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How one special Pink Day helps save and support cancer patients
When Rachel Wojnilower was an undergraduate at American University in Washington, D.C., she did all kinds of activities with her Jewish sorority, Alpha Epsilon Phi. Now 36, Wojnilower has let most of them fade from memory.
But in retrospect, one in particular stands out.
That’s because about five years after graduating, Wojnilower got married and underwent genetic testing along with her husband as they both prepared for future children. They were surprised when they each tested positive as carriers of a potentially dangerous mutation, and even more so when Wojnilower learned, after additional testing, that she also carried a mutation in the BRCA1 gene.
Such mutations, which are 10 times more common among Ashkenazi Jewish men and women than among the general U.S. population, significantly elevate the risks for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and also increase the risks for melanoma, pancreatic and prostate cancers.
Without any intervention, there was a 50-50 chance that the couple would pass down this dangerous mutation to their children. Wojnilower didn’t know what to do.
“As you can imagine, my stress and anxiety levels were through the roof,” Wojnilower recalled. “I didn’t know a single person who had ever gone through this before.”
Then she remembered one of the volunteer opportunities she had done with Alpha Epsilon Phi: a fundraising drive for Sharsheret, the national Jewish breast cancer and ovarian cancer organization.
Wojnilower reached out to Sharsheret and spoke to one of organization’s social workers, who explained more about the mutation and what measures she could take to protect her health and that of her future children. The social worker connected Wojnilower with a trained peer supporter — another young woman who had had a very similar experience.
Ultimately, Wojnilower and her husband decided to pursue pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) — a cutting-edge procedure used with in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to screen embryos. This enabled them to identify which embryos were lower-risk and thereby reduce the chances of passing on the BRCA mutation.
Wojnilower has since given birth to two healthy children, both free of the genetic mutations that she and her husband carry.
“That’s really the essence of what we do at Sharsheret, which is Hebrew for the word chain. We are connecting women, families, and communities to each other and to life-changing and, quite frankly, lifesaving resources,” said Jordana Altman, Sharsheret’s director of marketing and communications. “Whatever the issue may be, you’re not alone, and we have skilled trained professionals and a community of thousands who together form a chain of support and information.”
Sharsheret Pink Day events, like this student-run fundraiser at Binghamton University, now take place at more than 150 college campuses, Jewish day schools and companies around the world. (Courtesy of Phi Mu Chapter of Alpha Epsilon Phi at Binghamton University)
In the years since Wojnilower was a student, Sharsheret has expanded its activities on college campuses and in Jewish day schools much more widely. One centerpiece of Sharsheret’s activities on campus is Sharsheret Pink Day — an annual day in February dedicated to the cause during which students and faculty dress in pink and undertake other activities to raise awareness of the risks for breast cancer and ovarian cancer as well as Sharsheret’s critical support programs.
The goal of Pink Day is to engage young people to participate in activities that they will remember later in life so that when one of them confronts a cancer-related challenge or helps someone who is, they’ll remember the resources Sharsheret offers. This year, Sharsheret hosted Pink Day activities around the United States at college campuses, Jewish high schools and day schools.
“We are planting seeds about Sharsheret,” said Ellen Kleinhaus, Sharsheret’s regional director of education and outreach. “While today you may only need Sharsheret to better understand your risk, you or someone you love will need Sharsheret for support in the future. There isn’t a family or a community out there that is not touched by breast cancer or ovarian cancer.”
Pink Day’s origins can be traced to 2006, when a New Jersey Jewish high school organized a dedicated day for students to support Sharsheret by wearing pink and sharing resources with their parents.
“It was such a memorable part of my high school experience,” said Tzvi Solomon, one of the students who initiated Sharsheret Pink Day. “People really rallied around it.”
Solomon was so inspired by the event that when he went to Israel for his gap year, he asked peers in the United States and Israel to bring Pink Day to their schools. Now an international initiative, the program engages thousands of participants at more than 150 schools and companies globally.
“I think it’s a reflection of our community being sensitive and recognizing the importance of having an organization like Sharsheret,” said Solomon, whose young son wore a pink shirt to school on this year’s Sharsheret Pink Day.
Amanda Goldsmith, 28, has been involved with Sharsheret since her Jewish day school hosted a Pink Day. Years later, while attending New York University, Goldsmith remembered Sharsheret when her parents called her one morning to inform her that her mother had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Goldsmith immediately turned to Sharsheret for help and information, and she referred her mother to the organization’s peer support network.
