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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/27342/full/27342/a-chemotherapy-siddur-and-other-jewish-resources/ <br /><br /> <b>A chemotherapy siddur — and other Jewish resources</b> <br /> Tuesday, October 11, 2005 | by <p>alexandra j. wall </p> <br /><br /><p>What is out there in terms of Jewish sources for breast-cancer patients? Not much, Sarah Fenner found.<br /><br /> When the San Rafael resident — who is the wife of Rabbi Natan Fenner, who works at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center — was going through chemotherapy, she found nothing Jewish to help her with this difficult process, so she decided to make her own “Chemotherapy Siddur.”<br /><br /> Fenner — who was 34 at the time of her diagnosis in 2002 — put together a small photo album, with blessings from a variety of sources, as well as cards friends had sent her, and photographs that she thought would help her during treatment.<br /><br /> “Basically, I thought how would I transform this negative event and the whole sort of ‘fight mentality,’ which I didn’t really relate to at all, and how was I going to make that positive?” she said. “I needed to be able to frame it in a constructive way. It was horrible enough to have this going on, but I felt I had to be in a positive frame of mind to feel like my treatment would be most effective.”<br /><br /> Because of its uniqueness, word spread, and there was even a mention of her siddur in the New York Times. She has so far sent about 30 of them to people, requesting that they make a donation to a breast-cancer organization.<br /><br /> Since Fenner photocopied the blessings, she was concerned about copyright issues. Many of them were written by Berkeley-based writer Marcia Falk, who gave Fenner permission to distribute them freely specifically for cancer patients.<br /><br /> Fenner has a friend who was diagnosed shortly after she was, a Reconstructionist rabbi who compiled a kind of radiation siddur. They are talking about combining their efforts.<br /><br /> Today Fenner is cancer-free. She found out early on she was a carrier of a breast-cancer gene, and the mother of two boys elected to have both her breasts and her ovaries removed.<br /><br /> “I reduced my risk so much, and I plan to be around so much longer,” she said. “I’ll never know what my recurrence rate would have been, but I’ve minimized it by 97 percent.”<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /> Fenner continues to send out copies of her “Chemotherapy Siddur.” To contact her, e-mail <a href="mailto:chemosiddur@yahoo.com"><a href="mailto:chemosiddur@yahoo.com">chemosiddur@yahoo.com</a></a>. <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /> Related Stories:<br /><br /> <a href="/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/27209/format/html/displaystory.html">Breast-Cancer Survivor overcomes pain, fear</a><br /><a href="/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/27211/format/html/displaystory.html">Jewish men throw a party for breast-cancer research</a></p> <p> </p>

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