Last Thursday, I participated in Israel’s first ever Susan G. Komen “Race for the Cure.” I didn’t think much of it when I signed up in school; my mom was the one who got excited when she heard, as she lost her mother to breast cancer in 1984. But I guess in an absentminded way, I was looking forward to it as well.
On race day, our buses pulled up to Gan Sacher at 11:15, where we were meant to sign in and begin the race. My girls immediately took off in all directions, finding their friends from other schools who were also going to be participating in the race. Some of them found fashionably challenged Israelis who were doing warm ups. Naturally, they were joined by my girls.
Soon after we were ushered (read: pushed) to the starting line with the other 5000 participants to listen to speeches by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Sen. Lieberman and the organization’s founder, Nancy G. Brinker (Susan G. Komen’s sister). In true Israeli fashion, people started the race before the Brinker finished her speech since someone had accidentally (or maybe not…?) cut the (pink) ribbon. After Ambassador Brinker was finished speaking, the pink and white balloons were set free and off the rest of us went.
Walking up Betzalel Street to Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive”, with my co-madrichot, we realized that this wasn’t really a race — there was almost no room to walk, let alone run. We kind of felt like an exhibit in the zoo as we passed the different shops on the busy King George street. Shopkeepers and customers came out of their stores to gawk at and applaud us, cabs and buses honked at us (probably because we held up traffic) and media people filmed us. It took us an hour to walk from Gan Sacher to Zion Gate, right outside the old city. We finished the race at 1:07 pm and headed straight back to school together.
The race made headlines. Aside from its original purpose of raising awareness and funds to combat breast cancer (which, I learned, kills about 4,000 Israeli women a year), people were intrigued by the fact that this race brought all kinds of different people together, even for a short while. Muslims, Christians and Jews, religious, secular, older, younger, men and women all marched together for a common cause. In this country it’s hard to remember the last time something like that ever happened, if it ever happened; it was, for lack of a better phrase, really cool. It makes me a bit wistful to think that it takes a deadly disease to unite people.
