Thank You, Angelina Jolie

This piece was first published on The Sisterhood blog at the Forward.

The personal piece actress Angelina Jolie published today in the New York Times should put to rest any question as to her seriousness. Say what they will about her in the tabloids, it is clear from her sharing that she has recently undergone a preventative double mastectomy that she is a woman of conviction.

Convinced that she has a better chance of living a long life without her natural breasts (she has had a series of three surgeries, the last being reconstruction with implants), Jolie has gone where most, if not all, other Hollywood actresses would not. I guess it’s hardly surprising given that she, as UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, has already readily traveled to dangerous places.

Jolie carries the BRCA1 gene mutation, common among Ashkenazi women. Her mother also died of cancer at age 56. And so Jolie, only 37, decided to not wait to see if she would eventually develop breast cancer herself. She wrote that doctors originally told her she has an 87% risk of breast cancer and a 50% risk of ovarian cancer. “My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87% to under 5%. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

S.F. Woman Speaks Out About Murder Of Her Father

This article as first published in JWeekly.

Julie Bernstein (center) at press conference with CA State Senator Darrell Steinberg (right).

Julie Bernstein decided that it was finally time to speak publicly about how her father died.

So while in Washington, D.C., in March, she joined the National Council of Jewish Women’s lobbying effort for gun violence prevention. She knew sharing her personal story would help get the attention of staffers in the offices of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

Bernstein decided to tell her story again on April 16 in Sacramento. In that instance, she gave testimony before a state Senate committee in support of a bill to prohibit the future sale, purchase, manufacture, importation or transfer in California of semi-automatic rifles that can accept detachable magazines.

“I had never spoken publicly about it, but I knew that telling a personal story is the most effective way of speaking to elected officials,” said Bernstein, a native of San Francisco and a Jewish community professional.

What Bernstein told the politicians was that her father, Jerry Bernstein, was murdered in 1991 by a business associate who had come to a meeting at his Noe Valley office with a gun. The man shot and killed Bernstein and another business associate before turning the gun on himself.

“I was 10 years old and a student at Brandeis Hillel Day School at the time,” recalled Bernstein, now 32. “It was a very public event. It happened at a time when it wasn’t common for people to settle differences by shooting each other. Today, unfortunately, it’s not so unusual.”

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.

NY High School Houses Hands-On Holocaust Museum

This article was first published in The Times of Israel.

Bronx Science sophomores Theresa Wang and Justin Wu examine artifacts at the school’s Holocaust Museum and Studies Center. (photo credit: Courtesy of Bronx Science High School)

Down in the Bronx High School of Science basement, in a heavily trafficked area between the boys’ locker room and the nurse’s office, is the school’s most recent attraction — a professionally designed and curated Holocaust Museum and Studies Center.

Even before this new addition, Bronx Science has always stood out: The foremost science magnet school in the United States, it is consistently ranked among the nation’s top high schools. It has had more Intel Science Talent Search finalists than any other school, and many of its graduates go on to Ivy League universities. Eight Bronx Science graduates have won Nobel Prizes (the most for any American high school), and six have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes.

And now, Bronx Science is distinguishing itself as the only high school housing a full-fledged Holocaust museum.

With its collection of 1,000 artifacts, the state-of-the art facility may have only opened on April 19, but its existence is a labor of love begun three and half decades ago.

Before there was the field of Holocaust education, and before there were Holocaust museums and memorials in cities across the US, there was Stuart Elenko. Elenko (who was not Jewish and died in 2009) was a Bronx Science social studies teacher who combined a passion for collecting historical memorabilia with a belief in the educational power of objects to establish a small Holocaust museum in a corner of the school’s library in 1978. He also instituted a Holocaust leadership class for students interested in learning Nazi-era history through primary sources, and who were willing to share their insights about the dangers of racism, hatred and intolerance with the rest of the student body.

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© 2013 Renee Ghert-Zand. All rights reserved.