Aging - Who, Me?

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Yom Kippur Afternoon 5766 - Thursday, October 13, 2005

It is very exciting this year at Shir Hadash to see the emergence of a second generation within our congregation. Young people who grew up and were confirmed at Shir Hadash are returning as adults, sometimes with spouses and children. This is what can happen when 25 years go by- with the first group of Shir Hadash Bar and Bat Mitzvah students signing their own children up for Hebrew school.

But this is not the only change that has gone on within the congregation as the years pass. We adults are also aging. When I arrived in 1990 I was told the average age of our members was 38. We were overwhelmingly families with young children. While Shir Hadash continues to have the largest number of children of any synagogue in our community, other segments of our congregation are growing too. All of a sudden I am regularly being shown pictures of new babies by proud grandparents and there are many great grandparents in our congregation as well.

In general throughout the United States the Jewish population is aging relative to the American population as a whole. We have fewer children and more older people, with a higher median age than non-Jewish Americans. This trend is present locally as well. A recent population study of Jews in the Bay Area, which came as far south as Sunnyvale and Cupertino, found that the number of Jews in the age brackets 45-54 and 55-64 was increasing while the number of Jews ages 35-44 was declining. With the first baby boomers hitting 65 in 2010, it is high time that we began to think about this graying of the Jewish community.

Our Torah portion this afternoon, refers specifically to the respect and reverence appropriate to the aged: “Rise before an white haired person, show respect for the elderly, and be God fearing, I am Adonai”. Our tradition is full of older adults playing key roles. Abraham first sets out for Canaan at 75, Moses leads the people out of Egypt at age 80. Joshua boasts that at 85 he is as spry as he was when first chosen as a young man by Moses for a leadership role, and Noah, according to the Midrash,, was the first one to honor not only his parents but also his grandparents. We are advised to listen to the words of our elders, lest things go as poorly for us as they did for King Rachavam, son of King Solomon. This young king rejected the advice of his senior staff, preferring to heed the words of his peers, with the result that the Kingdom of his father split in two, leaving him with only two of the twelve tribes.

Going back to our Torah reading from Leviticus 19, we notice that the verse refers to two groups of older people, seivah and zaken, reminding us that an aging population is also a diverse population. 65 is very different than 85, married is different than widowed, those who have lived in our community all their lives are different than those who have just relocated to our area, and of course, those with good health have different needs than those facing significant illness.

Further the conclusion of the verse might seem unrelated or unnecessary: vayaretah et elohechah, ani Adonai. What does being God fearing have to do with respecting elders? Rashi explains that it was the custom of some to close their eyes, so they would not see their elders, and thus not have to rise in their honor. Therefore the verse concludes with the warning that God, who knows what is in the heart, is watching our care of our elders. Certainly within modern society, the averting of eyes is not just to avoid the inconvenience of rising. The aged, which I understand for female actresses means anyone over 40, become literally invisible on the big screen and even on television, or else are portrayed in stereotypical fashion as cranky, cane waving and irrelevant. Our elders are often invisible in other ways as well and feel excluded and unwelcome by the subtle signs we give of valuing only the participation of younger members of our community.

Really seeing the older adult members of our community and recognizing them as a resource as well as a group of people who might need help, is a first step. What age constitutes an elder? The Shulchan Arukh defines those over 70 as zekenim, the elders mentioned in this verse as deserving our special respect. The Zohar puts the age at 60, and Pirke Avot siding with the AARP says from the age of 50 one becomes eligible to give other’s advice. At whatever age, the older adult Jews of our generation are a tremendously talented and accomplished group. Well educated, experienced, many of them having made a significant mark on our community; of those 65-75 today, 20% are still working, and less than 6% require assistance in issues of daily living. These older Jews are more likely to own their own homes than Jews under 50 and are more affluent as a group than young Jewish adults ages 18-40. These are the members of our congregations who, without the pressure of working 24/7, are more likely to attend services, to volunteer and to participate in Adult Jewish learning. These are the Jews who have made Jewish topics at Elderhostel among the most successful of their programs, and these are our members with the free time to explore Jewish travel and other cultural opportunities.

Let’s remember that all of us, God willing, will someday, some sooner, some later, approach this stage of life. We will be faced with the question, what shall we do with the rest of our lives? We will be looking for purpose in these bonus years. Many of us will experience two or three decades of good health and vitality after retirement. We can add meaning to these years by sharing our experience with our community. We can step up to be leaders, second career teachers or advisors and trainers. Our careers may at some point, before or after retirement, fail to provide the over riding sense of purpose for our lives that they gave us in earlier years. Purely recreational activities, golf and cards, can provide sociability, but that may not be enough in the face of other realities, the illness of peers, the death of friends. We may need something more weighty to give significance to our lives. We are taught in the Talmud: Rabbi Nehorai said: Every trade in the world gives a person sustenance only in youth. But the Torah stands by us in our youth and gives us a future and hope in old age (Kiddushin 82B translated by Rabbi Dayle Friedman).

Doing mitzvot adds significance to our lives, whether these are acts of gemilut chasadim, loving kindness to others, acts of tikkun olam, world improvement, or acts of personal piety, like study and prayer. Connecting us with the past and the future, they can help us see our own lives in a new perspective and add another dimension to our lives. Some of these mitzvoth, like studying Torah, for example, may have more meaning for us as elders, than they did in our youth, as we bring a lifetime of experiences to bear on the teachings of past generations.