During her mother’s treatment, Goldsmith vowed that once her mother was cancer free she’d start an initiative to get college students in New York City more involved with Sharsheret. She ended up establishing a local student board for the organization in New York City.
On Sharsheret Pink Day last year, Goldsmith, a human resource professional, implemented Wear Pink at Work, where her colleagues gave a $5 donation to Sharsheret and wore pink to the office. Her family also established a new Sharsheret program for young adults called YAD: The Young Adult Corner, which helps young adults understand their loved ones’ diagnoses, provides peer support and manages a website about cancer for young adults.
“It’s really just about spreading Sharsheret’s mission because they do so much good for so many people,” said Goldsmith, whose mother is now cancer free. “Pink Day might seem like something relatively small, but it’s hugely important.”
To learn more about Sharsheret, YAD: Young ADult Caring Corner or Sharsheret Pink Day 2024, email info@sharsheret.org.
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The post How one special Pink Day helps save and support cancer patients appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Qatari Money Corrupting Georgetown University, New Report Says
Students, faculty, and others at Georgetown University on March 23, 2025. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Georgetown University’s suspect relationship with the country of Qatar is the subject of another report which raises concerns about what the Hamas-friendly monarchy is getting in exchange for the hundreds of millions of dollars it spends on the institution for ostensibly philanthropic reasons.
Titled, “Qatar’s Multidimensional Takeover of Georgetown University,” the new report, by the Middle East Forum, describes how Qatar has allegedly exploited and manipulated Georgetown since 2005 by hooking the school on money that buys influence, promotes Islamism, and degrades the curricula of one of the most recognized names in American higher education.
“The unchecked funds provided by Qatar demonstrate how foreign countries can shape scholarship, faculty recruitment, and teaching in our universities to reflect their preferences,” the report says. “At Georgetown, courses and research show growing ideological drift toward post-colonial scholarship, anti-Western critiques, and anti-Israel advocacy, with some faculty engaged in political activism related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or anti-Western interventionism.”
Georgetown is hardly the only school to receive Qatari money. Indeed, Qatar is the single largest foreign source of funding to American colleges and universities, according to a newly launched public database from the US Department of Education that reveals the scope of overseas influence in US higher education.
The federal dashboard shows Qatar has provided $6.6 billion in gifts and contracts to US universities, more than any other foreign government or entity. Of the schools that received Qatari money, Cornell University topped the list with $2.3 billion, followed by Carnegie Mellon University ($1 billion), Texas A&M University ($992.8 million), and Georgetown ($971.1 million).
“Qatar has proved highly adept at compromising individuals and institutions with cold hard cash,” MEF Campus Watch director Winfield Myers said in a statement. “But with Georgetown, it found a recipient already eager to do Doha’s bidding to advance Islamist goals at home and abroad. It was a natural fit.”
MEF executive director Gregg Roman added, “Georgetown is Ground Zero for foreign influence peddling in American higher education. It has not only abandoned its mission to educate future generations of diplomat and scholars to represent US interests at home and abroad, but is working actively to undermine the foundations of American government and policy. No doubt they’re eager to get the money, but at base this evinces an ideological hostility to Western civilization.”
Georgetown’s ties to Qatar’s have aroused suspicion before.
In June, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism Policy (ISGAP) released a report titled, “Foreign Infiltration: Georgetown University, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood” a 132-page document which revealed dozens of examples of ways in which Georgetown’s interests are allegedly conflicted, having been divided between its foreign benefactors, the country in which it was founded in 1789, and even its Catholic heritage.
According to the report, the trouble began with Washington, DC-based Georgetown’s decision to establish a campus on Qatari soil in 2005, the GU-Q located in the country’s Doha Metropolitan Area. The campus has “become a feeder school for the Qatari bureaucracy,” the report explained, enabling a government that has disappeared dissidents, imprisoned sexual minorities without due process, and facilitated the spread of radical jihadist ideologies.
In the US, meanwhile, Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding “minimize the threat of Islamist extremism” while priming students to be amenable to the claims of the anti-Zionist movement, according to ISGAP. The ideological force behind this pedagogy is the Muslim Brotherhood, to which the Qatari government has supplied logistic and financial support.
Another recent Middle East Forum (MEF) report raised concerns about Northwestern University’s Qatar campus (NU-Q), accusing it of having undermined the school’s mission to foster academic excellence by functioning as a “pipeline” for the next generation of a foreign monarchy’s leadership class.
