Odd Mom Out star Jill Kargman has revealed that she underwent a preventative double mastectomy earlier this year — but it wasn’t the pain and discomfort from surgery that kept her up at night during her recovery.
The 44-year-old, who starred in the three-season Bravo show adapted from her 2007 book Momzillas, opened up about the procedure in a new essay for Tablet magazine, in which she also discussed the heartbreaking anti-Semitism that her young son Fletch faced at school while she was recovering from her surgery.
Jill, who lives on New York City’s Upper East Side, said she was still hooked up to drainage tubes when Fletch came home and told her about a classmate calling himself a ‘fan of Hitler’ — and despite her complaints to the school, the classmate faced minimal consequences.
Procedure: Odd Mom Out star Jill Kargman has revealed that she underwent a double mastectomy earlier this year
Jill, who is the sister of Drew Barrymore’s ex-husband Will Kopelman, elected to get the mastectomy when she learned she had a variant of the BRCA gene that would increase her changes of getting breast cancer.
While still recovering, she wrote, she was distracted from her physical pain when Fletch came home on the verge of tears.
He told his mother that another boy in his class had said, ‘I’m a fan of Hitler! God sent Hitler down to kill the Jews because they nailed Jesus to the cross!’
Jill was horrified by the comment, even though she wasn’t entirely surprised — this wasn’t the first time that classmate had made an anti-Semitic remark.
Earlier that year, Fletch was telling classmates that he wasn’t blown away by Radio City Music Hall’s Christmas Spectacular, and the classmate had told him, ‘You just didn’t get it because you are a Jew and the show is made for Christians.’
At the time of the earlier incident, Jill was concerned, but not enraged. She had emailed the headmaster, who oddly wrote back, ‘Courage!’, and then let the situation be.

Cutting: While she was recovering, her son Fletch (pictured in June while paintballing) came home from school to tell her a classmate had made horrific anti-Semitic remarks

Relaxed attitude: Jill (pictured with her son in 2011) complained to the school, but the classmate faced minimal consequences
‘It wasn’t a threat, just a weird thing to say, and I’m not the squeaky-wheel mom who calls my kids’ schools or other mothers. I grew up with an acute distaste for busybodies or tattletales,’ she said.
This time around, though, she didn’t drop it. She was ‘running on Tylenol and sheer rage’ and wasn’t about to let the hateful comment go.
So she and her husband contacted the school, telling them they were ‘furious’. The school put together a disciplinary committee to deal with the matter – and their solution was to punish the anti-Semitic child by excluding him from two field trips.
Jill did not think this punishment was quite enough. What’s more, the offending child ended up only being pulled from one field trip.
‘We found the whole episode extremely upsetting and I found myself — a generally very happy person — in a dark spiral of anguish for a month,’ she said.
At a loss, she spoke to her rabbi.
‘According to my rabbi, anti-Semitic slurs are sharply on the rise,’ she said.

Moving on: She and her husband Harry (pictured together in May) decided to pull their son from the school
‘We are falsely perceived as puppeteers of the media. Waspy friends have confessed to being privy to Locust Valley dinner party whispers of how we’re all “Madoff types” and that copper wire was invented when two Jews found the same penny.’
Jill was leaving Mount Sinai hospital after having her drains removed that she had an idea. She went to a nearby bookstore and picked out several books about the Holocaust.
She wrapped them up and added a note to the anti-Semitic boy’s family, which said: ‘We thought this would prove valuable reading for your family. Best, the Kargmans.’
She had it delivered to them, but never heard anything about it. Still, it made her feel a bit better.
‘Now is the time to speak up. We can’t be afraid of “causing trouble.” And institutions need to have protocols for punishment and community healing, as well as a schoolwide discussion on how this will simply not be tolerated. Racism, religious or sexual discrimination, sexism, none of it,’ she wrote.
Ultimately, unsatisfied with the way her son’s school handled hateful, racist remarks, she and her husband decided to enroll him in a new school this September. She added that she feels lucky that she lives in New York City, where she has that option, as people from smaller towns do not.