Wisdom of the Elders
‘Sacred Aging’ addresses the spiritual needs
of a rapidly graying Jewish population

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

Adele Kaplan, 85, is looking forward to writing her spiritual autobiography.

For the former resident of Union and Elizabeth, her quest for spirituality began when she moved into an assisted living facility in Whippany at age 82 and decided to learn Hebrew. “Before that, my spiritual life consisted of High Holy Day services. I didn’t know any Hebrew at all.”

Before long, she began studying for an adult bat mitzvah ceremony and reading the haftara. And now, she goes to services every Friday night and studies several days each week.

“I thank God and my [late] husband every night for watching over me.”

On a recent Tuesday, she added one more class to her schedule, this one specifically focused on her spiritual journey: Twenty other participants in the class examining aging as part of a lifelong journey, sharing their own thoughts about their travels.

The class at the Lester Senior Housing Community in Whippany, led by adult Jewish educator Debra Smith, is designed to capitalize on the wisdom of older Jews with more years of lived spiritual experience than their younger counterparts. It will culminate in the actual writing of a spiritual autobiography. And it represents just one facet of a Reform movement project known as Sacred Aging, an attempt to respond to the spiritual needs of a rapidly expanding cohort of Jewish seniors.

“All of a sudden, we are finding a whole group of people who are not ill, who are active, educated, who have human talent, who are underutilized and undertapped, [and] who are seeking meaning and purpose,” said Rabbi Richard Address, director of Jewish Family Concerns at the Union for Reform Judaism.

“They may be in their 50s and 60s and 70s with all sorts of life experience and talents. How are they being involved in a creative way in the congregation, in mentoring, in educational programs that speak to the issues they are dealing with, like caregiving?”

Or, as Kaplan put it, “We want to keep our lives interesting. We don’t want to just sit down on the sofa with a book or TV.”

Sacred Aging, a project of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns, is designed to raise awareness of what Address calls “the longevity revolution.” It seeks to offer practical guidance and programs for a multi-generational senior population that continues to belong to synagogues.

“Fifty percent of Reform congregants are 50 years and over. All kinds of things are happening, but most congregations haven’t begun to look in any creative way at this cohort. Nothing is happening to prepare congregations, and most remain pediatric in focus,” said Address.

The recent National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 estimated that a quarter of America’s 5.2 million Jews are 60 or older, and that the very old are growing as a percentage of the Jewish population.

Of all Jews, 19 percent are 65 or older — compared to only 12 percent in the general population — a marked increase since the last study, in 1990, when they comprised 17 percent of the general Jewish population. Their median age is 75, up from 71 in 1990.

Jewish social service and senior housing agencies were probably the first to take notice of the expanding senior population, but synagogues and educational institutions are catching up. Last May, academics, gerontologists, rabbis, and social service professionals gathered in Philadelphia for a conference on Aging and the 21st Century Synagogue. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pa., has established Hiddur: The Center for Aging & Judaism, which is training rabbinical students and producing resources for senior-care facilities.

And locally, a host of new projects have been created to meet these emerging needs. Jewish Family Service of MetroWest has started several new programs in the last two years. One in particular, a bereavement group run by a social worker and a rabbi through the auspices of the MetroWest Jewish Health and Healing Center, is very well attended, according to Leah Kaufman, director of JFS’ Transitions Eldercare Service. The group has continued meeting beyond the usual eight to 10 weeks.

Kaufman also said that the agency has clients unaffiliated with synagogues requesting to work with the Health and Healing Center on spiritual issues.

The Health and Healing Center has also has spearheaded an effort to provide congregational nurses. They attend to both physical and spiritual needs of aging congregants.

Many Reform synagogues across the area already have successful Renaissance groups. A national program launched 15 years ago at Temple B’nai Or in Morristown, the groups offer leisure activities, support, and friendship through meetings, shows, lectures, and lunch. Although originally designed for empty nesters ages 50-plus, they are now mostly populated by active seniors in their 70s and 80s. (The Conservative movement instituted a similar program, known as HAZAK, about 12 years ago in New Jersey.) As successful as they are, according to Address, Renaissance groups are only the starting point of what congregations need to do to meet the changing needs of their senior population.

The Reform movement’s Sacred Aging project was launched in 2003. For two years, Address and other representatives met with congregants, as well residents of assisted and independent living facilities and other focus groups around the country. Through these sessions, he elicited the most pressing issues affecting the aging population and then crafted responses. They are included in a resource guide that will be completed in November. It is divided into six parts that consider each of the different areas identified as critical such as caregiving; creating new rituals; decision-making involving medical technology; raising awareness among congregational leadership; celebrating the spiritual capital of older adult;’ and developing educational and programming models for seniors.

The goal, according to Address, is “to raise awareness of the longevity revolution and to encourage congregations to begin programming and education… and move the congregational culture into a more caring and supportive community for multi-generational older adult groups from 55 and 60 through people in their nineties.”

“This is not easy stuff,” according to Address. “It does require a cultural shift. And it requires understanding that programs for aging congregations have at least two distinct populations: those who are frail and might need taxi services, support groups, and perhaps discussion groups and luncheons; and those who are “aware, bright, active, who may have run a business, and are highly educated…these are very different cohorts with different cultural and community histories.”

Some area congregations have begun to see a shift in their populations and their needs, and say they welcome guidance from the movement, particularly with regard to caregiving issues and new rituals. Some have also been developing their own initiatives to meet seniors’ needs.

“The issue of caregivers is huge,” said Rabbi Laurence Groffman, spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills. He added that he would be interested in “ways we as a congregation can better respond to the situation of aging parents.” That congregation has already experimented with some of its own initiatives on behalf of its senior population, from an exercise class with a study component to a project directed by Cantor Howard Stahl whose goal is to capture the wisdom of seniors.

Late-in-life relationships
On the ritual side of this issue, many congregational rabbis are struggling with one particular scenario that is among the situations Sacred Aging tries to address: late-in-life relationships and finding an appropriate way to bless an elderly couple without creating legal entanglements. As Address explained, many older congregation members who are no longer married find themselves in committed, long-term relationships but choose not to marry for a variety of reasons, ranging from mere hesitation to the merging of finances to medical and familial issues. And yet many couples come to rabbis seeking some kind of a religious ceremony without the formality of a legal Jewish marriage. Rabbis are often reluctant to provide such a blessing, viewing it as an inappropriate end-run around the law or an event lacking precedent within Jewish and secular traditions.

“I wasn’t comfortable performing the ceremony,” acknowledged Groffman. “I didn’t feel right uniting a couple in marriage while pulling the wool over the eyes of the state.”

Rabbi Donald Rossoff, spiritual leader of Temple B’nai Or, put it in more blunt terms: “I strongly disagree with my colleagues who perform religious ceremonies without the civil counterpart [in order] for people to get around the system. I have a real ethical problem with that.”

Both expressed interest in an alternative model being developed by the Sacred Aging project. It will probably take the form of a prayer or blessing, different from the wedding ceremony.

For Adele Kaplan and her friends, the project couldn’t come at a better time. As Deb Smith explained, “These people have told me, ‘we know we’re aging. We’ve got the aches and pains. But how can we make it meaningful?’ They are taking care of their spiritual lives here, studying and praying together. We are helping them age spiritually as their bodies age.”

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.