Dear All,

This past week I was one of the few lucky men to join the Schara Tzedeck Women's League and 250 participants for a symposium on Breast Cancer awareness and early detection. You might be thinking, 'what need has a man for an evening on Breast Cancer awareness?'   

The truth is that there are several 'of course you need to be there' answers.

1) You are rabbi to many women as well, many of whom have had and are statistically likely to encounter this disease.  Furthermore, I had a close friend from university who passed away three years ago from a very aggressive form of breast cancer.  Her name was Dr. Beth Samuel z"l was a brilliant mathematician and Torah Scholar who was an assistant professor of mathematics at University of California Berkley.  She left behind her husband and two young children.  Her passing simply reminds me how seriously this topic must be taken.

2) I attended a similar event hosted by Schara Tzedeck's men's club on Men's Health.  I figured that I was the one person in the crowd for whom Dr. Larry Goldenberg would have little to tell.  I could not have been more wrong.  Dr. Goldenberg was addressing not only the issue of prostate - he was telling all of us men that we needed to be a lot more conscious of our health.  We need to be aware of our weight, risk factors, and exercise levels.  We need to get physicals and try to extend our lives and healthy years.  In fact, he taught us that we need to take a page out of the women's book, since they have been so successful in lobbying for breast cancer research and promoting awareness.

This leads me to the lessons we can take from this event:

1) The lecturers stressed the importance of the support we get from one another in the context of coping with these illnesses, and in which positive social circles and community support can lend to prevention.

2) Be active and take charge of your health: we need not accept these diseases without 'fighting back' with detection, prevention and intervention.  This is true for both men and women.  I dare say this is a religious obligation.

In truth these last two lessons are a lesson of the Heroic women found in the book of Exodus (for more on this subject click here to read an article that I wrote for a memorial volume in memory of Dr. Beth Samuels).  The women of the book of Exodus, Miriam and company do not accept Pharaoh's decree lying down, they fight back, they intervene, they resist, and they do so out of a care for one another and a relationship with Hashem.  Go women!!

I would like to thank the organizers of both the Men's Club event and the Women's League event, in particular the chairs (Mel Sprakman, Arnold Silber and Barbara Silber) for bringing us together for these important topics.

Good Shabbes to all, and may we all live till 120!

Zai Gezunt, and see you in Shul.

Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt