I’m a typical Persian and a typical Jew. For example I'm the first mayor in the history of Beverly Hills to put a mezuzah on my door, which I did because I’m proud of my Jewish heritage. At the same time, I give interviews to Persian papers and magazines. I go on TV programs in Farsi. I encourage people in Iran to show their intolerance to that regime. Are you in touch with the Iranian community?
Yes, through TV. I go on many different programs. I get a lot of emails from people who are dissatisfied and want to get out. What do you tell them? To be vocal about their situation, and not accept the pressure that’s on them. If you accept everything they put on you, then they’ll keep on doing it. But if you force the government to take a stand, sometimes they have to take a position that would look very bad. What kinds of positions? Like if you and your wife are on a bus, and they separate you. They say, your wife goes on the back of the bus. Don’t accept it. Sit together, hold hands together. Let them take a situation like that and make it big. Show intolerance to their unjust way of running your life. You left Iran in 1959, because you felt you had no opportunities as a Jew. I grew up as Jew and I could only go to a certain level. It was a glass ceiling that you could never really break. I could become a good businessman or a doctor, but I wanted to be in politics and I couldn’t represent anyone other than the Jews. I wanted to be president of organizations, but I was being held back, so I decided to go to a country that gives me opportunity and freedom. I moved on to higher levels here, much more than I could have in Iran. How old were you when you left? Nineteen. What made you decide to run for City Council?
I became president of Sinai Temple, which was groundbreaking — there’s never been a Persian or Sephardic president of any Ashkenazi temple like this — so when that broke ground, and it felt good, I decided maybe I’d extend it to a higher level. Right after 9/11, immigration officers asked all immigrants to come to their immigration office to present their visas and passports, to declare where they are. A lot of Persians who voluntarily went to show their visas were held for weeks at a time, almost like prison. They were victimized in Iran, and they left Iran, and they’re getting victimized again.

So they needed somebody to speak on their behalf. No senator or congressman would interfere with what was happening. So I said, that’s what I want to do. I decided to run for City Council, and after that I could become the mayor, and it made a difference. Forward magazine, I’m one of the 50 to watch. Can I ever imagine that?! So I must have touched people’s lives. I must have made a difference.

Why aren't more Persian-Americans involved in politics? In Iran you are afraid to put your name on any list. The government will be watching. It’s like living under communism. You don’t want your name to be known by anybody. Because of that, those who came to America didn’t want anything to do with politics. It took me a long time to convince them to vote. As a result, they are involved now. I’m hoping that will set an example for Iranians, and other immigrants in America.

Is there racism against Persians in Beverly Hills? There’s jealousy. Some people think that Persians all came from Iran with a lot of money, which is not true. A lot of them left everything they had. But Persians work hard here. They’re very intelligent. They are very educated. And so there is a resentment toward newcomers who are successful. There was a controversy over the McMansions, and the City Council passed new requirements.
A lot of Persians were building houses that were very large — too big for the lots that they were on. Our City Council created a new commission to look at all new homes – whether Persians or non-Persians will live there – to evaluate whether the homes are in the character of the city and the neighborhood, and not too large. What did you think about that? I was very much in support of it. We didn’t want to stereotype people and say that all Persians’ homes are like this, but because of the commission and the architects' ideas on how to change the houses – change it here, change it there – people are happier with their finished homes than with the blueprints.

You didn’t feel like any of it was an underlying racism? No, it was more of being new and not understanding. There was some jealousy involved — like, how can they afford big homes like that? Iranians didn’t come here poor, but they came with knowledge and education. If you come with education, you advance — you open the doors. What was it like for you, being here, during the 1979 revolution in Iran? It was very tough because I was looked down on. It didn’t matter if I was a Jew or a Muslim — they looked at me only as a Persian. I wore an American flag pin for years so everyone would see that I was proud to be an American. I shaved my moustache and my beard, so I won’t look like some of them. I wanted people to feel comfortable knowing me. My first name was Jamshid in Farsi, so I added Jimmy. So they’d be more friendly. It was very difficult for a long time.

