Award-winning journalist Ruth Ebenstein comes to Chattanooga to tell her story How to Laugh (and Cry) Through Breast Cancer during a brunch on Sunday at 11 a.m.
During her presentation Ms. Ebenstein will Skype with her close friend and fellow breast cancer survivor Ibtisam Erekat, a Muslim Palestrina woman living in Israel.
Diagnosed with breast cancer while nursing her baby, Ms. Ebenstein feared that she would die. Lumpectomy scars still healing, she joined an Israeli-Palestinian breast cancer support group, hoping to find something "good" in cancer. She found wonderful Ibtisam Erekat, a Muslim Palestinian woman whom she calls kin. Ms. Ebenstien models how to conquer the lines that divide and transform darkness into light.
Ms. Ebenstein is an American-Israeli writer, historian and health activist who loves to laugh. She has published her writing on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2004, Ms. Ebenstein won a first-place Simon Rockower award, sponsored by the American Jewish Press Association, for a Bnai Brith Magazine cover story on President of the Israeli Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak. In 2013, she won the same award for an essay that ran in Tablet about her Israeli-Palestinian breast cancer support group's trip to Sarajevo to meet other survivors who support each other across religious and ethnic lines. Through the group, Ms. Ebenstein befriended Ibtisam Erekat, a Muslim Palestinian woman whom she now calls sister.
Ms. Ebenstein graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and completed an M.A. in German history magna cum laude from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has also written a children’s book entitled “All of this Country is Called Jerusalem”.
Ms. Ebenstein's story has been covered by the BBC, The Atlantic, and Alhurra TV.
The brunch will take place at the Jewish Cultural Center. The cost to attend is $8. This program is sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Chattanooga and the Chattanooga Chapter of Hadassah.
To register call 493-0270 ext.10; rsvp@jewishchattanooga.com or visit the Federation’s website www.jewishchattanooga.com.