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Jewish women struggling with early menopause due to cancer treatment find new help
Beverly was 41, had two children and was contemplating a third when her first mammogram revealed a lump. Diagnosed with breast cancer, Beverly, who lives in Portland, Oregon, opted for chemotherapy, immunotherapy and a double mastectomy.
She knew the chemo would affect her fertility. What she didn’t know was that the type of cancer she had would necessitate hormone suppression drugs that would lead to severe menopausal symptoms.
For Beverly, now 46, that meant hot flashes, vaginal atrophy, zero libido, thick curly hair that turned straight, sparse and wispy, and what she describes as “old lady bones.”
“If I’m lucky enough to live to 95, am I just going to crumble into a pile of chalk?” she said.
Beverly, who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, is not alone in experiencing severe menopausal symptoms following breast cancer or ovarian cancer treatment or prophylactic surgery, which entails breast and/or ovary removal, sometimes along with removal of the uterine and fallopian tubes.
Risk-reducing surgery is often recommended for women who carry a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, which significantly increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. These mutations are found in Ashkenazi Jews — in both women and men — at rates about 10 times higher than in the general population.
For women who test positive, surgery can reduce the risk of developing ovarian cancer by over 75%. There may also be reduced risk of breast cancer, though research findings are mixed.
While hormones gradually decline as older women approach menopause, younger women who undergo surgery-induced menopause may experience a sudden and dramatic hormonal crash.
“Natural menopause is gradual; surgical or medically induced menopause is intense,” said Elana Silber, CEO of Sharsheret, a Jewish nonprofit organization that provides support, counseling, patient navigation, financial assistance and education in the United States and Israel for those facing breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
“Doctors focus on immediate cancer treatment plans; Sharsheret helps support and educate women about what comes next,” Silber said. “We highlight these critical issues so that women know to raise them with their healthcare providers, and we make sure they don’t face those questions alone.”
As public discussions about menopause have become more common, Sharsheret has fielded a growing number of inquiries from young women seeking information on the subject and ways to connect with peers. Many are navigating an abrupt and frightening transition for which they never prepared, and they sometimes describe it as even more traumatic than their breast surgeries.
“Menopause brought on by breast cancer surgery or treatment doesn’t follow a normal, natural progression,” said Adina Fleischmann, Sharsheret’s chief services officer.
Sharsheret has responded by connecting women with social workers and genetic counselors to help them understand both the medical and emotional impact of treatment-induced menopause.
Through peer-to-peer connections, survivors are matched with others who have gone through the same surgeries and drug regimens. They get real-world perspectives that many women say they don’t receive from their physicians.
The organization also provides survivorship kits, medical webinars, and tailored educational materials on sexual health, bone strength, fertility preservation, and non-hormonal strategies for coping with hot flashes, sleep disruption, and vaginal dryness.
Beyond the physical symptoms, it’s not uncommon for women undergoing early menopause to experience depression, according to Dr. Gila Leiter, an Ob/Gyn affiliated with New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital and a member of Sharsheret’s medical advisory board.
“Knowing what symptoms to expect — and expect pretty suddenly — is very important,” Leiter said.
Liora Tannenbaum, Sharsheret’s Israel regional director, underwent risk reducing surgeries as a result of being a BRCA carrier. She said she was less fearful of the physical recovery from having her ovaries and uterus removed than when she did her double mastectomy, but she was terrified of the emotional and mental recovery.
“As much as I looked for people to talk to for support who had been through this, I found that so many women were suffering in silence,” Tannenbaum said. “The lowered tones and discomfort around the entire conversation caught me by surprise.”
One woman, M., 44, recalled symptoms “hitting like pile of rocks” after surgery five years ago to remove her ovaries, fallopian tubes and uterus. (She asked to use only an initial to preserve her privacy.)
Just 23 when she lost her mother to ovarian cancer, M. was 28 when she learned she carried the BRCA1 mutation. She spent several years considering her options before ultimately choosing to remove her ovaries and uterus.
“It took me a long time,” M. said. “The biggest concern is you want to have kids, and when you have these surgeries you can’t have kids.”