Would you go back to Iran? Not to stay. I tried to go back for a visit to take my wife and kids, but I lived in Israel when I was 16, so it was very difficult to go back to Iran because that hatred for Israel remains. If the regime changes, I would be happy to go back and visit. I would love to. There’s talk now that maybe the U.S. will bomb Iran. What do you think?
I’m not in favor of another war. I don’t think it’s good for America or Iran. But I think the situation can be handled through moratoriums and divestments from Iran’s businesses. I proposed divestment of all of our money from any companies that invest in Iran — European or anything — that are in the nuclear sector. And that proposal was passed by state of California, by the senate and the assembly; the governor signed it. I was the only mayor who promoted that. Mayors don’t usually have a foreign policy, but I wanted to get that message across — you’re not dealing with Washington, but the people of America, who are very much against your regime and the nuclear bomb you are trying to develop.

Instead of building an atomic plant, Iran should build refineries. You don’t have refineries there — less refineries than 30 years ago. No one would mind that. Refine your oil, run your country. It’s so obvious you’re not after energy; you’re after the power of a bomb in order to force other governments to follow you. Who do you think they would say that to?

They would love to be able to control the Arab countries in the neighborhood. How do you think there could be regime change in Iran? America alone is not enough. If the Europeans put economic sanctions on Iran, then people will revolutionize — if they have to stop working, stop getting paid. Do most Iranians support Ahmadinejad? No, not at all. They laugh at him. But when he was here in New York, his respectability at home went up. Sure, because stood up to a government — because we gave him the freedom to say it. So people say, “Wow our president, a little guy, went over there and stood up to the big giants.” It was totally wrong for him to take advantage of our freedom. He wouldn’t allow us to go over there and talk like that. What do you like best about being mayor? I can make people feel proud that somebody of their background and their culture reached a high position. People in Iran feel proud, people in Europe feel proud — that’s the best thing. What’s the worst thing about being the mayor? The amount of calls I get asking for personal favors. Most of them have to do with building something or coming to this country. A lot of people write me and say, "We want to leave Iran." And I have to be silent. Here, Jewish culture is so defined by Ashkenazim – the food, the culture. Is that a perception you would like to change?
A big part of my mission is to create bridges — between Persians and non-Persians, between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi. My wife is Ashkenazi and I'm not, so I created a bridge.

It’s important to teach others that family is important. But it’s also important to understand that your child can have a relationship with someone who’s not from the same background as your family, and learn from that. As a Jewish Persian, do you have many Muslim Persian friends? Every Persian thinks of me as one of them. I use that opportunity to create harmony and acceptance. They welcome me and I welcome them. Again, to create a bridge.

The post From Iranian Exile to Mayor of Beverly Hills appeared first on Jewcy.

So before you get overwhelmed by all the things that feel insurmountable, try getting your mind and machine in shape to deal with all the tasks on your plate. You’re not on your own: There are countless books, essays and Web sites devoted to your success. And if your job still sucks after all your self-improvement, you can always quit—just do it with class.

Increase your productivity by reading blogs (yes, blogs) You’re going to do it anyway, so why not have your procrastinating Web surfing time work for you? No, not by joining a pyramid scheme. Web sites like 43 Folders and Lifehacker are full of pointers and freeware to make your work life more efficient. Folder’s Inbox Zero helps you get your e-mail stream squeaky clean in under 20 minutes, and devise strategies for keeping it that way. (Hint: “delete, delete, delete.”) Lifehacker points you to haiku productivity, and if that Zen path doesn’t prove fruitful, there’s always a crude Microsoft timer to get your ass in gear. Lastly, don’t underestimate how having the perfect iTunes equalizer setting can help your projects practically finish themselves.

Join the cult of David Allen If the blogs don’t make you a super-employee, David Allen will. Twenty pages into Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, you might be inspired to put down the book and make all those calls you’ve been putting off. If it only takes a couple minutes, then it falls under his Two-Minute Rule: If it takes less than 120 seconds to handle (phone call, e-mail, bill paying), do it now so your brain can be freed to deal with more important tasks later on. Might was well just buy the book now. It only takes two minutes.

Charm the jorts off your office’s IT team The IT guys claim they’re busy, but when you walk into their office, they’re playing World of Warcraft and inhaling Cool Ranch Doritos. Lazy bastards? Yes. Permission to throw a fit? No. Making enemies in the IT department will only get you grief. Fortunately, IT guys are usually pretty easy to please. First, read this article in the Wall Street Journal, which gives tons of tips about how to improve your relations with the office geek. Next, print it out and tape it to your cubicle—not just so that you can follow all the instructions, but also so they know you’re trying. Third, if you really want to charm them, learn their language; the Family Guy Wikiquote page is an excellent place to start.

