If it were up to Ilan Biederman, he wouldn’t be carrying the Olympic torch next Friday when it passes through Oakland on its cross-country tour. If the former Netivot Shalom Hebrew teacher had a say in the matter, he would be as far away as possible from the proceedings, forsaking his nomination in favor of the quiet anonymity of another winter’s day. If all was well, next Friday he might simply stay at home in Berkeley.
For that to happen, of course, the recurrent tumors that have ravaged Biederman’s spinal column for the past decade would be only a figment of some bad dream, melting away with the rest of his nighttime phantoms once morning arrives.
He is battling osteoblastoma, a rare tumor that has sent him to six hospitals for 14 major surgeries. It has left him, for the most part, in a wheelchair, reliant on a steady stream of painkillers to simply face each new day as it arrives. Significant hardware has been installed to help support the seven vertebrae that have been mangled both by the tumor and by surgeons’ knives, and since his most recent procedure in April he is still unsure whether his blight has been excised.
Biederman, 30, was raised in Los Angeles, where he was educated in a Jewish day school, the Akiba Academy. He was in his first year at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine when he had his first surgery. After his second surgery, he dropped out. Fluent in Hebrew, he has had to put even a part-time job teaching Hebrew on hold.
But if there is light in every dark situation, the Torch Relay is just that to Biederman. His was one of only 5 percent of the 210,000 nominations to be accepted by the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, and he is thrilled at the notion of being wheeled down the route on 51st Street by his fiancée, Anna Dinaburg.
“It really is an honor,” said Biederman, in anticipation of the event. “It was hugely emotional to find out about it, both for what it means and for the people who care enough to have nominated me.”
Biederman and Dinaburg were engaged in August 2000, and have been inseparable through his ordeal. Before his most recent spate of surgeries, she quit her job at the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay and moved with him first to Baltimore, where he underwent two procedures in a week’s time, and then to Los Angeles for nearly seven months of convalescence at his parents’ home. Now back in Berkeley, she provides the constant care his condition necessitates. It was Dinaburg’s sister, Alissa Stolz, who spearheaded the Olympic nomination effort from her home in Seattle. Via e-mail — keeping her plan secret from Biederman — Stolz solicited letters from his friends and family about the ways in which her brother inspired them. While he was convalescing in Los Angeles, he heard the news of his acceptance via telephone.
“Alissa started reading me this thing, and it was her nomination script,” said Biederman. “After that, she started reading me the acceptance letter, and it all started coming together. Holy cow, I thought, I’ve been nominated. Holy cow, I’ve been accepted. I was floored. I was just so honored, and started to cry, along with Anna and [sister] Yael.”
Such moments of family connection were less frequent before Biederman’s initial diagnosis, he says. His struggle has become his family’s struggle, and he has become significantly closer to his parents and sisters. Yael left U.C. Berkeley for a semester to be near her brother in Los Angeles during his third and fourth surgeries in 1994, recently returning to Berkeley to be near him again. “My whole family went through a major transformation,” he said. “Because we all went through this together it really brought us so much closer.”
Likewise, Biederman’s relationship with Dinaburg has been pushed to the limits of intimacy and trust. More bright spots: Both of them realize that the lessons they’re learning about each other will serve to strengthen the future they count on sharing.
“I simply would not be where I am today without the help of Anna and my family,” he said. “In the same way that these past eight months have been the hardest of my life, they’ve been the hardest of Anna’s life, too. I can’t even speak justice to what she’s done for me and how much she does for me each day, just to make my life easier and make my life happier.”
As Biederman’s relationships with family and friends changed, so, too, did his relationship with God. While battling his illness, Biederman has embraced religion, which has provided relief as well as support. He attends services at various congregations.
He has come to the realization, he says, that it is not in asking for health that one experiences the power of God, but in asking for the strength to deal with his circumstances. All of Biederman’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors, and he says that the notion of their perseverance through their ordeal helps him through his.
“This tumor changed my life — it changed who I am,” he said. “It has made me appreciate life much more fully, and it gave me this attitude that I have to really enjoy and make the most of each day.”
Next Friday, that day will involve friends, family, outpourings of emotion and, at the end of three feet of silver and glass, one Olympic flame.