What the
Bar Mitzvah
Boy Really
Learned Ben Ross
BY MELISSA JACOBS
Ben Ross doesn’t
believe in God.

He doesn’t like
the violence in
the Bible, nor
does he think that its stories ac-
tually happened. And if God really
is the Almighty, how can Ben ex-
plain what happened to his father?
In September 2014, Dr. Michael Ross
was diagnosed with Stage IV of a rare kind
of colon cancer. “Michael’s case was so off-the-
books that we didn’t have a standard of care to
follow,” explains his oncologist, Dr. Ursina Teitelbaum
of Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center. Five-year
survival rates for colon cancer hover at around 6 percent. So
at about the same time that Ben started studying for his Bar Mitzvah,
his father started fighting for his life.

It’s a good life. Michael is a sports medicine physician and the
founder and director of the Rothman Institute’s Performance Lab.

He designed the lab to improve athletes’ performances by diagnosing
and treating their often-unseen physical obstacles. His wife is Dr.

Wendy Ross, an autism expert and the founder of Autism Inclusion
Resources. Wendy believes that, with the proper support, people
with autism can visit museums, attend sporting events and travel
on airplanes without becoming overwhelmed and agitated. For her
work, she was nominated as a 2014 CNN Hero.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because the Rosses were public about
Michael’s diagnosis and treatment, chronicling it on Facebook and
in the media. Their goals were to increase awareness about colon
cancer and raise money for research for cures. The Rosses are can-
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MARCH 31, 2016
do people who, when faced with cancer, were determined to kick
its tush.

But the disease was a formidable opponent. It eluded imaging,
playing a lethal form of peek-a-boo as it hid in the tunnels of
Michael’s intestines. “It’s hard to fight what you can’t see, let alone
excise,” Teitelbaum says. Following her advice and that of Dr.

Daniel Labow, chief of surgical oncology at Mount Sinai Hospital
in New York, Michael decided to have cutting-edge surgery and
hot chemo, a new and nasty-sounding treatment that pumps the
medication directly into his abdominal cavity. It worked. Michael’s
status is now NED: There is no evidence of disease in his body.

The cancer is gone.

So, it was time to party. Two weeks before Ben’s March 5 Bar
Mitzvah at Congregation Beth Am Israel, the Rosses sat at the
kitchen table in their Wynnewood home to discuss the father-son
celebration. As his mitzvah project, Ben created websites that raised
more than $7,000 for Teitelbaum and Labow’s discretionary funds.

The Rosses also raised money by selling blue T-shirts with yellow
semi-colons that reference Michael’s now partial (or semi) colon.

Michael thinks the T-shirts are not only empowering, but hysterical.

There’s a saying that God has a strange sense of humor, and if that’s
true, God would love the Rosses. “When life gives you cancer, you
make cancer jokes,” Michael says. He’s full of them, and Ben slings
zinger after zinger. Wendy mostly rolls her eyes and sighs, clearly
having given up on censoring her husband or son.

This is what everyone says about the Rosses: that their unflagging
optimism and infectious positivity is not only admirable, but down-
right heroic. Teitelbaum, a mother of three, says that Ben is a role
model for other kids whose parents are going through illnesses.

Labow even wrote Ben a letter bursting with praise.

Ben scoffs at the idea that he’s the poster boy for parents with
SIMCHAS JEWISHEXPONENT.COM




cancer. Ben is quite a handful and he knows it. “So cancer turned
me into a saint? Give me a break,” he says. “It didn’t change my dad,
either. He was a warrior before cancer and he’s a warrior still. Cancer
isn’t magic, certainly not the good kind. It’s a disease. Nothing pos-
itive comes from disease. It only does one thing: It sucks.”
That’s the truth, as plain and simple as it is refreshing. All of the
community support was amazing, Ben says, but in some ways, it
was camouflage for the really scary parts of last year. Ben’s parents
wouldn’t tell him the survival rates for colon cancer because, they
say, Michael’s form of it was rare. Ben went online and learned the
sobering facts for himself. “I wish they’d just given it to me straight,”
he says. “If I’m supposed to talk to my parents about everything,
then that includes the stuff that’s really hard — and that includes
the fact that Dad might have died. Like, let’s just be honest and talk
about it.”
They did. And Ben’s right. “It did suck,” Michael admits as his
eyes water with tears. “God, this is really hard to talk about. It sucked.

No doubt.”
And it wasn’t fair. Michael dedicated his life to healing other peo-
ple. He exercises religiously and is a vegan master of clean living.

Michael did everything right but still got a rare, very deadly cancer
at a young age. “No, it’s not fair,” Michael agrees as a few tears ease
down his visage. “I haven’t put thoughts to this because it’s easier to
dwell on the positive.”
But Ben has put thought to this, aided by his Bar Mitzvah tutor,
Rabbi Yitzhak Nates of Derech HaLev, a havurah in Lower Merion
Township and Jenkintown. Nates says that, whether he realizes it
or not, Ben’s questioning God is quintessentially Jewish. “With Ben
more than the average student, we’ve been talking about ways to
live life, what’s important and how we want to spend our days,” Nates
says. “He’s gravitated to larger religious questions, probably because
he’s dealing with large issues.”
Truth is, Ben didn’t need to read the Bible or memorize a Haftorah
to become a Jewish adult. He learned Jewish values like family, com-
munity, tikkun olam and courage by watching his parents, especially
his father.

Back at the Ross’s kitchen table, Michael wishes that Ben could’ve
learned those life lessons without cancer. The worst part of last year,
Ben Ross (left) and his father, Dr. Michael Ross, share a moment
together before Ben’s Bar Mitzvah.

Michael says, was the uncertainty over whether he would live or
die. Watching Ben and his younger brother, Jacob, deal with his can-
cer was more painful than anything Michael experienced physically.

As he thinks about it, Michael’s eyes fill with tears again.

“Oh, Dad,” Ben gently scolds his father as Michael lets the tears
flow. Ben circles the table to where Michael sits and wraps his father
in a big hug. They stay like that for a while, in what seems like a fa-
miliar embrace. Ben comforts his father with pats on the back, having
no problem displaying affection. He’s proud of their bond and un-
derstands that, although Michael’s warrior status is uncontested,
Ben himself is a source of his father’s strength. It seems that Ben has
plenty to share. Clearly, the boy has become a man. l
A team of Michael Ross’ supporters ran the Philadelphia Marathon wearing “semi-colon” shirts in a show of solidarity.

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