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Hereditary cancers aren’t just a women’s problem. Jewish men need to take precautions too.
Bill Harris, a veteran Los Angeles photojournalist, didn’t think much of it when one morning in 2012 he woke up and found a tiny blood spot on the T-shirt he’d slept in. The next morning, he found blood in the same place on his chest — and went straight to his computer.
“Online, I could find only three things that would cause a man’s nipple to discharge blood: being an avid runner, which I wasn’t; having a subtropical fungus, which I didn’t; and breast cancer,” he said. “That was a pretty big shock.”
Harris, then just a few weeks shy of his 61st birthday, immediately called his doctor, who ordered a mammogram and ultrasound. They confirmed a cancerous growth in his right breast. Ten days later, a biopsy came back positive. The next month Harris got a right mastectomy, followed by the removal of his left breast half a year later.
“I walked into a woman’s imaging center and had to get into a pink paper robe,” he recalled. “All the women in the waiting room were staring at me.”
Like many other Ashkenazi men, Harris never had considered that he might have been born with a harmful mutation of the BRCA gene, which elevates the risk not only of breast cancer, but also of melanoma and prostate, ovarian and pancreatic cancer.
“Hundreds of other mutations in the BRCA gene are just as dangerous, but they’re not specific to Ashkenazim,” said Dr. Robert Sidlow, director of the Male BRCA Genetic Risk Program at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. About 1 in 40 Ashkenazi Jews (those of Eastern European descent) carries the harmful mutation, compared to about 1 in 400 in the general population.
“The vast majority of patients I see are relatives of women who have breast or ovarian cancer and then get tested,” he said. Of BRCA mutation carriers, Sidlow added, “Most men are pretty happy to enroll in some kind of surveillance program once they get over the initial shock.”
Sidlow is on the Men’s Leadership Council at Sharsheret, the national Jewish nonprofit organization that educates the community about cancer risks and supports those with breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
Elana Silber, CEO of Sharsheret (Hebrew for “chain”), says it’s crucial that men with a family history of cancer undergo genetic counseling screening for BRCA and other hereditary cancer mutations.
Genetic testing is possible via a standard blood or saliva sample.
While Sharsheret is primarily considered a women’s organization, it has been using November — nicknamed Movember for its focus on men’s health — for an awareness campaign focused on Jewish men’s cancer risks.
“This is not only a women’s issue,” Silber said. “Family history is so important. When a man shares his family history with his doctor, he may not realize that he should mention that his mother had breast cancer or that his sister had ovarian cancer, as these are not generally ‘men’s diseases.’ They are not aware that these cancers could mean that they themselves are at increased risk for cancer and that they can pass on these mutations to the next generation – their daughters and their sons.”
If someone discovers he (or she) is a carrier of one of the genetic mutations with elevated cancer risks — not just BRCA but also such mutations as ATM, TP53, CHEK2, and PALB2 — there are various precautions they can take for themselves and their children. They can monitor their own health more closely, they can get encourage their children to test to see if they are carriers and, for any future children, take steps to prevent the mutated genes from being passed down.
For example, couples can conceive via in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and then test the embryos before implantation to ensure that only those unaffected by the genetic mutation are implanted.
While most women are aware of the risks of breast cancer, men generally are not — even though the disease strikes 2,500 men in the U.S. every year and kills about 500 of them, according to Sidlow. About 1-2% of men with the BRCA1 mutation and 6-7% of men with the BRCA2 mutation will develop cancer by age 80.
“This is why we recommend periodic mammograms starting at about age 50 for men who carry a BRCA2 mutation,” Sidlow said. “We like to educate these men on how to check their chests once a month and have a clinician do a breast checkup on them once a year.”
Since the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations also make prostate cancer more likely, men with either mutation should get PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels in their blood tested annually beginning at age 40, rather than 50, the age at which screening generally begins, Sidlow said.
