Day: March 16, 2004

For centuries, Jewish communities lived in fear that many of their babies would thrive through infancy, only to become blind and demented as toddlers and die by age 5. That described the ordeal of Joseph Ekstein, a Hasidic rabbi in Brooklyn. Over three decades, he and his wife lost four children to Tay-Sachs Disease, and their experience was not unusual. Some families were just unlucky.