Most doctors, including M.’s, recommend such surgery by age 40. By 39, after two children, a third miscarriage, and ongoing exams, a suspicious finding — which proved to be nothing — made her doctor insist on risk-reducing surgery if she wanted to live to see her kids’ bar mitzvahs.
“I was already considering surgery, and that scare pushed me to do it,” M. said. “I’m glad I did.’”
But the sudden loss of hormones – not just estrogen, but also progesterone and testosterone – left her with vaginal dryness, loss of muscle mass, dry skin, diminished libido and a return of asthma. M., now a nurse who volunteers for Sharsheret’s peer network, noted that she wasn’t told during her medical appointments what to expect.
“The message was: ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll give you a low-dose hormonal patch and everything will be fine,’” she recalled.
Menopausal symptoms aren’t severe for all women, and sometime they’re only temporary.
Farrah Zweig was 31 when she was diagnosed with hormone-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. She had a lumpectomy, radiation and chemotherapy. She also took Lupron, a hormone suppression drug, which put her in menopause.
“My medical team did not discuss menopause with me,” said Zweig, now 42. “My only source of information was from people who had gone through it due to age, not as a result of a medical treatment like mine.”
She experienced the hot flashes and difficulty sleeping, which she expected, and also had a tough time losing weight she’d gained during chemo.
Leiter said physicians often don’t inform patients about treatments that might help their symptoms — even those that don’t involve hormones. She noted that antidepressants can reduce hot flashes and mitigate some of the irritability or emotional fluctuations. Meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, and laser treatments for vaginal dryness also can be effective.
“Knowing what you may feel and how you’re going to handle it, what medications are available, what support systems you’re going to have and maybe lining up your therapist or acupuncturist in advance makes all the difference,” Leiter said.
To speak with a social worker or someone at Sharsheret, visit www.sharsheret.org or call 866.474.2774.
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The post Jewish women struggling with early menopause due to cancer treatment find new help appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Door-to-Door Anti-Israel Boycott Campaigns in Britain Raise Alarm Bells Over Hostile Environment Toward Jews
Protesters from “Palestine Action” demonstrate on the roof of Guardtech Group in Brandon, Suffolk, Britain, July 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Chris Radburn
Across Britain, local Jewish communities are raising alarms bells over pro-Palestinian boycott activists going door-to-door to track residents who refuse to shun Israeli products, fueling an increasingly hostile and intimidating environment for Jews and Israelis.
Earlier this week, South Yorkshire Police, which serves Sheffield and surrounding areas in northern England, opened an investigation following a violent clash in the Woodseats neighborhood, in the southern part of the city, between the anti-Israel activists demanding residents boycott Israeli goods and opponents who called them “Jew hunters.”
Known as Sheffield Apartheid Free Zone (SAFZ), this anti-Israel group has been active for months across neighborhoods in Sheffield and other parts of the United Kingdom.
As part of a broader effort to undermine the Jewish state internationally, the group distributes materials urging boycotts of Israeli products, claiming that “Israel thrives on international support.”
“When we choose not to buy Israeli goods, it hurts them in the most central place – their economy. Boycotts have worked before. They were a powerful factor in ending apartheid in South Africa and together we can replicate that success,” says one of the group’s propaganda materials.
Sparking outrage among local Jewish communities and political leaders, the group reportedly tracks residents’ responses, noting whether they are “no answer, not interested, or supportive.”
Earlier this week, a violent confrontation erupted in the Woodseats neighborhood in northern England after pro-Israel activists who had learned of the group’s activities on social media arrived on the scene.
Jean Hatchet, a local activist, confronted the anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrators, following them through the streets while shouting “Jew hunters are coming” and waving a sign reading “No tolerance for Jew hatred.”
According to Hatchet’s testimony, one group member snatched the sign from her hands and struck her on the head, prompting her to file a police complaint alleging assault motivated by religion.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Hatchet claimed the group actively maintains a “blacklist” of anyone who supports Israel.
“They’re taking addresses of people who don’t agree with their point of view,” the pro-Israel activist said. “We have data protection regulations in this country and they’re committing acts that cross the boundaries of what’s permitted.”