Throw your Blackberry in the fountain, Devil-Wears-Prada–style Sometimes it’s not your bad attitude, or your passive-aggressive asides, or your impatience with the IT department that’s ruining your life. Sometimes you’re in the wrong job. It’s happened to all of us, and when it does, it’s OK to move on. Make your search for a new job less grueling with a meta-search engine—Indeed and PageBites are two of the best—that will trawl the job boards for you, bringing together the best listings from Monster, CareerBuilder, and a gazillion other sites. And when you do leave, make sure you do it with class. WetFeet.com has lots of advice for finding yourself a brand-spanking new job this year without making an office full of enemies in the process.

The post Like a Virgin: Work appeared first on Jewcy.

Hence Jewcy’s guide to starting over. We’ll tell you how to clean up past messes and prep for future successes in six categories:

Sex, love and dating | Health | Friendships | Family | Money | Work

Consulting myriad websites, books, and experts, we've pulled together 26 separate ways to start the year squeaky clean. Click the links above to get to each section, and remember: If Madonna can reinvent herself every few years, so can you.

The post Like a Virgin appeared first on Jewcy.

“The blood’s fake, I know it is,” insisted one of the American wedding guests. “Well, I fucking hope so,” I said to myself.

I didn’t stay in the city long, but four days was enough to get me off my bearings. We arrived late at night, en masse, on a private bus from Jaipur. The hotel where we first disembarked was wickedly overpriced and the beds were made of sand. Jeff, Michael, and I hopped from hotel to hotel in subsequent days, but we never found anything better.

Delhi’s not the best place in India to be without a plan. You especially don’t want that “without a plan” look on your face. That’s when someone wants to take you a hotel, muttering, “Very nice, very clean.”

A driver from the expensive sand hotel took us to a place his cousin (or maybe it was his cousin’s friend?) owned called Dreamland. Dreamland was the kind of temporary home that only worked if you were passed out asleep.

The only night I slept there, I insisted on staying out late and getting as sauced as possible so I couldn’t think about the shirtless guy next door who kept talking to an invisible parrot on his shoulder. The only bar open in Hindi/Muslim Delhi at 10 p.m. on a Thursday was at the Plaza. We got a dazed 13-year-old rickshaw driver to take us there, and when we walked in it was a different world. The perfectly manicured bar was poolside under a giant disco ball. Well-groomed twentysomethings—a mix of nationalities—danced and flirted in $500 shoes. Our driver napped in the rickshaw, and I was glad he couldn’t see the extravagance inside. The cost of a beer could probably feed him for weeks.

Continually barraged by the traffic, poverty, and chaos of Delhi, and with nowhere to regroup, we all started to reach the end of our tethers.

I spent most of my time in the old city, where it’s best not to get too attached to any concrete notions about where you’re going and when you plan to be back. Once we wanted to find a kite. Another time it was fabric. Then silver.

Originally called Shahjahanabad. Old Delhi was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in 1638. In its day, the Muslim Mughal Empire reigned supreme, controlling a huge population and area. Today its narrow winding streets are still occupied mostly by Muslims. At the edge is the giant Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India. No cars can pass through the narrow lanes; the nicest way to see everything is on the back of a bicycle rickshaw, confusingly known as a “helicopters.”

The streets wind in and out of darkness and light. This part of the city, like Jaipur, is also lined with deteriorating old havelis. Once ornate, they now have plastic signs advertising whichever store occupies the first floor. Here in the old city, some of the cautionary tales I heard about India made some sense. Bad smells and oceans of flies emanated from the butcher shops. At one shop, two young goats napped in the sun while a butcher hacked at one of their brethren a few feet away.

Not long after I spotted the doomed goats, I tried to cross an Old Delhi street after lunch. Considering there are no cars and the lane was about 15 feet wide, this shouldn’t have been that hard. But with people and rickshaws and motorcycles all bumper-to-bumper (they all literally touch) yet miraculously moving, I couldn’t do it. At midday the heat pounded, and as I stepped into the road, I got past one direction of traffic but was unable to cross the other.

I looked down. Next to my right foot was a fully flattened dog’s head. Its ears were splayed out as if it had just perked up at the sound of a cat. A Halloween costume? Did they have Halloween in India? Or dog costumes,? I started to feel dizzy, glanced up at the sky, then looked down at it again. Maybe it was a goat and not a dog? Someone yelled at me to hurry up, and I threw myself across the street.

