Jewish Visions for Aging

Dayle A. Friedman

Description

Discover the Jewish tradition’s insights on growing older and eldercare in this groundbreaking resource—the only one of its kind!

“Judaism can be [tremendously] powerful for those searching for new meaning and roles, for perspective on life’s profound questions, and for solace amid the inevitable loss and change of later life…. It is time to forge a new paradigm for the Jewish response to aging.”
—from the Introduction

From the rapidly changing retirement years to the sometimes wrenching challenges of dementia and chronic illness, spiritual questions and needs among today’s elders and caregivers are central. This rich resource probes Jewish texts to offer solutions and suggestions for finding meaning, purpose and community within Jewish tradition.

With timely—and timeless—wisdom, this rich resource probes Jewish texts, spirituality and observance, uncovering a deep, never-before-realized approach to responding to the challenges of aging with a refreshing and inspiring vitality. The insights—spanning textual analysis and spiritual and pastoral perspectives—provide practical guidance in spiritual care and communal programming to dynamically engage and serve elders and their families.

Accessible and honest, Jewish and non-Jewish clergy, chaplains, elder- and healthcare professionals, volunteers and family members will find this guide an invaluable asset as they explore how to empower elders and their families through daily spiritual and communal life.

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Santé familiale
• Philosophie et théologie
• Judaism
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580235310
• Langue: English

Extrait

Another Jewish Lights book by Dayle A. Friedman
Jewish Pastoral Care , 2nd Edition
A Practical Handbook from Traditional and Contemporary Sources

Jewish Visions for Aging:
A Professional Guide for Fostering Wholeness
2008 Hardcover Edition, First Printing
2008 by Dayle A. Friedman
Foreword 2008 by Thomas R. Cole
Preface 2008 by Eugene B. Borowitz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information regarding permission to reprint material from this book, please mail or fax your request in writing to Jewish Lights Publishing, Permissions Department, at the address / fax number listed below or e-mail your request to [e-mail] .
Page 231 constitutes a continuation of this copyright page.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Friedman, Dayle A., 1956-
Jewish visions for aging: a professional guide for fostering wholeness / Dayle A. Friedman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58023-348-4 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-58023-348-1 (hardcover)
1. Aging-Religious aspects-Judaism. 2. Older Jews-Care. 3. Older Jews-Religious life. 4. Respect for persons. 5. Dementia-Patients-Care. 6. Aging parents-Care-Religious aspects-Judaism. 7. Jewish ethics. I. Title.
BM540.A35F75 2008
296.084 6-dc22
2008019086
10 8 9 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on recycled paper.
Jacket design: Melanie Robinson
For People of All Faiths, All Backgrounds
Published by Jewish Lights Publishing
A Division of Longhill Partners, Inc.
Sunset Farm Offices, Route 4, P.O. Box 237
Woodstock, VT 05091
Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
www.jewishlights.com
To my beloveds, David, Anya, Anat, and Avram, who fill each new day with possibility and love, laughter and light.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Thomas R. Cole, PhD
Preface by Dr. Eugene B. Borowitz
Introduction: Seasons of Splendor-New Visions for Jewish Aging
PART I
TEXT AND TRADITION
1. Crown Me with Wrinkles and Gray Hair: Traditional Views and Visions of Aging
PART II
AGING AND MEANING
2. The Mitzvah Model: Meaning and Mission in Late Life
3. Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Nursing Home: Torah for Confronting Fragility and Mortality
4. Seeking the Tzelem : Making Sense of Dementia
5. Lilmod U lilamed : Elders as Learners and Teachers of Torah
Practical Tips for Engaging Elders as Learners in Jewish Education
PART III
FAMILY CAREGIVING
6. Help with the Hardest Mitzvah: Spiritually Supporting Family Caregivers
7. Beyond Guilt: Perspectives from Tradition on Obligations to Aging Parents
8. Balancing Parents and Children s Quality of Life: Ethical Dilemmas in Family Caregiving
PART IV
LIVUI RUCHANI : SPIRITUAL ACCOMPANIMENT IN AGING
9. Enabling Their Faces to Shine: Spiritual Accompaniment with Aging Individuals
10. PaRDeS: Compassionate Spiritual Presence with Elders
11. Spiritual Challenges and Possibilities for Jews in Long-Term Care Facilities
12. An Anchor amidst Anomie: Ritual and Aging
PART V
AGING AND COMMUNITY
13. L Dor Va-Dor : Living the Chain of Tradition through Intergenerational Programs
14. Weaving the Generations: Congregations as Communities for All Ages
Afterword
Notes
Glossary
Credits
Index

About Jewish Lights
Copyright
U vituvo mechadesh b chol yom tamid maaseh vereishit
In goodness You renew each day the work of creation.
(Siddur, Shacharit service)

