CHAPTER SIX - The Aging Process: Late Life Questions

A: BACKGROUND

10. What can be done?
1.) Community

The first factor relates to the presence of a support group around the elderly person to provide comfort and help in late years.

From the Jewish point of view, the first pointer comes from the aforementioned idea of the “elders”, the traditional leadership group of tribal society. This is an attempt to institutionalise a position of respect for the elderly, who are clearly at the centre of traditional society: the elders are the repository of tribal wisdom, the decision makers, who are respected and esteemed by the rest of society.

Perhaps, the situation was not always as ideal as it sounds: indeed the elders, as a group, lost power and status as the Biblical period went on; nevertheless, it represents a significant statement. The status of the elders in the community was institutionalised in a manner which afforded them support, respect and meaning: they were the carriers of the tradition and they spent their days in a position that was not just honourable, but decidedly useful.

All of these factors have been acknowledged by contemporary health experts as being among the most central factors in creating the potential for the Biblical Category A.

Does the contemporary Jewish community, as a community, attempt to give the same support to its elderly - not just by providing a network of charitable institutions and facilities for them, but by giving them prestige within the community?

The clear answer would appear to be no: in comparatively few places in Jewish public life does one find reverence and respect for the old, as repositories of communal wisdom and experience.

Indeed, the only area where it seems to happen to any extent is that of scholarship. Jews tend to give respect to their scholars, both traditional and otherwise.

However, the vast majority of elderly who may well have something to offer in terms of life experience, are well nigh ignored by present-day communal institutions.

It could also be argued that, although the poor status of the Jewish elderly in terms of their communal positions is a general phenomenon, the situation of Jewish women is significantly worse than that of men, who do still tend to play more of a part in the Jewish community than women.

In the Jewish world, men have traditionally derived status from their position in the communal arena, while women’s status has principally been acquired, until fairly recently, as homemakers.

These roles certainly defined many of the elderly of today:

• Elderly Jewish men still tend to have more of a position within the public institutions of the community, even if they are not on the whole considered leaders by virtue of their age.
• Women, on the whole, are denied that public status, unless they make an effort to compete and even fight for it: most elderly women won’t.