Students think pink for cancer awareness
search
home page

Students think pink for cancer awareness

By NJJN Staff February 26, 2014, 12:00 am Edit
Above, in shades of pink for Sharsheret’s breast cancer awareness day are Kushner students, from left, Judi Fusmane, Zoe Eisenberg, Rose Ginsberg, Ilana Hafner, Daniela Berk, and Maia Sason.
Above, in shades of pink for Sharsheret’s breast cancer awareness day are Kushner students, from left, Judi Fusmane, Zoe Eisenberg, Rose Ginsberg, Ilana Hafner, Daniela Berk, and Maia Sason.

Pink was everywhere at Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School on Feb. 12 and at Bruriah High School for Girls in Elizabeth on Oct. 24: on the lunch lines, around the gym, even at the lockers.

Kushner was among the more than 95 colleges, high schools, and day schools around the country that held a Sharsheret Pink Day, designed to raise awareness of breast cancer and ovarian cancer. Sharsheret, founded in 2001, is a Teaneck-based not-for-profit supporting young Jewish women and their families facing cancer. Schools designed advocacy and fund-raising campaigns in connection with the special day.

At Kushner, students not only raised money for Sharsheret through a bake sale, but also donated their time, according to student activities director Josh Gottesman, including walking laps around the gym during lunch, for which they received certificates of recognition.

At Bruriah, the school’s hesed committee ran the Pink Day events, which included showing a video featuring a breast cancer survivor helped by Sharsheret; a fund-raiser selling pink cupcakes, pink lemonade, pink bracelets, and pink hair clips; and a raffle for “manicures” — all of which yielded several hundred dollars. Committee members decorated the school in pink, and many of the students dressed in pink.

“Almost everyone knows someone who has or had cancer and knows the devastation it brings,” said committee head Leora Sherman, a senior from Edison. “Pink Day was our way of bringing simha and awareness to such an important cause. It was amazing to walk into davening on a somewhat ordinary Thursday and find the room looking like a sea of pink.”

The message was simple, according to Sharsheret: “Wear pink, spread the word about breast cancer in school and your community, and generate life-saving conversations among Jewish families at increased risk of hereditary breast cancer.”

read more:
comments