Sharsheret has been promoting the importance of learning one’s family history, genetic counseling and screening among both men and women. The 20-year-old organization also runs various peer support networks, offers financial assistance to cancer patients, provides mental health counseling and guidance to patients, caregivers, and their friends, and seeks to educate the broader Jewish community about cancer risks and support.
Peggy Cottrell, a certified genetic counselor at Sharsheret, said men in general are more reluctant to get regular checkups than women.
Ashkenazi Jewish men are at elevated risk not just of breast and prostate cancer but also of pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is particularly difficult because it’s tough to detect early enough and hard to treat. The five-year survival rate is only 11%. About 2% of BRCA1 carriers and 4% of BRCA2 carriers will develop pancreatic cancer, Sidlow estimated.
“Usually by the time pancreas cancer is clinically detected it has already spread microscopically to the liver,” Sidlow said. “But pancreas cancer is potentially curable if caught when the tumor is extremely small.”
Even among those with elevated risks, certain behaviors can improve one’s odds, such as avoiding obesity, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.
Harris, the California photojournalist, is still fighting at age 71. While he overcame breast cancer 10 years ago, last year he was diagnosed with ampullary cancer, a rare disease related to his BRCA2 status that was discovered thanks to his participation in a UCLA study. Surgeons have removed his gall bladder, half his pancreas and part of his small intestine, and he has had to endure eight rounds of chemotherapy.
“I’m still working through the aftereffects of the chemo. I have to eat smaller quantities than before and take enzymes to supplement my digestive processes,” Harris said.
Meanwhile, his 37-year-old son discovered that he, too, carries the BRCA2 mutation, and he had a double prophylactic mastectomy and reconstruction at age 30 — just to be on the safe side.
“If there’s any history of breast, ovarian or prostate cancer in your family, get tested genetically so that you’re informed,” Harris advised. “Diagnoses happen way too late for men, and the danger is too big.”
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UK Jewish groups express concern as the likely next PM criticizes Israel over Gaza
(JTA) — Andy Burnham, who is on track to become Britain’s next prime minister following Keir Starmer’s resignation last month, apologized for his party’s handling of the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas mass killings in Israel, saying that it should have done more to push for a ceasefire and called for exerting greater pressure on the Jewish state today.
His comments prompted a joint response from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, which said they had contacted his team to express “significant concerns” about his remarks.
Burnham made his comments in a video statement on Thursday in response to questions from the public. Burnham is likely to become the next prime minister after gaining the overwhelming support of sitting Labour members of Parliament. To date no one has challenged him for the party’s leadership ahead of a July 17 deadline.
“I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza, my party didn’t get it right, and I am sorry about that,” he said. He added that he supported further sanctions on Israelis involved in the violence in Gaza, measures to ban trade with Israeli settlements and restrictions on arms licenses to Israel, saying there was “increasing evidence that war crimes appear to have been committed.”
He also condemned increased antisemitism in Britain, and said that tackling antisemitism did not contradict holding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to account.
His comments came as lawmakers across the political spectrum have pushed for increased condemnation of Israel and sanctions on the country.
“The unbearable suffering in Gaza is a scar on our collective conscience,” Burnham said. “The killing of innocent Palestinians, including children,” was “completely unacceptable,” he added, declaring that Britain had to do more to “put pressure on the Israeli government.”
He described the country as “too slow to call for a ceasefire” and that “we must now do more to strengthen our approach” as “Israel continues to violate the ceasefire agreement killing innocent Palestinians.”
In their response, the Board and JLC said they shared “concern for the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” but stated that the conflict “cannot be understood without reference to the role of Hamas not only in launching the conflict but in perpetuating the war through the holding of hostages, war-fighting entirely from within the civilian population, and [their] ongoing refusal to cede power and disarm, in line with the 20 point peace plan.”
They added that the conflict also could not be understood without reference to Hamas’ regional backers and allies, including Iran and Hezbollah. Burnham addressed none of this in his comments.
