Amy Ettinger, who inspired readers with her life-affirming essays, succumbs to cancer at 49

• Published date: 09 April 2024
• Author: ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL/JTA
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Ettinger's essays focused on the things she was able to do and cherish despite her diagnosis with a rare, incurable cancer called leiomyosarcoma: seeing a live performance of "Mamma Mia!" with her 14-year-old daughter, Julianna; eating her favorite pastry from a San Francisco bakery

"I've learned that life is all about a series of moments, and I plan to spend as much remaining time as I can savoring each one, surrounded by the beauty of nature and my family and friends," she wrote.

Ettinger was an occasional contributor to Kveller, the Jewish family website that is a Jewish Telegraphic Agency partner. There she wrote about her mother's kugel recipe ("light brown on its crispy top, and the color of milky coffee in the middle"), and how she, as a "non-observant Jew," marked Yom Kippur - which in 2013 happened to fall on her 10th wedding anniversary.

"Like Yom Kippur, a wedding anniversary is a time to take a step back from your daily life - to weigh the good and bad, to contemplate your triumphs and missteps, to make a vow to do better individually and as a couple," she wrote.

Ice cream lover turned inspirational writer

Ettinger was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in Cupertino, California. She discovered her calling as a journalist in high school. She majored in American literature at UC Santa Cruz and earned a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 1999.

Her writing appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, Salon, CNN and Newsweek. In a 2021 article for AARP, she wrote how her mother's death inspired her to learn Sheila Ettinger's favorite game: mahjong. She taught writing classes at Stanford Continuing Studies.

In 2017, Penguin Random House published her...