On the other side, my friends were hopelessly haggling with a rickshaw driver. He wanted to put all five of us in his cab, which was clearly built for two. Michael, whose arm was, at that moment, being stroked by a beggar lady, finally snapped.

“Look, buddy,” he yelled in his Aussie drawl while the driver stared blankly, “I’m really beginning to lose my patience with you.” Finally, comic relief.

We climbed into another, unsuspecting rickshaw, this one driven by a boy no older than 13. He looked like he had actually never done this rickshaw thing before, and proceeded to charge off in the wrong direction.

It was impossible not to enjoy the Old City, though. Everything there was magic and mayhem, and why else does one suffer a 15-hour flight if not for magic and mayhem?

Finally, on my last day in the country, we went to a place called the Red Fort, or Lal Qila. This was the 15th-century palace of the Mughal Emperor Shahjahan. Behind its walls were intricate halls and buildings that made up the center of Indian life centuries ago. There were also serene, well-tended lawns where visitors played and picnicked.

How did we not know about this place? It may have been the most peaceful spot in Delhi. You could even hear birds chirping. We all lay down and napped immediately. If I learned anything in India, it was to treasure peace and quiet, and nap without delay.

The post Magic and Mayhem appeared first on Jewcy.

Perhaps I didn’t yet tell you about the cows. There are cows everywhere. Sure, everyone knows that Hindus consider cows sacred. But sacred is relative. Nobody eats the cows, but nobody feeds them either. One of the most common tableaus is a cow munching on a pile of trash. Second to that might be a cow munching on a poster pasted to the wall. Not a lot of vitamins in those posters, I imagine, nor in the glue. Poor buggers. So you’ve got a lot of sickly looking cows wandering around just trying to make it to their next Bollywood release.

But back to the city. Jaipur is beautiful. It’s called the Pink City because of the pinkish-orangey wash that covers many of the old stucco buildings. Jaipur was once a feudal state and the lords built elaborate castles, or havelis, to protect their land and (I imagine) to show off. Now havelis line the streets and give the city an air of dilapidated regality.

In Jaipur we made another predawn arrival to a hotel fit for princes, or at least imperialists of some sort. Beyond the gates was the screaming, choking, electric city. And inside was a well-tended garden where whiteys of all types drank tea and smoked cigarettes, waited on by extremely attentive Indians. It was at once very comfortable and very uncomfortable.

Holi We arrived on the eve of Holi, the first day of spring. To celebrate the holiday, people throw water and “colors”—mysterious powered stuff—on one another. In the old days, fevers in springtime could be deadly, and the powder used to have curative properties. Nowadays the powder is often toxic and the ritual itself is more an excuse to get someone (a female most likely) really wet and really messy. Think Puerto Rican Day Parade, year 2000, New York City. Not good.

Before the colors, there were fires. The night before Holi, celebrators set fires all over the city, burning wood, brush, plastic bags, and whatever else fell into the pile. Jeff and I took a tuk-tuk (motorized rickshaw) ride through Jaipur, and every 20 feet there was another bonfire. It was like the Indian apocalypse. It was awesome.

The next day we decided to avoid the water- and paint-throwing and hang out with the wedding party for dance lessons. An auntie commandeered a minivan and cranked up the Bollywood hits on the sound system. The party raged. Which led, in turn, to the abrupt end of my sobriety. Did I drink too many Kingfishers? Did someone crack open the Bombay Sapphire? If only.

Along with setting fires and defiling innocent people’s clothing and skin, another Holi tradition is to drink Bhang, a potent distillation of the cannabis plant. I was absent during the sentence that included the word cannabis and simply accepted a class from Krishna, one of the groom’s father’s friends. There was some concern over the concoction, but it centered on the cleanliness of the ice cubes. All the old people were taking sips, so I figured it was some kind of harmless tea. It tasted like dirt, but in the spirit of cultural openness, I drank it.

An hour later, I was having lunch with one of the bride’s friends, whom I had met two hours ago. I started talking uncontrollably. What the fuck? And then I realized.

“I am so high,” I said.

A middle-aged dean of engineering had just dosed me. I needed to lie down immediately. An hour later I felt stable enough to wander down to the garden where I found the only other person stupid enough to drink his whole glass of Bhang, Jeff.