Similar door-to-door boycott campaigns have been reported in Bristol and Hackney in England, Cardiff in Wales, and Belfast and Glasgow in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
Last Saturday, pro-Palestinian activists were filmed going door-to-door in Brighton, a coastal city in southern England, asking residents to sign pledges to boycott Israeli products.
Vicky Bogel, founder of the pro-Israel group “Jewish and Proud” in Brighton, denounced the incident after witnessing eight teams of volunteers moving systematically from house to house with clipboards and lists of addresses.
“They found out who has ‘Zionist tendencies’ and who doesn’t and where they live,” Bogel told the Jewish Chronicle. “This is cunning and dangerous activity; we’re talking about an intimidation campaign at another level.”
Peter Kyle, the British trade secretary and a member of Parliament representing Brighton, strongly condemned these latest incidents, calling for police investigations into the groups for potential hate crimes and incitement.
However, Sussex Police, which covers the Brighton area, said that “there is currently no evidence of criminal activity,” while acknowledging that the reports are under review.
The Israeli embassy in London also condemned the incidents, calling them a “disgrace” and warning that such campaigns fuel intimidation and hostility toward Jewish communities across the country.
“Compiling lists of homes and businesses to enforce a boycott of Israeli products is not principled protest, it is intimidation,” the statement read.
“Targeting people and shops because of their Israeli identity echoes some of the darkest chapters of European history,” it continued. “Decent people should call this out, clearly and without hesitation.”
What happened in Brighton and Sheffield was a disgrace. Compiling lists of homes and businesses to enforce a boycott of Israeli products is not principled protest, it is intimidation.
Targeting people and shops because of their Israeli identity echoes some of the darkest… pic.twitter.com/BO7IhidcuW
— Israel in the UK
(@IsraelinUK) February 18, 2026
Earlier this month, the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, revealed in an annual report that it recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2025, the second-highest total ever in a single calendar year and an increase of 4 percent from the 3,556 in 2024.
Last year averaged 308 antisemitic incidents each month — an exact doubling of the 154 monthly average in the year before the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
Antisemitic incidents had fallen from the record high of 4,298 in 2023, which analysts say was fueled by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack — the biggest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
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Two Men Spit, Say ‘Free Palestine’ as They Attempt to Gain Access to Jewish Center in Dallas
Two young men who attempted to gain entry to a Jewish life center in Dallas by claiming to be window cleaners. Photo: Screenshot
Jewish community leaders on Monday denounced an antisemitic incident in which two men trespassed the grounds of the Olami Dallas Center in Texas and demanded entry to the home of its rabbi by claiming to be window cleaners.
According to StandWithUs, the perpetrators rang the doorbell of Rabbi Yaakov Rubin, who refused to let them, in response to which one of the men spat on the property as the other said “Free Palestine.” StandWithUs added that they also said “fake Jews” during their attempt to gain access to the building.
However, after realizing they were caught on camera, one of the perpetrators then yelled: “I love the Jews.”
StandWithUs shared video footage of the incident.
“There’s much brazenness required to walk up to a house, in an attempt to intimidate a Jewish Life center, and its host family, ring the doorbell, and say, ‘Free Palestine,’” Rubin said in a statement included in a press release StandWithUs issued following the incident. “This requires us to be that much bolder and proud of our Jewishness and Israel, through open pride, a strong sense of identity and nurturing our mission from G-d. We don’t run, won’t hide, we will be a light to the world.”
The incident at the Olami center comes amid a period of anti-Jewish violence in the US that is unprecedented in the country’s history. Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, Jews have been murdered on the streets of Washington D.C., firebombed in Colorado with Molotov cocktails, and gang assaulted. In a recent incident just last month, a young man apparently radicalized by the far right set the Beth Israel Congregation on fire over its “Jewish ties,” a catastrophic event which has shut down the Jewish house of worship for the foreseeable future. Another arsonist struck the San Francisco Hillel building in December.
In Monday’s press release, Jordan Cope, director for policy and education at StandWithUs, said this latest incident is a reminder of the degree to which antisemitism is coupled with anti-Zionism.
