CHAPTER SIX - The Aging Process: Late Life Questions

A: BACKGROUND

15. Summing up: the same old story?

There are a number of factors within the Jewish tradition and the Jewish community that can help to make a difference in the quality of life that the elderly experience.

• If it is correct to suggest that the Bible posits two possibilities for the old: a good and desirable possibility and a far harsher reality; and
• If the movement of as many mature or elderly Jews is correctly identified with the first Category (A) as an aspiration of Jewish life;
  then these factors and corresponding ideas should be examined.

The contemporary reality is incompatible with Jewish - and other - traditions.

Its message is clearly that old age is something bad that should to be kept out of sight and out of mind; cosmetics, fashions, plastic surgery, together with the media in general, conspire increasingly to promote both a devaluation of the aged and a permanent search for youth.

Judaism provides a counter-position, offering a perspective that values aging, dignity and wisdom in the elderly.

In the western world, both messages vie for supremacy among the contemporary generation of Jews.

If, as has been said, the measure of a People is the way that its treats the foreigner, so it might equally be said that the measure of people is the way they treat their elderly.
A society that learns – or remembers – to view in its elderly a potential resource, rather than a potential burden; a society that values its elderly - is indeed a society of human values.

As has been stressed throughout, Judaism values life and affirms it at every opportunity: an examination of the attitudes of Judaism and the Jews to the elderly conveys this message again, with tremendous and simple clarity.