ISRAEL

HERE’S NO greater value for a Charedi woman than modesty.”

So said the former chief of staff for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, Rabbi Dov Halbertal. He was explaining why posters raising awareness of breast cancer screening in Charedi society were inappropriate for the very population they were crafted to reach. No matter how carefully posters talking about women’s health are worded, he explained, the fact that they address women at all makes them inherently immodest.

How, then, does one convey a message about women’s health to those who have no access to the internet or television, and where “kosher” radio stations won’t utter the words “breast cancer”? Doesn’t the very absence of information in these women’s lives mean that they are the ones who most need to hear it?

Three major Israeli medical studies in the past decade have revealed that, despite the fact that Charedi women develop breast cancer at a lower rate than the general population, they suffer a 30 per cent higher mortality rate from the disease.

There are numerous unofficial theories as to why they are disproportionately dying