This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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Colon Cancer Seen Linked to Bloom Gene
Ashkenazi Jews are two to three times more likely to develop colon cancer if they carry the gene for Bloom syndrome, according to a September 2002 study by American and Israeli researchers. Dr. Kenneth Offit, senior author of the study and chief of the clinical genetics service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York,…
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Procedure Offers Hope for Families
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, a fairly new procedure that allows embryos created outside the uterus to be screened for genetic diseases, has been embraced by some Jewish couples who carry the mutations for diseases such as Tay-Sachs. But even as the procedure, known as PGD, offers these families the hope of healthy children — and in…
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Finding Your Roots
The search for Jewish roots in Germany may be easier now, thanks to a new research center that opened last fall. The Ephraim Gustav Hoenlein Genealogy Project is designed to help Jews of Germanic descent trace their origins. It is a joint project of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the Jewish Community of Würzburg….
The Latest
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A New Treatment for Gaucher? Compound Intrigues
Researchers have developed a chemical compound that could lead to a new treatment for Gaucher disease, the most common genetic disease among Ashkenazi Jews, which causes problems including anemia, poor blood clotting, an enlarged liver and spleen, bone damage and, in the most serious cases, neurological problems. The newly discovered compound is made up of…
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Who Gets Tested for BRCA, and Why?
Many Jewish women of Ashkenazi origin face an increased risk of inherited breast and ovarian cancers, the result of mutations in two genes that became relatively common to Eastern Europeans. Women with bad copies of either gene, called BRCA1 and BRCA2, have a lifetime risk of breast cancer that approaches 85%. Their overall risk of…
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Surgery Promises Relief for Dystonia
When Peter Cohen entered a public swimming pool recently, he was greeted with several rounds of applause. Cohen is not a person whom one would normally expect to be met with such a reception; he has never been an Olympian, nor has he ever held public office. Merely attempting to move about freely in a…
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DNA Bank Dilemma: Who Owns the Data?
Two years ago, the Israeli company Genomica embarked on a comprehensive and unprecedented study in which DNA samples were collected from thousands of patients to build a private DNA bank for the purpose of finding new disease-causing genes. The establishment of the private DNA bank caught the Health Ministry off guard; no public debate had…
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Oncologist Seeks To Develop Vaccine Against Pancreatic Cancer
When Elizabeth Jaffee was studying to become a doctor, back in the 1980s, her uncle was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Yet even with her medical knowledge, “there was nothing I could even suggest,” said Jaffee, whose uncle passed away three months later. “The fact that there’s no hope bothers me more than anything.” Now Jaffee…
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Little Girl’s Affliction Sparks Flowering of Creativity
In the close-knit community of Greenmeadow, Calif., a 2-year-old girl diagnosed with a rare Jewish genetic disease cannot talk, but her spirit speaks loudly enough to touch many people beyond her neighborhood. There is no cure for the disease afflicting Sophia Herzog-Sachs, who was diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type A in early 2002 and whose life…
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Doctors Find Fanconi Link to Pancreatic Cancer
There is some bad news for those carrying genes that can lead to Fanconi anemia, a rare blood disorder. Recently, a team of scientists at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center found that three genes linked to Fanconi anemia play a role in pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal forms of the malignancy. The study,…
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‘Daylight Breaks’ for Canavan Boy
Jordana Holovach is tenacious. In the first few minutes of “As Daylight Breaks,” a documentary about Holovach, 33, and her 7-year-old son, Jacob Sontag, Holovach reads aloud the first page of her journal. “November 19, 2002,” the pretty, blond-haired Holovach says, without betraying any emotion. “My Jacob — my beautiful 6-year-and-9-month-old son — [was] diagnosed…
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