Recognizing the serious threat of breast cancer to Jewish women, one woman in the Edison/Highland Park Jewish community decided to mobilize other members of her shul and hold an event to encourage people to act proactively.
Lilah Braun is kiddush coordinator at Congregation Ohav Emeth in Highland Park and she and her husband, Eddie, are longtime members of the community. Braun stated that she organized this event because she saw a serious need for education in the community.
“The reason I decided to put together a program is because too many young women get this disease,” she said. “They don’t think it’ll happen to them. I hope people will hear the speaker’s story and realize the importance of getting regular mammograms.”
Braun enlisted Rifky Atkin as the main speaker at a Breast Cancer Awareness Month event at Congregation Ohav Emeth, to be held on Shabbat, October 12, starting at 3:30 p.m. Atkin and her husband, Jack, are well-known members of the shul, as well, and she is a breast cancer survivor and activist.
Atkin stated that she generally doesn’t speak publically, in the community, about her experience with breast cancer but Braun was a very persuasive recruiter and the cause is an important one.
“As Jewish women, whatever our stage in life, we generally juggle multiple roles across our family, community and professional worlds,” said Atkin. “While we put in maximum effort to excel at all of these roles, it’s not uncommon to find that we shortchange ourselves when it comes to our own health. In recounting my own personal experience facing breast cancer in my 30s, I hope to impart to others the importance of paying as much attention to our own health as we do to everyone and everything else in our lives.”
Atkin’s talk will be followed by a Q&A session led by Dr. Jonathan Rosenbluth, a board certified physician specializing in medical oncology and internal medicine. Rosenbluth is affiliated with Regional Cancer Care Associates, Central Jersey Division, in Somerville.
The upcoming event, entitled “It’s Not Just About You—It’s About Yours,” will include a dessert buffet and is open to all women in the community. The organizers invite people to contribute to this event and sponsors of $180 or more will receive an “OE Fights Breast Cancer” T-shirt. All proceeds of the event will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and Sharsheret.
For more information on the event, or to make a contribution, email [email protected].
By Harry Glazer