We confirmed that we both felt like we just ate five pot brownies. I have never been dumb enough to eat five pot brownies, but I’m fairly confident this was what it would feel like. Jeff had a big smile on his face and was taking it much better than I was. The two recurrent thoughts running through my head were, “I’m going to kill Krishna,” and “I cannot, under any circumstances, be high for the first wedding event tonight.”

I ordered a hot curry and sat down with Jeff and another friend of the groom, Michael Dean. I had never met this Michael Dean before and the first thing he said to me was,

“Man, that stuff lasts for ten, twelve hours,” in an Australian accent.

“He’s lying,” Jeff said.

“Ten, twelve hours,” Michael repeated.

The Bhang wore off about 4 hours later. Michael Dean turned out to be just that kind of prick. Somehow I ended up hanging out with him for the next week.

Riches and Rickshaws With that, the Indian wedding began: two nights and three days of sparkling outfits, rich food, and heartfelt professions of love. The bride and groom were regal in their embroidered finery. The marriage ceremony was held at the Rambaugh Palace, perhaps the swankest hotel in the entire country. Only in India would the men’s clothes be as much a topic of conversation as the women’s. In attendance were two camels, an elephant, and several horses. Tourists lined up to take pictures of the procession. Rose petals covered the pond and the ground. The opulence was stunning.

I thought about the poverty some miles down the road. Jaipur is a booming city. New construction projects appear on every block. But most people are still incredibly poor. Towards the end of the wedding festivities, the entire wedding party retired to the lovely minimalist house-turned-hotel where the newlyweds’ family was staying. It was the night of the marriage ceremony, and because there hadn’t been much dancing at the event, people definitely wanted to party.

I had a cold at that point, and had already gotten quite the chill in my own wedding finery at the outdoor ceremony, so I found a comfortable chair and parked myself in it. The group got rowdy pretty fast and soon bottles of Johnnie Walker labeled with colors I had never seen before appeared out of suitcases. The resident musician got on the Indian drums called tablas, toasts were given, and a few of the drunker souls started dancing. Then someone poured a drink for the driver of the bus that ferried us to all the events. It was the size of a glass of iced tea, but filled entirely with scotch.

The driver took the glass and the party continued. It could have been a few hours, or a few minutes—in any case, I had used up many, many tissues—when two of the aunties came downstairs in a tizzy.

“The driver has gotten drunk and is insulting people!”

“Where did he get the liquor anyway?”

“He must have stolen it!”

“Can you believe, he wanted to join the party?!”

“I knew he was a bad man from the moment I saw him.”

Later I was able to piece together that the driver had somehow (somehow?) gotten quite drunk and tried to join the rest of the guests in drunkenly singing and telling stories. This kind of headlong barreling over class lines might raise some awkward eyebrows in the states, but in India, it’s just not done.

After that, little Johnnie Walker stumbled over to the security gate and got in a kerfuffle with the security guards. The guards, indignant that a man of a lower rank was drunk and uppity, called the party’s hosts and the hotel management to complain.

Every wedding has some drunken drama, but this guy probably lost his job afterwards. And who knows what would happen to him, his wife, four children, sick aunt, and legless nephew? Okay, I made up the nephew, but in a country where half the children are malnourished—a statistic that has barely moved in the last decade—the truth can’t be too far from the fiction.

Next: The congested madness of Delhi

The post Going out With a Bhang appeared first on Jewcy.

The post Where Are All the Indian Yoga Students? appeared first on Jewcy.

