(Published in Neshama,
2002)
Esther Rome,
1945-1995; Making Better Lives for
Women
By Ruth
Kertzer Seidman
To engage in
Tikkun Olam, repairing the world,
we must have the gift of insight-to see the world’s wrongs that need to
be
righted and to know how to set goals in order to right those wrongs.
Esther
Rome, my dear sister-in-law of blessed memory, was the possessor of
that
spiritual insight, that ability to set
goals
and accomplish them.
Esther was a
founder of the Boston Women’s
Health Book Collective, one of the authors of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and an effective women’s health
advocate.
Born on Rosh
Hashanah in 1945, just as a new
life and new hopes were starting for so many, Esther, my husband’s sister, grew up in a very small town in eastern
In her
childhood and early adolescence, Esther
watched her mother deal with a serious illness in the absence of
adequate
health care information. This was an important influence on what came
to be her
life's work of empowering women worldwide to demand respect and control
over
their own health decisions. Our Bodies, Ourselves has now been
translated into 19 languages including Hebrew, and further translations
and
adaptations are in progress. The latest edition, published in 1998, is
distributed worldwide.
Esther
participated effectively as a media
spokesperson and as a consumer representative. When toxic shock
syndrome
emerged as a serious problem, she served for many years on the American
Society
for Testing and Materials tampon task force, where she advocated for
responsible labeling changes. She served on the Food and Drug
Administration
Committee that investigated the potential hazards of silicon breast
implants.
And on an individual level, she created and ran a support group for
women who
were experiencing devastating symptoms from silicon implants.
While
influencing the larger world through her
writing, media appearances, and advocacy work, Esther continued to
exercise
loving care and concern for her family and those around her. She took
great joy
and spiritual satisfaction in her life with her husband and two sons,
traveling, gardening, creating a Jewish home, and supporting Jewish
causes.
Tikkun Olam on a grand scale did not preclude a very thoughtful
attention to
those around her, and Judaism continued to be an important part of her
life.
At the age of
42 Esther was diagnosed with
breast cancer. She and her family, friends, colleagues, and health care
providers made every effort to confront and overcome the disease in the
less
than eight years remaining to her.
With a
coauthor, Esther wrote Sacrificing
Ourselves for Love, addressing the health risks of choices women
make and
covering such topics as breast implants, sexually transmitted diseases,
and
domestic violence. She completed the book shortly before her death, and
publication was a year later. The book has had influence both in the
Though
failing in
health, Esther had the strength of will and purpose
to
accomplish what I believe to be her final goals. In the last few months
of her
life, she completed the revisions of Sacrificing Ourselves for Love,
participated actively in her younger son’s Bar Mitzvah, and lived to
see her
elder
son stand before her as a high school graduate with plans made for
college. She
instigated a first-ever reunion of her mother’s relatives, planned with
two
male cousins who, like her, were to turn 50 in 1995. The family reunion
was
held later that year, in her memory.
On Shabbat Shelah, 26
Sivan 5755 (
_________________________________________________________
Ruth Kertzer Seidman is a Reconstructionist and a feminist. In her professional life, she is an academic librarian. Ruth is currently pursuing her interest in the many facets of Jewish spirituality.
ã 2000 Ruth K. Seidman