Validating Grief

As a professional grief counselor with years of experience in hospice and private practice as well as the author of Sad Is Not Bad, I want to thank Carol Saline for her article “The Journey to Healing” in the September/October 2022 issue. Through interviews with authors of other support books, Saline offered validation and education around grief.

While I was a bereavement coordinator in two separate hospices, I created a workshop called “Coping With the High Holy Days After the Death of a Loved One,” which I understand was helpful for those who participated. Hopefully, “The Journey to Healing” has and will continue to support those traveling their own journey of grief.

Harriet Vogul 
Palm City, Fla.

More on Endometrial Cancer

I would like to addend Sandee Brawarsky’s Q&A with writer Helen Epstein, who shares her challenging experience with endometrial cancer in the September/October issue.

There are some things women can do to prevent and/or reduce the risk of developing endometrial cancer.

Use of oral contraceptives has been shown to reduce the risk by 40 to 70 percent. Excess weight and diabetes are strong risk factors, which can be reduced with appropriate dietary and lifestyle changes. Women who carry the gene for hereditary Lynch syndrome have a 40 to 60 percent risk of developing endometrial and colon cancer; removal of the uterus after childbearing prevents the former.

Dr. Susan Richman
Branford, Conn.

A Different Viewpoint

Normally, I try not to express my conservative views. I have alienated too many friends and relatives. Their loss, for not being able to tolerate a different viewpoint. In my synagogue sisterhood and within Hadassah, I feel that I am looked upon as a pariah. However, when I read two letters to the editor in the September/October issue supporting abortion, I decided that I had to write one of my own. “The other side” must be represented.

I agree that there is a difference between a fetus and a baby. I agree that a woman’s health must be considered, and I agree that a woman should have a choice about her body. But when politicians and candidates such as Stacey Abrams of Georgia advocate for zero government restrictions on abortion, we part company. I don’t care that Abrams calls abortion a medical decision and not a political one. At some point it becomes legalized murder.

Miriam Edelstein
Nanuet, N.Y.

Read The Third Daughter First

I was especially interested in the review of Javier Sinay’s The Murders of Moisés Ville in the July/August 2022 issue because of another book associated with that city in Argentina.

Not long ago, my book club read The Third Daughter by Talia Carner. The novel recounts how wealthy Jewish men in Argentina would travel to Eastern European shtetls, find poor, pretty Jewish maidens, promise money and marriage to the families and bring them back to Argentina.

I won’t spoil Carner’s story, but the book does tie into the beginnings of Moisés Ville. I suggest you read The Third Daughter first—it makes a great introduction to Sinay’s investigation. 

Gail Dinnerstein
Boca Raton, Fla.

No End to Being Jewish

In the July/August arts article, “Are We in a Golden Age of Haredi Television?” Allison Josephs is quoted as lamenting: “And then we’re cheering for the heroine—it’s usually a woman—when she finally gets the guts to stop being Jewish. That’s the end game.”

No, it isn’t. Not one of these “heroic” protagonists stopped being Jewish. One cannot stop being Jewish. You are born a Jew, you die a Jew, regardless of what anyone—or any television show—tells you.

Brenda Frank
Hollywood, Fla.

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