Burnham did, however, reiterate his condemnation of Hamas, describing the Oct. 7 attacks as “monstrous,” stressing that he denounced them “as strongly today as I did in the immediate aftermath.”
He said that he also condemned “the increase in appalling antisemitic attacks here in the U.K. and those who seek to divide our communities by targeting Jewish people.”
“I felt first-hand the anxiety in our Jewish community and the very real threat they face,” the former mayor of Greater Manchester said, referring to the Yom Kippur 2025 attack on the city’s Heaton Park synagogue in which two people were killed.
The Board and JLC welcomed Burnham’s “zero tolerance approach to antisemitism” and affirmed his assertion that “there is no contradiction between fighting antisemitism and disagreeing with actions of the Israeli government.”
However, they said, “Antisemitism cannot be confronted without addressing all its drivers,” arguing that in Britain that includes “Islamist, far left and far right extremists who go beyond criticism of the Israeli government to a place of hatred directed at Jews and Israelis.”
Their joint statement pointed out that Burnham knew “first hand the links between hatred of Israel, antisemitic extremism and deadly violence against British Jews,” adding that, “in a country in which antisemitism has become more normalized, more extreme and more violent, we call on our leaders to show the utmost care in their rhetoric in relation to the conflict.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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NY congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier doubles down on attending Oct. 8 pro-Palestinian rally
(JTA) — Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier defended her presence at a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel during a wide-ranging interview Friday with progressive Jewish author Peter Beinart.
“I think the targeting of civilians is wrong in any context, including on Oct. 7,” Avila Chevalier said when asked by the editor-at-large of the leftist Jewish Currents about slogans legitimizing “resistance” that appeared at the rally. Avila Chevalier previously defended her attendance at the rally to City & State in June.
“I think what matters is international law, and what international law condemns and protects,” she said. “And it condemns the targeting of civilians, and it also protects the right to resist.”
Beinart, who is an outspoken critic of Israel and a journalism professor at the City University of New York, pushed back, saying that he “didn’t see any discussion of international law in that rally on the signs or the slogans of the kind that you are offering now … Were you uncomfortable by that?”
Avila Chevalier responded that, at any protest, there will always be “folks who are voicing opinions that you might not agree with.”
“I knew even as early as Oct. 8, right, where this cycle was headed, and I knew the things that I did have power over,” Avila Chevalier said. “The thing that we have power over is the fact that our tax dollars are going towards an apartheid state that has a pattern of engaging in this type of retribution against civilians.”
Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who helped organize pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia University, ousted incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat last month in the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District, which covers parts of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
“Today we make it clear. The politics of the past ends today,” Avila Chevalier told attendees at an election night watch party, where the crowd erupted into cheers of “Free Palestine.”
She joined two other progressive and Israel-critical candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in winning upset primary victories, cementing the anti-Israel mayor’s influence in the city’s politics and likely extending the left’s gains in Congress since the wins came in deeply Democratic districts.
Beinart’s interview offered an extensive look into the Israel-related positions that became flashpoints during Avila Chevalier’s campaign, including her attendance at the Oct. 8 rally, which was condemned at the time by Mamdani and fellow congressional candidate Brad Lander, and past criticism of former President Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel and Gaza in a since-deleted X account.
Many of the attendees on Friday’s Zoom call appeared unimpressed by the candidate’s responses.
“She is well intentioned, but also clearly is not familiar with the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” said Hillel Schenker, a veteran American-Israeli peace activist.
Other attendees defended Avila Chevalier.
“I am surprised and disturbed by many of the comments made here that are just dismissing her comments and her approach to expressing her belief in human rights and a world without hierarchies of peoples,” wrote an attendee with the screen name Benjy Ben Baruch.
To kick off the interview, Avilia Chevalier described her internship in the West Bank as a 20-year-old Columbia University student, saying that at the time she observed “systems and how they were impacting Palestinian people and Jewish folks, and how people were being treated based off of those state structures.”
