It was right after the very first Shabbat service that I officiated at Temple Beth Sholom in 2012 when a congregant came up to me in tears. I introduced myself and I asked her what was wrong.
She looked back at me and told me in no uncertain terms “You cannot be my rabbi. You are a child.”
I clearly looked too young to be a rabbi for this congregant.
For several years, I must be honest – this was a problem. When I first started as a rabbi, I looked like I was about fifteen years old – But I have to say, almost thirteen years later, I now have started to have the opposite experience.
When I arrived at Ben Gurion airport this past March for a rabbi’s mission to Israel, I was meeting a group of rabbis who I did not know. As I arrived at the airport, I went to the spot where I was supposed to meet these rabbis and at a table, I saw a group of older men sitting together who were very clearly the rabbis I was supposed to meeting.
As I looked at them, I thought to myself – am I on a retired rabbi’s trip? – and then I walked up to them, I introduced myself and I found out that the men sitting around this table, all of whom I thought were my father’s age were all my age or younger. I realized at that moment that I am no longer that young rabbi who was just a child to the woman in 2012, today, thirteen years later, I am one of those older rabbis.
The feeling of getting old is very much a part of life’s journey. As my older son Kaleb is off at college, as my younger son Ari is now officially taller than me, I am freaking out.
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It was only last week when I was going off to college – it was only last week when I was the tallest person in the family.
And so yes, these days, I find myself feeling not quite so young anymore – I’ m getting the sense that I am on the other side – and listen, I know I say this to a room of people who still think I am very young, and who also think it’s ridiculous for me to talk about getting old when I am not even fifty, but please stay with me for just a moment.
This past July, our nation had an important opportunity to have a conversation about what it means to get older. A debate took place in which a political candidate seemed old and a bit confused.
At that moment, we had a chance to talk about the meaning of aging, about what it means to deal with the many issues that come from getting older – some hard and difficult, and some beautiful and wonderful.
In that moment, we should have come together and thought about this, what it means for those who are aging, what it means for their families and what it means for their communities – but unfortunately, we were so focused on the politics of the moment that we missed this opportunity for a dialogue.
In the wake of that presidential debate, we focused only on how getting older makes us less useful and less reliable – we did not focus on what it really means to advance in age.
Truth is – our nation is getting older – the baby-boomers and their children are all getting older. In the Jewish community, this aging is even more pronounced with over 50% of non-Orthodox Jews today being over sixty years old. This trend is going to continue –in the next generation, the number of Americans 65 and older will double and the number of Americans 85 and older will quadruple.
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As this is happening, we continue to be obsessed with youth – so much so that we have created what author and sociologist Susan Douglas calls the anti-aging industrial complex. Douglas writes that “the mission of the anti-aging industrial complex, and its effect, have been to intensify to the level of air-raid sirens our anxiety about any signs of aging.” Billions of dollars are spent each year on marketing to tell us that there is a fountain of youth, that there are ways to slow or even to stop the process of getting old.
Of course, if there is one thing we cannot control – it is time—all of us are aging, even as we sit together in this room or watch this service online, we are getting closer to the end of our lives every single day.
These High Holy Days are here to remind us of this fact – one of the central themes of these days is forecasting our own mortality –in the Unataneh Tokef, we wonder aloud, who will live and who will die – on Yom Kippur, we wear traditional garbs that we are buried in and we sustain from life-giving actions – such as eating, drinking and having sex.
Yes, these days are all about facing our finitude—But the purpose of this encounter with death is not simply to make us despondent – rather, it is to remind us that despite the brevity of our time on earth, we still have time on earth – you see, there is meaning to be found in our days, especially as we get older, there is great meaning to be found.
It is after-all, a seventy five-year old named Abraham who leaves his home and begins a journey to create an entire people. Abraham begins all of this when he is pretty old.
And the rabbis, in commenting on Abraham, do not consider this a bad thing — the rabbis write that Abraham’s age was a gift from God – they call his grey hair a “crown of splendor.”
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By the way, as my hair is now beginning to gray, I’ve been telling Shara that she should love it because it is a crown of splendor.
Abraham’s age is blessing. It enables him to understand his role better and to recognize why his journey matters so much. Abraham’s age gives him wisdom and his wisdom allows him to seek true meaning.
Yes, we all get older and that is something we cannot stop – yes, getting older means coming to terms with loss, but our aging also provides us access to make tremendous meaning in our lives – meaning that our younger selves often took for granted or simply did not understand.
This past August, Shara and I dropped off our son Kaleb at college. As we arrived at his dorm room and saw all of these kids coming in to organize their rooms to begin this new adventure, as we opened the door into his dorm room and began to put together Target furniture, I had some pretty complex emotions.