MEF found that 19 percent of NU-Q graduates carry the surnames of “either the Al-Thani family or other elite Qatari families.” Additionally, graduates from the House of Thani, the country’s royal family, are overrepresented in NU-Q by a factor of five despite being only 2 percent of the population.
The report also said that NU-Q uses its immense wealth, which includes a whopping $700 million in funding from Qatar, to influence the Evanston campus in Illinois, Northwestern’s flagship institution. “Endowed chairs, faculty exchanges, and governance links” reportedly purchase opinions which are palatable to the Qatari elite instead of investments in new NU-Q campus facilities and programs.
“The financial flows raise concerns about whether the Doha campus is a facade and whether the funding is in effect underwriting access and institutional influence rather than solely supporting the overseas campus,” the report continued. “The pattern at NU-Q mirrors the dynamic uncovered by the US Department of Justice in the 2019 Varsity Blues Case, where federal prosecutors exposed how a small group of privileged families exploited side-doors into elite universities through fraudulent athletic recruiting and exam manipulation. While the tactics differ, the structural similarity is clear: insiders repeatedly securing access that ordinary applicants could never obtain.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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France’s National Assembly Advances Bill to Combat Modern-Day Antisemitism
Procession arrives at Place des Terreaux with a banner reading, “Against Antisemitism, for the Republic,” during the march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
France’s lower house of parliament has advanced legislation targeting what it describes as “renewed forms of antisemitism,” including anti-Zionism and Holocaust minimization, drawing applause from Jewish leaders and sharp criticism from opponents who claim it could undermine free expression.
On Tuesday, the National Assembly’s Law Committee narrowly approved, by an 18-16 vote, a bill — introduced by Jewish MP Caroline Yadan — aimed at combating modern-day antisemitism and Israel-hatred amid growing hostility toward Jews and Israelis across France.
“Strong and decisive measures to send a clear message to our fellow citizens: France unconditionally protects everyone on its soil, guided by the force of the law, steadfast principles, and loyalty to its history,” Yadan wrote in a post on X.
Fière et émue de l’ADOPTION
, aujourd’hui en Commission des lois, de ma proposition de loi visant à lutter contre les formes renouvelées de l’antisémitisme.
Renforcement du délit d’apologie du terrorisme ;
— Caroline Yadan (@CarolineYADAN) January 20, 2026
With support coming largely from the governing majority and the far right and opposition from the left, the bill is now set to advance to the full assembly for further debate.
The new legislation seeks to strengthen existing law by punishing both explicit and implicit praise of antisemitism, equating praise of perpetrators with praise of antisemitic acts, and treating the downplaying or trivializing of terrorism as a form of support.
It would also reinforce laws against glorifying terrorism, establish a new offense for inciting the destruction of a state, and crack down on the trivialization and denial of the Holocaust.
“Today, anti-Jewish hatred in our country is fueled by an obsessive hatred of Israel, which is regularly delegitimized in its existence and criminalized,” Yadan said. This hatred, she continued, is “disguised under the mask of progressivism and human rights.”
“Antisemitism is never an isolated phenomenon,” the French lawmaker said. “It is always a warning. It is the first symptom of a violence that, sooner or later, spreads, expands, and strikes more broadly.”
“When it flourishes, it is our collective responsibility that falters. That is why we must act,” she added.
Debate over the bill comes as France continues to experience a historic surge in antisemitic incidents across the country following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews — welcomed the legislation, highlighting the importance of safeguarding freedom of expression while ensuring that hate speech threatening public safety is properly regulated.
“CRIF welcomes this initial adoption and underscores the importance of fighting hatred and discrimination within the Republic, whether antisemitic, racist, or in any other form,” the statement read
On the other hand, opponents of the bill warn that it could threaten free speech by blurring the distinction between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel, potentially criminalizing ambiguous statements, irony, slogans, or political commentary.
“Turning public speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a penalized arena risks deepening divisions rather than easing them,” Socialist MP Marietta Karamanli said during the parliamentary debate.
La France Insoumise MP Gabrielle Cathala, representing the far-left political party, also opposed the legislation, arguing that it does little to effectively combat antisemitism.
“It does not protect Jews. It protects a policy – that of the State of Israel and its criminal leaders – a policy of apartheid, a colonial enterprise, and genocide of the Palestinian people,” she said.