Beinart then asked Avila Chevalier why she believed Israel had become so “central for progressive politics.”
“I think there is a war machine that is insatiable,” Avila Chevalier replied. “An American war machine, the Israeli war machine, that we fund with our tax dollars as Americans, and instead what we could be funding is our communities.”
When asked by Beinart what she wanted to see as the future of the region, Avila Chevalier voiced her support for a one-state solution, which she described as “one governing body, one state that sees everyone as equal before the law, regardless of race, religion, identity, ethnicity.”
“We have seen over the course of history that attempts at two states have failed, and even so, I think in this question of like, well, do we partition to begin with, that inherently is divisive,” Avila Chevalier said.
Avila Chevalier also stopped short of saying that “Zionism is racism” when asked if she agreed with the statement by Beinart.
“Zionism is an ideology that creates this type of hierarchy that I’m talking about, and I just don’t believe that we should be striving for a world where there is a hierarchy among people,” Avila Chevalier replied.
Towards the end of the conversation, Beinart referenced scrutiny Avila Chevalier had drawn for her 2022 statements in which she condemned Dominican nationalism and said it was the reason she didn’t put the flag in her social media bio.
“What do you see as the fundamental differences between Zionism as a form of Jewish nationalism, the Dominican nationalism that you have had some concerns about, and Palestinian nationalism,” Beinart asked Avila Chevalier, whose parents are Dominican immigrants.
In response, Avila Chevalier referenced racist attacks she had endured for those comments in the lead-up to the election.
“While it’s not the majority of Dominicans, I would never say that, I think there is a faction that supports this ideology that I have just always found incredibly violent, and the type of rhetoric that I was subjected to, I think, is reflective of the very thing I was criticizing, and I see a lot of that in Zionism as well,” Avila Chevalier responded.
The candidate added that, in contrast to Zionism and Dominican nationalism, Haitian and Palestinian discussions of “liberation” were rooted in “a more universalist understanding of human rights before the law.”
“When I was there in Palestine, you know, some of the most dehumanizing language I’ve ever heard, right, was coming from Israeli soldiers towards children,” Avila Chevalier said, adding that she saw the movements “in very different lights.”
When asked whether she worried that “Hamas’s version of Palestinian nationalism may have exclusionary elements as well,” Avila Chevalier replied: “That’s why I worry about nationalism point blank.”
“Nationalism itself always gives me pause, but I think it’s important to also consider the context in which we’re talking about, like what group is engaging in this conversation, right, and the power dynamics at play there,” Avila Chevalier continued.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Many young Jews support a binational state. That doesn’t mean they’re anti-Zionist.
(JTA) — There are three kinds of young Jews the headlines keep confusing: the anti-Zionist, the non-Zionist and the young Jew who loves being Jewish, shows up, feels bound to other Jews, and cannot tell you what happened in 1967. The last is by far the most common kind I meet as the executive director of Hillel at Brandeis University.
The anti-Zionists are certain they have thought it through, and conclude that the Jewish state should not exist. The non-Zionist wants to be Jewish without making the Israel they see in the news central to their Jewishness. The third stays bound to Israel and its people, and wants it safe, democratic and Jewish, even when its government disappoints them. That is because Israel has become part of what it means to be Jewish now, like Torah study or acts of kindness, something you can wrestle with or resent but not simply set down.
A recent poll found nearly half of American Jews under 35 agree that a single binational state of Jews and Palestinians is the best resolution of the conflict. The headlines around the poll imply that these young supporters are anti- or non-Zionist. But I suspect many of those who embraced the idea do not reject Zionism but are expressing something else altogether.
The survey asked which of three resolutions is best. The first, two states for two peoples, looks dead after the peace process has repeatedly failed to deliver that outcome for their entire lives. It’s certainly not an option according to the Israeli consensus, with only 15% of Israeli Jews currently supporting two states.
