A Soulful Journey

  When the time comes for us to let go of the creations of our middle lives, we are like a tree in autumn dropping leaves, as we release our past attachments and preparing for a new phase of growth. The children move on, and careers shift or end. The lines on our faces, the stretch marks, and the grey hairs are beautiful testaments to the fullness of our experience. In the winter of our lives, we become stripped down to our essence like a tree. We may become more radiant than ever at this stage, because our inner light shines brighter through our eyes as time passes. Beauty at this age comes from the very core of our being—our essence. This essence is a reminder that there is nothing to fear in growing older and that there is a kind of beauty that comes only after one has spent many years on earth.

An old Jewish woman just turned ninety, became ill and called the doctor.  he examined her carefully and looked doubtful. “Can you cure me, doctor?” the old woman asked hopefully. “Dear Granny,” said the doctor soothingly.  “You know what happens when one gets older.  All sorts of ailments begin to happen.  After all, a doctor is not a miracle man.  He cannot make an old woman younger." “Who’s asked you to make me younger, doctor?”  protested the old woman, irritably.  "What I want is to grow older!”   Listen. Only then speak.

HaYashan Yithadesh V’hadesh titkadesh- Rabbi A. Kook   “The old shall become new and the new shall become holy.” Powerful words spoken by the first chief rabbi of Israel.  As we read and learn about our ancient traditions we can resolve to renew them and let them infuse our lives with light.  We also have the ability to renew ourselves and our lives every day.

The Kelmer Maggid came to a city where a modern Talmud Torah had been erected.  The leaders wanted the new school to receive a certain amount of the charity money that belonged to the old school.  A heated argument arose and the Kelmer Maggid was asked to give his opinion.  So he rose and addressed the people in his own inimitable way: “My good friends, I want to tell you a story.  A man arrived at the gates of paradise dressed in modern clothes, with a trimmed beard in the fashion of a Frenchman.  He wanted to enter.  Father Abraham, who stands near the entrance, approached him and asked, ‘Who are you? ‘I am the Vilner Maggid,’ the man explained. Abraham stared the newcomer’s attire and repeated, ‘You are the Vilner Maggid?’  Tell me, in which synagogue did you preach?’ After a few similar questions that man broke down and confessed.  ‘The truth is that I am a former actor of a Vilna theatre....

The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from what she daily tears of sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future that is in store for him?   “No, thank you,” he will think.  “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and...

You know you’re getting older when everything hurts and what doesn’t hurt, doesn't work! Your little black book contains names ending in “M.D.” You get winded playing chess. You turn the lights out for economic reasons. You sit in a rocking chair and can’t get it going. Your knees buckle and your belt won’t. Your back goes out more than you do. You walk with your head high, trying to get used to your bifocals. You look forward to a dull evening. You don’t care where your wife goes, just so you don’t have to go along.

Cary Grant was told he did not look so old on his birthday- “Oh yes, I do.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  If you mean I look good for 80 thanks for the compliment.” Age bring wisdom and dignity.  It brings its own certain gifts that only the aged can possess.

A Jewish family living on the outskirts of a small village in Russia believed that their grandfather had secretly buried a treasure under a tree along the road for Bialystok to Slonim, when he was fleeing from the Cossacks.  One member of the family earnestly determined to find the treasure.  He dug under every tree along the road, but in vain.  Though exhausted, he continued his search. An old man, passing, noticed the young fellow with a spade in his hand, perspiration trickling down his forehead. "What are you looking for?" he asked. "I am searching for a treasure my grandfather buried along this road," he replied. "You'll never find it, son," the aged passerby smiled.  "In your grandfather's days people went along the old path, and you are looking along the new path of which your grandfather knew nothing." Moral: We seek spiritual riches along new roads, unaware that the real treasure lies on the old ones.

A very self-important college freshman attending a recent football game, ​  took it upon himself to explain to a senior citizen sitting next to him why ​  it was impossible for the older generation to understand his generation. "You grew up in a different world, actually an almost primitive one," the ​  student said, loud enough for many of those nearby to hear. "The young ​  people of today grew up with television, jet planes, space travel, man ​  walking on the moon, our spaceships have visited Mars. We have nuclear energy, electric and hydrogen cars, computers with light-speed processing, ​  and...." pausing to take another drink of beer. The Senior took advantage of the break in the student's litany and said, ​  "You're right, son. We didn't have those things when we were young... so we ​ ​ invented them. Now, you  @#$%^& , what are you doing for the  next generation? "  - Joe Mendelsohn

Midrash: “And Avraham was aged, he came into his days*…” Genesis 24 Commented Rabbi Acha: There are people who are “old” and yet never “come into their days.” And there are others who “come into their days’" and never  become “old.” But here we find ‘aged’ corresponding to “coming to one’s days” and vice versa. *Traditionally “coming into one’s days” signifies maturity and wholeness. Age is a gift.  Especially when accompanied by the wisdom of years.

"An old man in the house is distressing while an aged woman is a blessing." - Arachin 19a It is no easy feat to age gracefully.  Some do  it better than others.

"He used to say, at 5 years the age is reached for the study of the Scripture; at 10 for the study of Mishna; at 13 for the fulfillment of the commandments; at 15 for the study of Talmud; at 18 for marriage; at 20 for seeking a livelihood; at 30 for entering into one’s full strength; at 40 for understanding; at 50 for counsel; at 60 a man attains old age; at 70 the hoary head; at 80 the gift of special strength; at 90 he bends beneath the weight of years; at 100 he is as if he were already dead and had passed away from the world. " - Pirkey Avot 5:20

"Do not cast us away into old age." Nobody wants to get old. Rabbi Sidney Greenberg made a comment on this verse that when a person visits a friend in the hospital they may remark, "Boy, has she aged!" Even though the patient may look bedraggled Greenberg warns us to to slot people into the old age category based on how we look.  Such thinking brings us lower than we already feel. Our words have a dramatic effect.

Time changes all things.   We are not exempt.   Time changes us in profound and sometimes unimaginable ways.   What was once critical becomes irrelevant.   What was meaningless becomes a cause célèbre. “A man who is not a liberal at sixteen has no heart; a man who is not a conservative at sixty has no head.”   - Benjamin Disraeli

Rabbi Hisda observed, long ago, that when a woman conceives at an early age her fertility will be long-lived. If however, she delays beyond this point, her fertility will diminish accordingly.” - Baba Batra 119b There are certain things that are left for the young and are not permitted to the old. Likewise, there are gifts given to the old that are not permitted to the young. Both are precious. Both are irreplaceable. Both are necessary. In its own time we grow and mature. Take life as God has presented: Today alone is promised.

There are many statements which are aimed at respecting elders.  Here are a choice few that teach this dramatically: 1. The Hebrew word for elderly is 'zaken' which is an acronym for 'zeh sh'kaneh chochma' -- a person who has acquired wisdom. 2. In Midrash Yalkut Shimoni it states: "When the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai, God appeared to the Jewish people as a "kindly, white bearded patriarch, full of mercy." 3. "Rabbi Yossi bar Yehuda of K'far HaBavli said, ‘One who learns from the young, to what is he compared? To one who eats unripe grapes and drinks wine from the press. And one who learns from the old, to what is he compared? To one who eats ripened grapes and drinks aged wine’." - Pirkay Avot 4. Of Avraham, our father, the Torah tells that he was “ Ba bayamim (Genesis 24:1),” advanced in his years – but still growing ( ba literally means coming, denoting forward movement).