“The youth’s mention of ‘fake Jews’ before his subsequent ‘free Palestine’ assertion followed by his ‘I love the Jews’ comments, is a clear reminder of how bigots all too often disingenuously disguise their antisemitism as a matter of Middle Eastern politics,” Cope said. “Efforts to intimidate the Jewish people into abandoning their pride of their indigenous homeless ultimately seek to intimidate Jews into silence and submission at a time where antisemitism continues to run rife throughout the West.”
He added, “Antisemitism is an age-old hatred. Anti-Israel sentiment is its newest spear.”
For several consecutive years, antisemitism in the US has surged to break “all previous annual records,” according to a series of reports issued by the ADL since it began recording data on antisemitic incidents.
The FBI disclosed similar numbers, showing that even as hate crimes across the US decreased overall, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups have noted that this rise in antisemitic hate crimes, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
The wave of hatred has changed how American Jews perceive their status in America.
According to the results of a new survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Federations of North America, a majority of American Jews now consider antisemitism to be a normal and endemic aspect of life in the US.
A striking 57 percent reported believing “that antisemitism is now a normal Jewish experience,” the organizations disclosed, while 55 percent said they have personally witnessed or been subjected to antisemitic hatred, including physical assaults, threats, and harassment, in the past year.
The survey results revealed other disturbing trends: Jewish victims are internalizing their experiences, as 74 percent did not report what happened to them to “any institution or organization”; Jewish youth are bearing the brunt of antisemitism, having faced communications which aim to exclude Jews or delegitimize their concerns about rising hate; roughly a third of survey respondents show symptoms of anxiety; and the cultural climate has fostered a sense in the Jewish community that the non-Jewish community would not act as a moral guardrail against violence and threats.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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In JFNA’s first ‘State of the Jewish Union’ address, security and antisemitism loom large
(JTA) — Speaking from Washington, D.C., on Thursday, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, Eric Fingerhut, laid out his assessment of the state of Jewish life in America.
“The state of the Jewish union in America is strong, but it is being tested,” said Fingerhut. “We are united in our commitment to America and to Jewish life, even as we worry about the real threats of violence and the growing acceptance of antisemitic rhetoric.”
During his remarks, which was billed as JFNA’s inaugural “State of the Jewish Union” address ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address next week, Fingerhut issued six recommendations to Congress which centered on increasing security for Jewish communities.
They included providing federal support for security personnel, expanding FBI capabilities to counter domestic terrorism, increasing support for local and state law enforcement, prosecuting hate crimes aggressively and holding social media companies accountable for amplifying antisemitic rhetoric.
“Jewish children and teens are facing growing risks online, including antisemitic harassment, bullying and extremist content,” said Fingerhut. “We recognize the difficulty of legislating in this field, but states are moving forward, and it’s time for Congress to move forward as well.”
Fingerhut also called on Congress to increase funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $1 billion annually, and “make the program more flexible and simpler to use.” (This year, the program is requiring recipients to support federal immigration enforcement and avoid programs advancing diversity, raising concern among many Jewish groups, including JFNA.)
At the beginning of his address, Fingerhut also emphasized the ties between the American Jewish community and Israel, which have come under scrutiny since JFNA published a survey earlier this month which found that only one-third of American Jews say they identify as Zionist.
“The focus of today’s talk will be about the state of Jews in America, but it is not possible to have that conversation without acknowledging and addressing the emotional, familial and religious connection between the American Jewish community and the people of Israel,” said Fingerhut.
Fingerhut’s remarks come shortly after Bret Stephens, the right-leaning Jewish New York Times columnist, argued during his 92NY’s annual “The State of World Jewry” speech that groups devoted to combating antisemitism, including the Anti-Defamation League, should abandon their strategy and instead focus on bolstering Jewish education and communal infrastructure.
During Fingerhut’s address, which largely centered on the security burdens placed on Jewish communities and concern for changes to social services funding, he also pivoted to a broader vision of Jewish life beyond the need for protection alone.
“It is important for the Congress to know that Jewish life is not only what we are protecting, but what we are building,” said Fingerhut. “It is Jewish education and Jewish experiences, but it is also human services, dignity and belonging.”
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