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow when a new life begins for me, as it does each day, as it does each day.
-S TANLEY K UNITZ , former poet laureate of the United States, in the poem The Round, published at age 80
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many guides and angels have helped me realize the vision of this volume. First and always, I thank the elders with whom I have had the privilege of working for shining their light on my path. I have shared some of their stories here, always protecting their privacy, but gleaning, I hope, their precious Torah.
I am conscious as well that my students at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and my earlier interns at Philadelphia Geriatric Center have immensely enriched my understanding and pushed me always to strive harder to articulate what I am learning. Mikol melamdei hiskalti -truly I have learned from all my students. I thank my colleagues who have unstintingly shared their experience and offered insight as the book was taking shape, especially Chaplain Sheila Segal, Rabbi Meryl Crean, Rabbi Richard Address, and Rabbi Leonard Gordon.
I am privileged to work at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. The leadership of Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, president, and our Board of Governors has made possible the creation of Hiddur: The Center for Aging and Judaism, a context in which the visions outlined in this book are being nurtured and shared.
I am blessed to have a publisher, Jewish Lights, that embraces my work. I thank Stuart M. Matlins, publisher, and Emily Wichland, vice president of editorial and production, for encouraging and supporting me in each step of this book s creation. I am indebted to Joysa Winter and Sonnie Katz for their invaluable assistance in the technical preparation of this manuscript.
Finally, words cannot express my gratitude to my haver in leben , David, and to Anya, Anat, and Avram. Thank you for your encouragement and patience, distraction and its absence, and most of all your love.
FOREWORD
Later life in the Western world is a season in search of its purposes. For the first time in human history, most people can expect to live well into their seventies in reasonably good health. Yet the words of Ecclesiastes- To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven -carry little conviction when applied to the second half of life.
Between the sixteenth century and the third quarter of the twentieth century, Western ideas about aging underwent a fundamental transformation, spurred by the development of modern society. Ancient and medieval understandings of aging as a mysterious part of the eternal order of things gradually gave way to the secular, scientific, and individualistic tendencies of modernity. Old age was removed from its place as a way station along life s spiritual journey and redefined as a problem to be solved by science and medicine. Older people were moved to society s margins and defined primarily as patients, pensioners, or consumers.
Because long lives have become the rule rather than the exception, and because collective meaning systems have lost their power to infuse aging with widely shared significance, we have become deeply uncertain about what it means to grow old. Ancient myths and modern stereotypes alike fail to articulate the challenges or capture the uncertainty of generations moving into the still-lengthening later years. The modernization of aging has generated a host of unanswered questions: Does aging have an intrinsic purpose? Is there anything really important to be done after children are raised, jobs are left, and careers are completed? Is old age the culmination of life? Does it contain potential for self-completion? What are the avenues of spiritual growth in later life? What are the roles, rights, and responsibilities of older people? How can frail or demented elders be treated as moral and spiritual beings?
The longevity revolution has created a paradoxical situation: we are younger longer and we are older longer. That is, we are likely to maintain our health and vigor into our late seventies, and we are also likely to live for another decade of frailty and/or dementia. The question is, how should we live those years-both healthy and sick? Questions of meaning and purpose pose themselves with particular urgency for the American Jewish community. Roughly 20 percent of American Jews are sixty-five or over, and half of that group are seventy-five or over.
Traditionally, Jews were born into a covenant from which they could not retire. But in an era when Jewish affiliation is increasingly chosen, that is precisely what many American Jews do-whether they belong to a congregation or not. We do not know how to live covenantally in later life. For some older Jews, the synagogue provides an important source of identity and social support. Congregational leadership often includes influential elders with a lifelong commitment to the covenant. But many older Jews-especially aging baby boomers-are detached from the tradition and do not feel its moral demands, sources of identity, comfort, and hope. And the broader culture socializes older people into the limited roles of patient, consumer, and/or pensioner-effectively undermining a fuller notion of moral agency and responsibility.
It must be said that, like the larger culture, contemporary Judaism lacks a persuasive vision of the good life for our later years. Leisure clubs and life cycle events become the default positions for engagement. The moral and spiritual opportunities and responsibilities of age pale beside the dreams of eternal youth. We have yet to articulate an ideal of spiritually successful frailty. We have only begun to mine Torah, our rabbinic tradition, and our historical experiences for the wisdom, inspiration and guidance to learn about aging and the sacred.
Fashioning authentic Jewish visions, images, and practices of later life is an urgent priority today, though it has been largely neglected in both rabbinical education and congregational life. Three notable American exceptions are Rabbi Richard Address s Sacred Aging project at the Union for Reform Judaism; Rabbi Peter Knobel and Dr. Martha Holstein s initiative on Judaism, aging, and ethics at Temple Beth Emet: The Free Synagogue in Chicago;