I was excited about Kaleb getting to take part in such an invigorating campus life, I was nervous about him being okay so far from home and on his own, I was proud of all that he accomplished to get there, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that my parents just dropped me off at college what felt like a few days ago and yes, I was sad at the fact that a stage of my life as a dad was coming to an end – all of these emotions were swirling around inside of me…
Later on, as we got back in the car to drive home and to leave Kaleb at school, I considered all of these emotions that I was having and I thought to myself – wow – there is something incredibly powerful about this moment – something extraordinary and sacred – all of my experiences with Kaleb as a baby, as a little kid, as a teenager, all of my experiences with Shara as a parent and as a spouse, all of the time going through college myself – all of these moments were playing out before
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me, filling me with this sense of sanctity—as I thought about my son and his new world and my own part in all of it, this sense of awe swept over me—
I thought to myself –- it is because I am at this point in my life that I can have this experience – I now have the joy of watching my son discover his own world – that is what this age of mine affords me – that is what all of those experiences of my life have offered me – they’ve given me a certain perspective, a view of the world that I’ve never had before—one that I could never have understood had I not lived through all that I have lived through—as we drove on, I thought about my own parents and their perspectives on their life, their opportunity to now see their third grandchild begin the college adventure—I thought about how their age grants them this unique and powerful perspective to see the world and the people they love most in that world in remarkable ways, to see meaning and purpose because of where they are in their lives.
Rabbi Richard Address is the founder of Sacred Aging.com, a website dedicated to
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creating resources for Jews on aging and longevity. In his
book Seekers of Meaning, Rabbi Address points out that we are now in a
unique time in which we are living longer – he asks, “what we will do
with this time? How shall we live? How can we begin to make sense of
our own mortality and our own reason for being here?”
To answer these questions, Rabbi Address proposes that we look at our
biblical texts – and specifically at the story of Adam and Eve in the
garden of Eden.
In that story, Adam and Eve learn about their mortality – after eating
from the tree of knowledge, they discover that they are not going to live
forever.
As a result, they hide in fear.
God then asks them – AYEKA – which means Where Are You?
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Ayeka is a call to Adam and Eve – it is God asking them, now that you
know you will not live forever, where are you? Where are you in coming
to terms with what your life is about? Where are you in understanding
what your legacy will be once you have left this world? Where are you
in building that legacy in the days ahead?
These are the questions that bear asking as we age – not simply what
have I lost or how do I stay young but also What am I going to do with
the days I have left?
How am I going to make them meaningful? How does my wisdom, my
understanding of the life I have lived so far, how does it affect how I can
make the most of these days?
AYEKA is asking ourselves, what have I learned in my time so far that
can make the rest of my life and the days after I leave this world full of
sanctity for me and for the ones I love most?
This past summer, as we were so focused on Joe Biden being too old to be president, as we were so focused on age as an impediment to meaningful living, we forgot to have a meaningful conversation on what it means to grow older.
Well it just so happens this same summer, a movie came out in theaters that many have not seen. Thelma tells the story of a ninety-three-year- old grandmother who is scammed out of 10,000 dollars in a crime of elder-abuse. Unhappy with how the police deal with the crime, Thelma visits her friend Ben in a local assisted living facility and borrows his scooter to chase down the bad guys.
Yes, Thelma is an action movie starring a 93-year old.
But what Thelma is really about is not stunts and explosions but rather how we as a society deal with aging.
In one particularly powerful scene, Thelma finds herself in an argument with her friend Ben about what she’s doing.
Ben tells her, “We’re old. Diminished. We’re a liability to the ones we love. You can tell yourself different, but you know better” To this, Thelma loses her cool. She tells Ben, “I still matter, what I do makes a difference – my life matters!”
As you watch the film and learn about the difference that Thelma makes in the lives of her daughter and son-in-law and specifically in the life of her grandson, you realize that she’s right – her life does still matter – what she does and who she connects to – it all still matters—and it matters most because she makes sure it matters.
She fills her days with meaning – at the end of the film, we learn that the writer/director of Thelma actually made this movie about his own grandmother – you realize at the end that the film itself is a thank you to what this woman gave to him.
Thelma is a reminder of how we too should approach aging – we should ask ourselves how am I going to use my life so far to make meaning in my life ahead
This year, I am hoping that we can do this together.
I have reached out to Rabbi Address, and we are now putting together a Sacred Aging forum here at Temple Beth Sholom dedicated to thinking collaboratively about what it means to age. We are looking to hold sessions and programs where we can come together and really wonder about this most important of topics.
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I am honored to spend each Shabbat morning with a group of boomers who engage in Torah study. For an hour each Saturday morning, we think about the portion of the week and the themes that emanate from it.
Often, this group becomes a therapy session for me – I hear all kinds of beautiful and meaningful advice on life and the many different challenges I face.
What I’ve learned from this group is that our time on this earth grants us tremendous wisdom and that this wisdom gives us these opportunities to seek meaning.
What I have learned from this group is that aging can be a sacred endeavor, one which grants us the chance to make extraordinary meaning in our lives and in the lives of those we love.
You see, it does not only have to be hard to grow old. Growing old can be a blessing – it is a blessing to have the life experiences to look out on this world and better understand it, to look out on our lives and better appreciate them.
The Jewish prayer known as the Shechiyanu is a prayer we recite to thank God for bringing us to this season – it is a prayer to acknowledge that we are happy to be right here, right now – as I think about the shechiyanu and the blessing of being older, I find myself remembering an old peanuts cartoon in which Charlie brown turns to Snoopy and says, “Someday, we will all die Snoopy”. And Snoopy, looking out at the water, says back to Charlie Brown, “True, but on all other days we will not.”
May this new year ahead give us all the opportunity to recognize how sacred our lives are—how much those other days really and truly matter.
Shanah Tovah
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