Hmm. “I don’t not believe in Karma,” I said. “But I can’t say I believe in it either.” Iryse told me that she was in a car accident months back. Part of the reason she came to the holy city of Rishikesh was to figure out if there were healing Karmic forces at work. I cringed. I won’t hide anything. I live in Los Angeles and I went to India for the enlightenment too. Sort of. Ostensibly I was there for a friend’s wedding, but I got the invite after about six months of practicing yoga. Like most 30-year-olds (or so I like to think), I was unsure about nearly everything in my life. What better place to find answers than magical spiritual Incredible India!® I decided to spend my first week in the northern city of Rishikesh. If you recognize the name, it might be because that’s where The Beatles studied with the Maharashi Mahesh and allegedly wrote much of The White Album. The song “Sexy Sadie” is actually about the Maharishi himself, written after the falling out. Apparently he made a fool of everyone. Fate would have it that another wedding guest, a San Franciscan I didn’t know named Jeff, also decided to spend several weeks before the nuptials in Rishikesh. Soon after arriving, he emailed to stop me from signing up for a $600 tour package. Indeed, I spent under $300 during my entire stay in India, with about $100 going to room, food, and yoga in Rishikesh. Most of it went toward the taxi from the airport.
Upon arriving in Delhi, I got directly in a taxi for the five-hour ride to Rishikesh. I’d flown four hours from Los Angeles and another fifteen from Chicago, and it was now midnight. A cab ride after all that may seem a little crazy, sure, but I hadn’t heard much good about the big city, and I had less than three weeks to reach a place of peacefulness. There was no time to waste in a Delhi hotel. The first hitch was that the taxi driver dropped me off across the Ganges River from my hotel. He pointed into the predawn darkness and motioned for me to get out of the cab. Outside a man cooked up something in a cart while a few others huddled on the floor next to him. There were sleeping bodies wrapped in blankets all around the taxi stand. The cab driver motioned to a footbridge that disappeared out of sight, which is when I realized how good I had it in that cab. After some confusion and pleading on my part, it was clear that this car was going no further. I put on my backpack and blinked into the shadows. A Clean and Sober Life As an introduction to India, predawn Rishikesh could have been worse. It was more peaceful than any other time I would spend in the country. I had the name of my hotel wrong, but that didn’t deter anyone I asked. “Ten minutes this way,” one said pointing south. I trudged 15 minutes south. Nothing. “Ten minutes this way,” said the owner of grocery store pointing north. Everyone was extremely helpful. I walked across the footbridge over the Ganges five times before the sun rose.
I plodded this way and that, threading through beggars lined up to get food at temples. I called Jeff at the hotel every half hour. No answer. Finally around 7 am, the sun came out, and the town came alive. And best of all, he answered the phone. Oh, the name was the Shiva Hotel, not the Yog Peeth. When Jeff came to greet me on the footbridge at around 7:30 am, it was the first time we had ever met. For a dude who had already been in India for two weeks, he looked clean and perky. I had been in the country for eight hours and it looked like someone had punched me. It was probably all the sobriety, yoga, and naps. Rishikesh is a holy city, so there is no meat or alcohol in the whole town. Some places catering to foreigners have paid off the authorities and will sell you a beer or a plate of chicken at ridiculously inflated prices. But I’m too cheap for a $10 beer in SoHo, much less India. By the end of the week I hadn’t touched alcohol or meat, and more importantly I had consumed just two cups of mediocre coffee. I hadn’t been this sober since I was 17. I was sleeping better, but still no enlightenment. Next: Neille discovers the yoga apartheid of Rishikesh.

The post The Enlightenment Industry appeared first on Jewcy.

In the six weeks I spent waiting to hear whether I tested positive for the cancer gene, I refused to think about the results. Perhaps I was just as fatal about my genes as my mother. To me, getting the test was akin to having the mutation. It never occurred to me that I might test negative.

The post A Jewish Girl’s Guide to Genetic Testing (Part Four) appeared first on Jewcy.

My mother and I made a deal. I would get tested for the breast cancer gene, and in exchange, she would go to therapy for at least six months.

The post A Jewish Girl’s Guide to Genetic Testing (Part Three) appeared first on Jewcy.

That grumpiness followed her home to our West Los Angeles condo. I knew that a hysterectomy meant removing the uterus and ovaries, but I didn’t realize that it would throw her hormones out of whack. And I didn’t understand why she had the operation. She was 35 and in good health. To me, she had inexplicably decided to have surgery for no real reason, and the resulting craziness was her fault. When I think back now, I realize she wasn’t crazier, just unhappy.

My mother had her ovaries removed because she was sure she had the cancer curse. Long after her surgery, but shortly after scientists discovered the mutation that caused ovarian cancer, my mother underwent genetic testing to find out for sure. The results were positive.

For Jews, it turns out, fearing cancer isn’t just a neurosis. A disproportionate number of Jewish women have the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation: Where the odds in the general population are 1 in 450, for Jewish women, the likelihood that they have a mutation is 1 in 40. Geneticists attribute this to the founder effect, a theory suggesting that genes in certain isolated communities-Iceland and Finland are others-can be traced back to a small number of “founders” who marry only within the group. Intermarriage normally gets rid of unhealthy genetic mutations, since only the children who inherit the healthy genes survive. When the founders only marry each other, though, those unhealthy genes stick around, For Ashkenazi Jews, the founders were a few thousand people who lived in Eastern Europe 500 years ago. My family is Sephardic, but we most likely wound up with the cancer curse by a similar process.