According to experts and civil rights groups, anti-Israel animus has motivated an increasingly significant percentage of antisemitic incidents, especially following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, which resulted in the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
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US Congressional Challenger Says Incumbent Ritchie Torres ‘Bought, Controlled’ by Zionists
Jose Vega, a candidate for US Congress in New York’s 15th District, giving an interview. Photo: Screenshot
Jose Vega, a self-described journalist vying to unseat US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), claimed in a new campaign video that the incumbent was “bought and controlled” by Zionists while appearing alongside an anti-Israel social media personality.
On Tuesday, a video circulated around social media featuring Vega, who is running for US Congress as a Democrat/Independent, speaking with anti-Zionist pundit Erik Warsaw. The video featured images juxtaposing “Zio Rich Neighborhoods” and “Everyone Else Neighborhoods.”
“Zio” is an antisemitic slur brought into prominence by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. While the term, derived from “Zionist,” has generally been deployed by white supremacists and other far-right extremists, it has more recently been used as well by anti-Israel activists on the progressive far left to refer to Jews in a derogatory manner.
“The Bronx is one of the poorest districts in America, but also has some of the richest Zionists millionaires in America, too,” Warsaw said in the video, standing next to Vega.
Nodding in agreement, Vega added, “Rich people like to live in areas where they can buy the politicians easily, like Ritchie Torres, who is bought and controlled by Zionist influencers and millionaires who all live in Riverdale.”
Riverdale, a leafy and affluent neighborhood nestled in the northwest portion of the Bronx, maintains a significant Jewish population. Vega implied that Torres only won because of low voter turnout from the heavily black and Latino areas of New York’s 15th Congressional District.
Torres responded to the video by lambasting his opponent and noting that Warsaw has praised podcaster Nick Fuentes, an avowed antisemite and Holocaust denier.
“My opposition sees antisemitism not as a tragedy but as a strategy,” Torres posted on X.
“One of my opponents appears in a despicably antisemitic video with Erik Warsaw, who once lionized Nick Fuentes — a notorious Holocaust denier — as a ‘hero.’ In that video, my opponent demonizes the Jewish residents,” the congressman continued.
My opposition sees antisemitism not as a tragedy but as a strategy.
One of my opponents appears in a despicably antisemitic video with Erik Warsaw, who once lionized Nick Fuentes—a notorious Holocaust denier—as a “hero.” In that video, my opponent demonizes the Jewish residents… pic.twitter.com/KVZ9CCPGyU
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) January 21, 2026
Warsaw’s Instagram account features an array of videos making broadside attacks against Israel and invoking various antisemitic narratives. In one video, Warsaw promoted the “red ribbon campaign” — a direct parallel to the Israeli yellow ribbon campaign calling for the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas — which accused the Jewish state of harboring 9,100 Palestinian “hostages” in prison. In another interview with political activist Diane Sare, Warsaw asked about the legitimacy of dual citizenship. In that clip, Warsaw sequenced a series of images accusing Israeli-Americans of having “dual loyalty,” invoking an antisemitic trope.
Vega, a progressive political organizer, entered the race in hopes of toppling Torres, an outspoken defender of Israel. Vega has thus far aligned himself with the far-left, anti-Israel arm of the Democratic party. On his social media profiles, Vega displays a Palestinian flag emoji next to his name.
Vega defines himself as an anti-establishment insurgent, seeking to upend the foreign policy status quo in Congress. On his website, Vega bemoans previous US foreign policy ventures in the Middle East, arguing that American intervention has made the region worse off. He claims that the plight of Gaza, which he has declared a so-called “genocide,” an extension of failed and immoral US foreign policy.
“The genocide taking place in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is perhaps the most satanic manifestation of our foreign policy today, which regards Palestinians as just another roadblock to attaining strategic dominance in an area,” he wrote.
Torres, 37, a Bronx native who is both Afro-Latino and openly gay, has not shied away from supporting Israel. He has long framed his support for the Jewish state as part of a broader belief in liberal democracy and human rights and is known in Washington as one of the few progressive Democrats willing to challenge the party’s left flank on Middle East issues.
Beyond the Middle East, allies of Torres argue that since his election in 2020, he has secured federal funding for affordable housing, local infrastructure, and small-business relief while being instrumental in directing pandemic recovery aid to neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID-19.
New York’s 15th District, encompassing much of the South Bronx, remains overwhelmingly Democratic and majority black and Hispanic. The congressional district, one of the poorest in the nation, has a child poverty rate of 37 percent, according to the US Census Bureau, the highest in the country.