Our Saturday morning Torah study last year turned out to be a multigenerational experience. It was perfect as we were studying Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, the musings of a somewhat cynical older man on the meaning of life. Much of the richness of our discussion came when one of our members in his 90’s bounced a thought off someone in his 50’s, and a woman in her 30’s shared her viewpoint which was then reflected upon by another member of the group, who had just taken early retirement. Like the blind men examining the elephant, we each came at the question of the meaning of life from our own viewpoint and what we were able to come up with together was so much more powerful than what any one of us could have considered alone. People of all ages gain from these cross generational contacts.

Thinking about aging we must consider not just the benefits for our community but also our responsibilities. Eventually many will get to be frail elderly, those over 85 who have a one in two chance of needing daily assistance of some sort. It is for this group that our prayers plead, as the cantor so movingly chanted : Al Tashlicheni- do not cast me aside when I am old, when my strength has come to an end do not desert me.” The caregivers of these frail elderly, given the Jewish tendency towards having children late, may be individuals who are still caring for their own children, or those in their 60’s and 70’s beginning to face their own health challenges. This care giving can be extraordinarily demanding, more than a 24 hour day and without the sense of progress that caring for children provides. The synagogue is a natural as a place where support can be offered and burdens shared. Already our Caring Committee has offered programs for caregivers and has volunteers visiting shut-ins on a regular basis. One of the best shidduch’s we made was between one of our younger adult members and one of our oldest. When I talked to the daughter of our older member, she told me about how much her mother enjoys this contact, and about how it is so meaningful for both sides of the equation, that neither is sure who is helping whom. There is much more that we can do and our scholar in residence this November, Rabbi Bill Cutter, of the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, will speak about this specifically at our Saturday evening and Sunday morning programs.

Many of our members will reach out to the Temple at the time of the loss of a parent. If we can be there meaningfully for them at that time, we provide a second opportunity to connect with Judaism and the congregation. Many older adults describe the experience of saying Kaddish for a parent as the beginning of a new chapter in their Jewish journey. The loss of a parent can be a difficult and painful time even for adults who are have long been independent and are quite successful in their own right. Sometimes their parent’s legacy, the obligation to recite the kaddish, is a doorway into community and spiritual growth.

There are also issues that we will need to face as a larger Jewish community. Our aging population needs to be on the agenda when we do long range planning. Religious schools and day schools are very important but we shouldn’t conclude that Jewish learning is just about children. Adult Jewish learning is important as well and older Jewish adults like to learn, as evidence by statistics on participation in community college and lifelong learning programs.

Transportation is a need that we recognize from personal experience and is also an issue that comes up in studies and surveys. Over the last week, in just the few days since Rosh Hashanah, for example, I received requests from the JCRC, from Chai Houe, from the JCC, and from our local Holocaust survivors group for help transporting seniors. The major study done in the Bay Area in 2004 by Professor Bruce Philips for the San Francisco Federation found that transportation was the major issue for elders in our community, mentioned more than twice as often as any other need including home health care, social programs and assisted living. Last year, at the very last minute, our local Jewish Council on Aging attempted to make a small contribution to this large issue but other local Jewish organizations were not yet ready to take on this responsibility. Our failure to respond actively to the need for help with transportation will make everything else we do as a community, inaccessible to a growing subgroup that wants to participate. Without providing transportation in a meaningful way, all the programming and welcome we offer is likely to have a minimal impact. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heshel once wrote that the test of a people is how it behaves towards the elderly. I do believe that our ability to plan and implement services for our elderly will be a test of our local community’s will, maturity, and caring.

In most of the areas of our life, we are segregated in so many ways, including by age. One of the wonderful things about the synagogue is the ability of people of different ages to meet each other and develop meaningful relationships. These might be formal relationships between seniors and teens, as happens through our confirmation mentoring, or informal relations between members sitting together at services, or at a dinner or program. I think of how impoverished my life would be if everyone I knew was of my own generation and if I had not had the wonderful enriching experiences I have regularly with those older and younger than myself. When Shifrah joined me on Rosh Hashanah to blow the shofar for a couple who were not able to get out to services, she took to heart what she experienced and was full of ideas for other things we could do to improve the lives of the people we visited. We and our children will gain from being part of a truly multigenerational community.

In a few minutes we will begin Yizkor and call to mind loved ones who are gone. The recitation of Yizkor reminds us of the flow of generations. Older people who were once such an important part of our own lives come vividly back to mind, dear parents and beloved grandparents, the aunts and uncles who made up our extended family. We thank God for all the goodness that came into our lives, through these older presences in our own personal circle.

If we care for the elders within our community, if we act individually and communally on their behalf, this will be a benefit to them and a comfort to us as we look forward to future chapters in our own lives. Then we can see the words of the psalms fulfilled. “Planted in the house of the Eternal, they shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall bear fruit even in old age, they shall be forever fresh and fragrant. “ As we learn from the Talmud in words chosen for this congregations original Bar Mitzvah service twenty five years ago: Blessed is the generation in which the old listen to the young and doubly blessed is the generation in which the young listen to the old.