by Dana Asher

A student at Vassar College, Bobby was waiting tables near his home in New York City that summer. A close friend of his - who, unbeknownst to his mother, was Bobby's first boyfriend - committed suicide. When Benzer offered her condolences to his mother, she asked if anyone knew why a promising young man would end his life. "Didn't you know?" his mother answered. "He had AIDS."

"I didn't even know at the time that my son, then 20, was gay. It wasn't until then that we really talked about it," says Benzer, owner of a knitwear business in Manhattan. "I dealt with the typical losses - the fact that he would never have children, that his life would be harder as a gay man, but I accepted him then and accept him now. Still, I was so afraid that Bobby's number was up, that he would get sick and that would be it."

So Benzer made a deal with God: She would pursue good works if He would keep her son, the younger of two boys, well. She began to volunteer through the Variety House, which helps children who are infected with AIDS and other serious illnesses, getting down on the floor to play with blocks and pushing the kids on the swings.

"I've never experienced prejudice as a Jewish woman. I grew up in Great Neck and I live in Manhattan," explains Benzer, board president of Mother's Voices, a national grassroots organization dedicated to mobilizing parents as educators and advocating for HIV education and prevention. The group was started in 1991 by five Jewish women and one Jewish man and now includes chapters in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami, as well as a "convening group" in Providence. "But we would take these children to the playground - this park on the Upper East Side near where I live - and mothers would pull their children aside, afraid of 'catching' AIDS."

As Benzer's fear for her son began to grow, she reached out for help, eventually find-ing a support group for mothers run by the People with AIDS Coalition held in a Greenwich Village church. There, mothers representing a cross-section of the city - African-American women and Jewish women, women from Spanish Harlem and from the posh Upper East Side, even the homeless - gathered to share their fears, rally support, and foster hope for the future.

One of the first women Benzer befriended in the support group was a Jewish woman from Miami, who was sleeping on the sofa of her ill son, a well-known real estate pro-fessional, so she could care for him. Another Jewish woman had a daughter who had gotten infected through unprotected sex. "We became closer than I was with women I have been friends with for years," Benzer comments. "There was a certain understand-ing between us, we shared this tremendous experience and could really support one another."

That support can be critical, especially when there are members of your own community who deny that AIDS affects Jewish families - particularly when you are a Jewish mother whose fear for her child can mean sleepless night after sleepless night. "There are people from the suburbs that don't want to talk about it. Then, of course, there are issues that are repugnant for some - issues people assume don't happen in 'nice' Jewish families: sex, drug use, and homosexuality." Benzer says. "My friends assumed that AIDS doesn't happen in Jewish families. Then it happened to me."