“Just Keep Going” Toby Klein Greenwald


“Just Keep Going”

Toby Klein Greenwald

I received my diagnosis of breast cancer on November 28, 2016. I was in the middle of producing and directing a revival of our Raise Your Spirits Theatre musical Ruth & Naomi in the Fields of Bethlehem, a show – how appropriately -- about chesed.

The cast, crew and stage moms all stepped up to the plate when I told them my news. They, along with my family and close friends, became a loving support group. Every time I walked through the door of the Efrat matnas, where we held our rehearsals, my cancer seemed to disappear. I felt all the love and support I had given my actresses for 16 years come flooding back to me.  

I got a big infusion of faith from one of our choreographers, an Italian dance and theater professional who was studying, along with her Italian artist-performer husband, to convert to Judaism. Her post-conversion name is “Emuna Bracha” – Faith and Blessing. She would talk to me about God’s goodness and the fact that He always has a plan.

The day she and her husband completed their conversion and got (re)married, according to halacha, was a chemotherapy day for me. I was utterly exhausted, but I went to the wedding, took two jingly belly-dancing belts, went into the circle, tied one around Emuna Bracha’s hips, the other around mine, and for five minutes I danced with her. I felt it was my badge of courage. I had decided there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to bring joy to this bride.  I was exhausted afterwards, but it was worth it.

The tag line for our show became, “A miracle will lead us through it all.” It came from one of the songs in the show, but everyone in our cast and crew understood that, for me, it was a double entendre.

Friends and family brought gifts, treats, healing hands, and – most important -- themselves. During a particularly difficult week, one friend came on Purim with her daughter, who told her mother afterwards, “I understand now the impact of bikur holim. When we walked through the door, Toby could not lift her head off the couch. By the time we left, she was sitting up and laughing.”

I discovered the power of prayer. Rabbi Benjy Levene had given me a Tehillim and another friend told me it was important to say Perek 100 every day – Mizmor l’Todah (Song of Thanks). In Rabbi Levene’s Tehillim, there was a citation, by the editor, that this psalm is said to overcome our enemies. I loved the idea that thanking God is the way we vanquish our enemies. My operation was on the 17th of Tammuz, and I felt that the fasting and davening of all my family and friends were shaking the heavens.

I (re)discovered how important gratitude is, and was thankful for every new day, for my husband, my children, my grandchildren, and for everything I had in life.

A friend, who had breast cancer five years earlier told me, “Radiation was a spiritual experience for me. Every time I got on that table, I imagined God coming down and zapping the bad stuff out of me.” I, too, would get on the table and use that time to communicate with God.

I decided to drive myself to radiation alone. My role model was my mother’s cousin, a breast cancer patient 30 years earlier, who had driven herself to radiation and afterwards to teach. I’d weave along the winding Wallaje road to Hadassah every morning at 6:15 am, have my telepathic talk with God, grab a latte in the lobby and drive home.

In 2006 I had co-directed a theater project, called “Secrets,” with Anglo youth who were struggling with their new oleh status. I asked them to write a scene called, “Voices in my Head.” One of their voices kept coming back to encourage me. It was: “Just keep going.”

A young neighbor told me that I was her “hero” because whenever she saw me, I was smiling. “I’m not a hero,” I told her. “Heroes are individuals who go beyond their capabilities. But this is the only way I know how to live.”

Like Rivka, in our current RYS show, for whom I wrote the song, “Eilech” – “I will go” – that is what life is all about. Going forward. “Just keep going.”

Adapted from an essay in Jewish Action Magazine that won an American Jewish Press Association Simon Rockower award in 2019 for Excellence in Jewish Journalism.