzman).
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Trump Eyes Bringing Azerbaijan, Central Asian Nations into Abraham Accords, Sources Say
US President Donald Trump points a finger as he delivers remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, US, July 31, 2025. Photo: Kent Nishimura via Reuters Connect
President Donald Trump’s administration is actively discussing with Azerbaijan the possibility of bringing that nation and some Central Asian allies into the Abraham Accords, hoping to deepen their existing ties with Israel, according to five sources with knowledge of the matter.
As part of the Abraham Accords, inked in 2020 and 2021 during Trump’s first term in office, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.
Azerbaijan and every country in Central Asia, by contrast, already have longstanding relations with Israel, meaning that an expansion of the accords to include them would largely be symbolic, focusing on strengthening ties in areas like trade and military cooperation, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Such an expansion would reflect Trump’s openness to pacts that are less ambitious than his administration’s goal to convince regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia to restore ties with Israel while war rages in Gaza.
The kingdom has repeatedly said it would not recognize Israel without steps towards Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state.
Another key sticking point is Azerbaijan’s conflict with its neighbor Armenia, since the Trump administration considers a peace deal between the two Caucasus nations as a precondition to join the Abraham Accords, three sources said.
While Trump officials have publicly floated several potential entrants into the accords, the talks centered on Azerbaijan are among the most structured and serious, the sources said. Two of the sources argued a deal could be reached within months or even weeks.
Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, traveled to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, in March to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Aryeh Lightstone, a key Witkoff aide, met Aliyev later in the spring in part to discuss the Abraham Accords, three of the sources said.
As part of the discussions, Azerbaijani officials have contacted officials in Central Asian nations, including in nearby Kazakhstan, to gauge their interest in a broader Abraham Accords expansion, those sources said. It was not clear which other countries in Central Asia – which includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – were contacted.
The State Department, asked for comment, did not discuss specific countries, but said expanding the accords has been one of the key objectives of Trump. “We are working to get more countries to join,” said a US official.
The Azerbaijani government declined to comment.
The White House, the Israeli foreign ministry and the Kazakhstani embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Any new accords would not modify the previous Abraham Accords deals signed by Israel.
OBSTACLES REMAIN
The original Abraham Accords – inked between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan – were centered on restoration of ties. The second round of expansion appears to be morphing into a broader mechanism designed to expand US and Israeli soft power.
Wedged between Russia to the north and Iran to the south, Azerbaijan occupies a critical link in trade flows between Central Asia and the West. The Caucasus and Central Asia are also rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, prompting various major powers to compete for influence in the region.
Expanding the accords to nations that already have diplomatic relations with Israel may also be a means of delivering symbolic wins to a president who is known to talk up even relatively small victories.
Two sources described the discussions involving Central Asia as embryonic – but the discussions with Azerbaijan as relatively advanced.
But challenges remain and there is no guarantee a deal will be reached, particularly with slow progress in talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The two countries, which both won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, have been at loggerheads since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh – an Azerbaijani region that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian population – broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.
In 2023, Azerbaijan retook Karabakh, prompting about 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia. Both sides have since said they want to sign a treaty on a formal end to the conflict.
Primarily Christian Armenia and the US have close ties, and the Trump administration is wary of taking action that could upset authorities in Yerevan.
Still, US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself, have argued that a peace deal between those two nations is near.
“Armenia and Azerbaijan, we worked magic there,” Trump told reporters earlier in July. “And it’s pretty close.”
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Trump Reaffirms Support for Morocco’s Sovereignty Over Western Sahara
A Polisario fighter sits on a rock at a forward base, on the outskirts of Tifariti, Western Sahara, Sept. 9, 2016. Photo: Reuters / Zohra Bensemra / File.
US President Donald Trump has reaffirmed support for Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara, saying a Moroccan autonomy plan for the territory was the sole solution to the disputed region, state news agency MAP said on Saturday.
The long-frozen conflict pits Morocco, which considers the territory as its own, against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, which seeks an independent state there.
Trump at the end of his first term in office recognized the Moroccan claims to Western Sahara, which has phosphate reserves and rich fishing grounds, as part of a deal under which Morocco agreed to normalize its relations with Israel.
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made clear in April that support for Morocco on the issue remained US policy, but these were Trump’s first quoted remarks on the dispute during his second term.
“I also reiterate that the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and supports Morocco’s serious, credible and realistic autonomy proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute,” MAP quoted Trump as saying in a message to Morocco’s King Mohammed VI.
“Together we are advancing shared priorities for peace and security in the region, including by building on the Abraham Accords, combating terrorism and expanding commercial cooperation,” Trump said.
As part of the Abraham Accords signed during Trump’s first term, four Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel after US mediation.
In June this year, Britain became the third permanent member of the U.N. Security Council to back an autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty for the territory after the U.S. and France.
Algeria, which has recognized the self-declared Sahrawi Republic, has refused to take part in roundtables convened by the U.N. envoy to Western Sahara and insists on holding a referendum with independence as an option.
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Israel Says Its Missions in UAE Remain Open Despite Reported Security Threats
President Isaac Herzog meets on Dec. 5, 2022, with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi. Photo: GPO/Amos Ben Gershom
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that its missions to the United Arab Emirates are open on Friday and representatives continue to operate at the embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate in Dubai in cooperation with local authorities.
This includes, the statement underlined, ensuring the protection of Israeli diplomats.
On Thursday, reports appeared in Israeli media that Israel was evacuating most of its diplomatic staff in the UAE after the National Security Council heightened its travel warning for Israelis staying in the Gulf country for fear of an Iranian or Iran-sponsored attacks.
“We are emphasizing this travel warning given our understanding that terrorist organizations (the Iranians, Hamas, Hezbollah and Global Jihad) are increasing their efforts to harm Israel,” the NSC said in a statement.
After signing the Abraham Accords with Israel in 2020, the UAE has been among the closest regional allies of the Jewish state.
Israel is concerned about its citizens and diplomats being targeted in retaliatory attacks following its 12-day war against Iran last month.
Earlier this year, the UAE sentenced three citizens of Uzbekistan to death for last year’s murder of Israeli-Moldovan rabbi Zvi Cohen.