NEW YORK — Rochelle Shoretz was fond of saying, There are no problems, only solutions.
Her approach to life was not to dwell on bad news, but to channel the energy that friends described as boundless into somehow making things better. It’s what drove her to establish the national cancer organization Sharsheret after she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 28.
On Sunday, May 31, Shoretz died of complications from the disease at her home in Teaneck, NJ. She was 42.
At the time of her initial diagnosis, she was an attorney, a former clerk to a US Supreme Court justice and the mother of two young boys. While others might have been compelled to save their strength, Rochie, as friends and family called her, shared hers. She launched Sharsheret in 2001 while still undergoing chemotherapy.
”When I was diagnosed, there were a lot of offers to help with meals and transport my kids, but I really wanted to speak to another young mom who was going to have to explain to her kids that she was going to lose her hair to chemo,” Shoretz told JTA in 2003, describing Sharsheret’s origins.
Colorado Jewry had a special relationship with Sharsheret. JEWISHcolorado became the first federation in the US to launch a chapter of Sharsheret in 2014, after Shoretz spoke at CHOICES.
The IJN interviewed Shoretz on Nov. 29, 2013, Rochelle Shoretz, Sharsheret founder, turns her cancer battle into a national resource for Jewish women.
Comparing her first diagnosis at 28 to Stage 4 at age 38, she told the IJN that the second diagnosis is typically harder.
“The first diagnosis comes around like a freight train. You tell yourself you’re going to do everything you can to get better and you get through it.
“The second time you think, ’But I’ve already done everything I can to get better! So what am I going to use to inspire and motivate me to make it this time?'”
Sharsheret was always her answer.
Doug Seserman, president and CEO of JEWISHcolorado, said that ”Rochelle’s passing is a true loss for both the Jewish world and the cancer community. In the words of the Sharsheret leadership, We will honor her memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the criticical work she loved so much.”
SHARSHERET, A Teaneck-based nonprofit, provides educational and support services to young Jewish women living with breast cancer and ovarian cancer or are at heightened risks for those diseases, as are many Jews of Ashkenazi descent.
One in 40 Ashkenazi Jews, both men and women, carry genetic mutations that increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.
Shoretz beat cancer the first time around, but in 2009 the disease returned and spread. Still, she pressed forward in her work and ran in triathlons and climbed Machu Picchu in Peru.
“They often say when you lose one of five senses, your others are enhanced,” Shoretz told the New York Jewish Week in 2010.
“I wonder if life feels so much more powerful and vibrant because I lost some of my health.
“She was a doer,” her colleagues said, “realizing — especially after her cancer came back — that she had no time to waste.”
“But at the same time, she would emphasize the need to literally block out time to think, to make sure what we are doing is right and everyone who connected to Sharsheret is important, is a link in the chain,” said Elana Silber, Sharsheret’s director of operations, eulogizing Shoretz at her funeral on Monday.
SHARSHERET MEANS chain in Hebrew. Shoretz was an Orthodox Jew.
Today, the organization Shoretz founded runs programs nationwide and has an annual budget of about $2.25 million, 16 staff members and offices in Teaneck and Hollywood, Fla.
Sharsheret receives support from individual donors, family foundations and the pharmaceutical industry, and was recently awarded a $1.8 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control to increase access to its programming.
Sharsheret maintains a peer network of 4,200 comprising Jewish women across the denominational spectrum;
• runs a genetics hotline for individuals and families to discuss their cancer risk;
• hosts webinars on topics ranging from clinical trials to managing relationships as a cancer survivor; and
• has programs for different cohorts, including parents of young children and women living with advanced metastatic breast cancer or recurrent ovarian cancer.
Silber said Sharsheret will continue the work that was so important to its founder.
”Rochelle was superhuman in so many ways — brilliant, visionary, motivating, passionate and compassionate,” Silber told JTA.
“She was a hero for women and families, and everyone who came in touch with Rochie came in touch with the human side of her as well.”
Shoretz always had the right words to express her gratitude, those who knew her said, and was able to find humor in the darkest places.
As a close friend, Deborah Leipzig said, We talked a lot about cancer, a lot about loss, and we laughed the entire time we were together.
Born on July 27, 1972, Shoretz grew up in Brooklyn. She graduated from Barnard College and Columbia Law School, and in 1999 served as a clerk for US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Shoretz is survived by teenage sons Shlomo and Dovid Mirsky; her mother, Sherry Tenenbaum; her father, Morris Shoretz; five sisters and two brothers. She was a stepdaughter of Jeffrey Tenenbaum and Carol Ann Finkelstein.
The IJN contributed to this story.