The second, in which Israel annexes the West Bank and Gaza and rules millions of Palestinians who cannot vote, seems to be the vision of Israel’s current government.
The third option, one democratic country, imagines equal rights for everyone. To a young American of decent instincts and thin knowledge of the region, schooled to see the conflict as a matter of racial equality, the last sounds like simple justice: one person, one vote. Choosing it is not the same as joining an anti-Zionist movement, even if barely 1% of Israeli Jews back it.
Why then would a young Jew, proudly Jewish and emotionally bound to other Jews, embrace such a plan?
It’s because this generation is already too loosely tied to the history and people of Israel to distinguish between a government and a country. The war in Gaza brought this into view. Young Jews today never knew Israel as the underdog of 1948 or 1967. And this generation has simply spent less time there than their peers did a few years ago.
There are many ways to visit Israel: a family trip, a high school or youth group trip, a college internship. For close to 15 years, at Hillels in Michigan, Chicago and now Waltham, Massachusetts, I have taken hundreds of students to Israel, dozens of non-Jewish students to Israel and the Palestinian territories, and worked with thousands more.
Birthright was meant to add to that mix. Yet for many it became the only trip, and even that has diminished: from 50,000 a year before COVID to 20,000 in 2024. Young adults, forming their views now, have visited the least. It is hard to feel bound to a people you’ve never met.
And yet there is another story, and not just a Jewish one. In 2025, Gallup found American pride had fallen to a record low, also along generational lines: Just 41% of Gen Z say they are extremely or very proud to be American, versus 75% of baby boomers and more still among their elders.
Young Americans are loosening their grip on inherited attachments across the board, and young Jews’ disaffection with Israel is one instance of that drift rather than a singular act of rejection. Politics is also dampening their pride: For Jews, the government of Netanyahu and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir; for polarized Americans, whichever administration sits in Washington.
That parallel points toward the repair. If your attachment to a country rests only on its current government, it collapses the day you cannot stand that government. So defending this Israeli coalition is a losing errand, and the wrong one.
Another round of advocacy training will not do it either. You cannot argue someone into a bond. It makes better debaters, not deeper ties, and too often it binds students to defending a government rather than a people. It is not fair to ask them to defend war aims the government itself has never clearly named.
And bringing more young Jews to Israel, however important that is, is not enough. The real work is to build the connection on something sturdier than politics and more lasting than a week on a bus: Jewish texts and traditions, mentors who bring both intellectual rigor and spiritual depth, and a shared sense of kinship with the largest Jewish community in the world.
Israel is now home to nearly half of all Jews alive. A young Jew who feels bound to that people holds a connection that can survive a government they find objectionable. As we’ve seen in the hundreds of local celebrations of America’s 250th anniversary, our love of country, at its best, can rise above whoever happens to be president. Our connection to Israel can rest on the same kind of ground.
I used to think the job of drawing young Jews to Israel was mostly a matter of better education, more Hebrew and more history. I still believe in those. But literacy lasts only when it is part of a Jewish life that is felt and lived, and the deeper work is to grow roots no argument can pull up. That comes from vibrant Shabbat tables, from Torah studied slowly with someone who loves both the student and the book, from time in Israel, early and often.
Some warn that the Zionist majority among American Jews may evaporate within a generation. Perhaps it will. But note the gap between the 37% of American Jews who call themselves Zionist and the 88% who support Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state. Even if the label slips, the bond endures.
It is the everyday work of Hillel and Jewish educators on hundreds of campuses, here and around the world, to strengthen that bond. The students in this poll are not a cohort to be scolded, or a problem to be scoffed away. We are the ones who let their attachments to Israel grow thinner in their formative years, and the repair is ours to make.
Given how little we have given them, it is remarkable how many still feel bound at all.
Rabbi Seth Winberg is executive director of Hillel at Brandeis, the university’s senior Jewish chaplain and a doctoral candidate in American Jewish history. The views expressed in this piece are his own.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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