Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Sarah Bendiner Fenner, creator of a “Chemotherapy Siddur” and a longtime employee and volunteer at area Jewish organizations, died Aug. 28 at age 47 after a long battle with breast cancer. A resident of San Rafael, she was visiting Claremont, where she had traveled to see her younger son, Evan, enter Pomona College.

In 2002, at the age of 34, Fenner was diagnosed with breast cancer. She created what she called her “Chemotherapy Siddur,” which contained blessings from a variety of sources, as well as cards and photographs. It was later distributed by Jewish Milestones, a Berkeley nonprofit.

“Basically, I thought how would I transform this negative event and the whole sort of ‘fight mentality,’ which I didn’t really relate to at all, and how was I going to make that positive,” she told J. in 2005. “I needed to be able to frame it in a constructive way.”

Although Fenner went into remission, the cancer returned in 2009. While she did some work here and there, including patient advocacy work at Kaiser, she saved most of her energies for her family.

“While cancer colored her life deeply and limited her, she lived a rich and full life despite it,” said her husband, Natan Fenner, a rabbi and board-certified chaplain at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center. “She did not want to be defined by it.”

On Fenner’s Facebook page, tributes continue to arrive from around the world.

“She wanted to do good and had an amazing capacity to cause people to love each other and the world more,” said Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. She and Fenner both served as national vice presidents of the North American Federation of Temple Youth, the Reform movement’s youth organizaion. “She loved a Judaism that accepts who people really are.”

“She was such a presence, through her smile, strength, courage and positive outlook,” said Nechama Tamler, who worked with Fenner at the Bureau of Jewish Education (now Jewish LearningWorks). “It’s her smile that I will never forget.”

Born on June 28, 1967 in Philadelphia, Fenner spent most of her formative years in Claremont, where she became active in NFTY, serving as Southern California president and later national vice president.

Described by many as “wise beyond her years,” and already considered a Jewish leader, Fenner was accepted to be part of Project Otzma’s inaugural year in Israel program, even though she had not gone to college. During that year, she met Natan Fenner.

After some time in Los Angeles, she moved to San Francisco to work at the Bureau of Jewish Edu-cation on its various Israel programs. While she took some classes at the New College of California, she never received a degree.

“By that time, she had such responsibilities in the world and such wisdom and trust of people, that she thought, ‘Why should I have to go back to school for a credential I may not use?’ ” said her husband. Natan and Sarah married in 1991, and shortly after, lived in Israel for a year, where Sarah oversaw the Otzma program. When they returned to the United States, it was to Philadelphia, so her husband could attend the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. While there, she became a certified doula, and gave birth to sons Micah and Evan. They returned to the Bay Area in 2000.

First and foremost, Fenner was devoted to being a mother, said her husband. An enthusiastic cook and food lover, she taught her two sons how to cook, and for a time, had each cook dinner one night a week at home.

But her talents were utilized and felt in many Jewish organizations throughout the Bay Area. She served on the board of Brandeis Hillel Day School, which her sons attended. She worked with Vicky Kelman at the Bureau of Jewish Education to develop a program to support new parents. She coordinated a conference called Models of Cooperation: Reflections on the Jewish Healing Movement, jointly sponsored by the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center, the HUC-JIR Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health, and UCSF School of Medicine.

In addition, she was an active member of two synagogues, Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon, where she worked for a short time, and Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael, as well Or Zarua: Reconstructionist Havurah of the East Bay.

In addition to her husband and sons, Fenner is survived by her mother, Joanna Horowitz of Claremont; sister Naomi Woldemar and brother Jon Bendiner, both of Santa Cruz; and a niece and nephew. Donations in her memory can be made to the Jewish Community High School of the Bay or Brandeis Hillel Day School.