After the surgery, my mom tried every conceivable dose of estrogen in every conceivable fashion. The pills didn’t work. Neither did the time-release patch. Finally her doctor prescribed Estrogel, which came in a long metal tube that she measured out on a spatula and rubbed on her thighs and arms, near major arteries. She kept dozens of tubes in a drawer in the bathroom that she instructed me never to touch. And with all the grief it caused her, I didn’t dare. To top it off, she couldn’t get dressed until the gel was completely dry, so she would walk around the house stark naked for a half-hour every night, insulting my strict 13-year-old sense of decorum.

I hated everything about my mother’s hysterectomy and subsequent estrogen binge, and I wasn’t shy about letting her know. That opinion only solidified as I grew older and more annoyingly well-read. Once in high school I gave her a newspaper article that counseled against preventative hysterectomies.

“I win,” I remember thinking, “Science and rationality triumph over superstition and crazy.”

She took one look at the headline and gave it back to me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. In a rare moment of tact, I let it go.

But I wasn’t the only one who could push buttons. As I got older, my mother extended her sense of cancer doom to me. Soon she was handing me articles: on foods that prevent cancer, vitamins that prevent cancer, even exercises that prevent cancer. If it prevented cancer, my mother knew about it and mailed it to me, or slipped it into conversation with about as much subtlety as a brick.

The word itself signaled a fight. When my mother mentioned something about “our” cancer, as if it was some private, fun trait we shared, I’d pick angrily at my cuticles. I wanted out of her neurosis. I moved to New York City for college and stayed long after graduating.

Although she’d never sat me down and told me our family’s cancer history, it felt like something I always knew. We mentioned ovarian cancer-and our relatives who had it-so casually that it seemed ordinary. Didn’t everyone’s grandmother, great-grandmother and great-aunt die of ovarian cancer?

It was only a few months ago, after I moved back to Los Angeles, that my mother told me the full story of her mother Soli’s sickness. I took her out to a belated birthday brunch in West Los Angeles. It was an unremarkable sunny summer day, and I had planned to ask her some questions about our family for this piece. I needed straightforward details-dates, names. Instead, I found myself moved in a way I’d never been before. For the first time, I found cancer scary and unfair and strange-the way most people see it-instead of manipulative and irritating.

Soli, my mother’s mother, died at 49 in Istanbul of ovarian cancer while, in the very same hospital, her own mother was dying of the same disease. A year later, Soli’s sister, Sibelle, who had taken care of my mother during Soli’s illness, was diagnosed-again with ovarian cancer. It wasn’t six months before she died.

Soli lived a year after she was diagnosed, which even in the United States today is a very long time. In 1969 Turkey it was a miracle. A crappy kind of miracle. Ovaries are so small that once a tumor is big enough to be detected, it’s almost always too late for any treatments to work. During the final three months, Soli had no veins left in her arms through which to feed the IV. The doctors used a vein in her foot, then one in her forehead. “Even when fluid filled her lungs, they didn’t just let her die,” my mother said to me, emotionless. “Then they cut a hole in her back to pump air through.”

For the first time I imagined my mother at 18, a time when she still needed a mom, watching a nurse tapping out every vein in her mother’s body. I spent years in therapy trying to understand my own childhood to decipher all the mundanely bad stuff in my own life: relationships, commitment issues. But I could not come near understanding what it would have been like at 18 to change your mother’s colostomy bags. I was bawling.

I’m not sure why that particular brunch unlocked a well of empathy inside me. Maybe it was because I was older, but I suspect the real reason was that I was now knew what the test really meant. I had begun to learn the awful truth of the BRCA mutations from people who were not related to me. I learned my mother wasn’t the only person to have healthy organs removed to prevent cancer, and that in fact many doctors recommended such procedures, even my surgeon friend from college. For once, I stopped approaching her emotions with suspicion and started doing so with love. “Did you want her to die?” I sniffed. “Were you conflicted?”

“Hmmm. No. I don’t think so. I can’t really remember what I wanted anymore,” she said. “But I know that when Sibelle died two years later I thought God hated me.”

Next week: The genetic mutation wager, or, How I learned to start worrying and fear for my life.

* * *

For more information, check out Jewcy’s ever-evolving genetic testing wiki, where you can find-and post-links to resources, support groups, and more.

The post A Jewish Girl’s Guide to Genetic Testing (Part Two) appeared first on Jewcy.