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SERMON BY RABBI michael berk
Ba-Bayamim – Judaism and Aging
AUGUST 3, 2007
— Sermon Delivered on the Occasion of Ernest Schoen's 100th Birthday Celebration
I remember when I first realized I was middle age. I was watching a news report by Tom Brokaw on AIDS. Before going to a commercial, Brokaw announced what was coming up after the break – a report on how the disease was affecting older and younger Americans alike. When it occurred to me that I fit neither of those cohorts, it dawned on me: I'm middle age! I'm aging.
Tonight, as we join as a community to celebrate the 100th birthday of our beloved member, Ernest Schoen and honor him for all that he brings to our Beth Israel Family, we also are aware of one way in which Jewish culture differs sharply from current American culture in how we feel about our older members.
Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi was among the first to draw attention to the cultural clash on how Jews view and treat the elderly among us years ago when he began to focus the Jewish community's attention to the fact that the American Jewish community is growing older. He pointed out the simple truth that in current American life, when something is old we throw it away. It's also the way we tend to treat our elderly.
America has not always acted towards the elderly with such low regard and discomfort. NY Times columnist David Brooks wrote about the problem of how we treat our elders, and mentions that historian David Hackett, in his book, "Growing Old in America," illustrates how the old in America were venerated in the first years of our great nation. "But starting in the first half of the 19th century, youth was venerated and age was diminished." So for example, Thoreau, brazenly wrote that the young have little to learn from the old. Brooks writes: "The word 'fogy,' which had once meant a wounded veteran, acquired its current meaning during this era."
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Today, we know that our nation's worship of youth has reached absurd levels. As a Reform Jew, I believe that Judaism needs to learn from the culture around it, but sometimes we need to reject popular culture and teach our values to those around us. So what does our tradition have to teach us about how to rise and show regard for our elders?
We learn in Torah:
"You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old."
What does this mean?" How do we show deference to the elders among us? How do we show that we treasure their wisdom, their experience, their very presence among us?
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that it is not too hard to answer these questions. He said, "What we owe the old is reverence, but all they ask for is consideration, attention, not to be discarded and forgotten. What they deserve," Heschel reminds us, "is preference, but we do not even grant them equality."
Our rabbis have taught: Act in such a way that you do not embarrass the old person you will one day become by your behavior today. The Midrash adds: "There once was a king who would rise to honor an elderly commoner saying, 'God has chosen to reward him with long life; how can I not do the same.'"
And tonight I ask the same question, how can we not do the same? As we look around our community, our synagogue, we can see what's happening. Demographic studies tell us that those in the Jewish community over sixty-five are about twenty percent of the total Jewish population. The fastest growth cohort in that group are those over seventy-five. About two years ago the nation acknowledged the 60th birthday of the woman considered to be the first baby boomer. Aside from the moral imperatives we are commanded to live up to, the mitzvah of rising and honoring, not degrading and discarding, our elders, we have the practical motive and challenge of welcoming them into our community and providing for their needs. The coming generation of older American Jews are the wealthiest, healthiest, and best educated group of older Jews ever to exist. These characteristics, along with our tradition's regard for those elders who honor us with their presence, create exciting new challenges to our Jewish community and synagogue. How will the Jewish community, how will this House of Israel, respond?
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Did you know that Abraham, the father of our people, is the first person the Bible calls, "old": "Abraham was now old, advanced in years, and the Lord blessed Abraham in all things."
The terms for "old," "zaken" has the connotation of wisdom and maturity. That is how we are bidden to regard the older folks among us... with reverence for all that their years have taught them. Our rabbis say the term "zaken" is an acronym for zeh kanah chochmah – this one has acquired wisdom." According to our sages, Abraham was the first person in human history to actually grow wiser as he grew older.
How different is this attitude from the slogans and advertising which permeate American culture and make me feel bad about getting old. We can feel that fear that the society around us will discard us as we age in the words of the poet in psalms who cried out the heart rending words: "Do not cast me off in old age/when my strength fails, do not forsake me!"
Instead, let us remember that for us there is an obligation to rise up and honor those whose older people who are a special blessing to us. Let us arise before them and honor them, thank them, and seek from them the wisdom that they have acquired with their years.
And let us now rise up and honor one of our elders, Ernest Schoen, on this, the occasion of his 100th birthday.
Rabbi Michael Berk
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