Tay-Sachs: A Parent’s Story

In the meantime, we took Evan to see a pediatric ophthalmologist. Midway through the exam, the doctor found a cherry-red spot on his retina. This news was like having a dagger stabbed through our hearts, since this was an almost certain indicator that Evan had Tay-Sachs disease. I contacted my OB-GYN, who, upon re-examining my records, discovered that I had actually tested positive as a Tay-Sachs carrier.

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The Road to Discovery

Rachel Chaikof was two years old when, with the help of cochlear implants, she heard her mother’s voice for the first time. “Cry Rachel, cry Rachel, ” her mother sang, alongside Rachel’s grandmother, who clapped her hands, watching her granddaughter, born completely deaf, respond to sound. “My family and I never understood why my sister and I were born deaf,” Rachel, now 30, says, “We knew it was genetic, but we never really had an answer.”

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Nathan Guttman: Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Why is America’s strongest faith-based bloc that opposes the war—the Jewish community—sitting this conflict out? From the front lines of the civil-rights movement through the Vietnam War protests and up to the campaign to stop genocide in Darfur, American Jews have never been shy about forming opinions, fighting for them, and even being arrested and harassed for voicing them in protest. So why were there so few placards representing Jewish groups floating above the thousands of antiwar protesters who marched on the Pentagon in March to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War? And why were Jewish groups also absent a month earlier, when tens of thousands gathered on the National Mall to call for an immediate pullout from Iraq? It might seem natural for any religious or ethnic group to sit out the Iraq debate,...

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