CHAPTER SIX - The Aging Process: Late Life Questions

C: EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

28. The Aged and Us: A personal Reckoning
(About two hours)

The aims of this activity are:

• To analyse personal attitudes towards the way that we treat the elderly in our lives; and
• To examine whether or not there is any need for improvement.

• Review with the group the main facet of Judaism’s approach towards the elderly, as explored in the previous activity. Explain to the group that, exactly as they saw previously, theory and reality do not always conform, and the Bible understood the same point.
• Bring the following Bible quotations:

  28a. Do not cast me away when I am old: do not forsake me when my strength is gone.
  Psalm 71:9
  28b. When King David was old and well advanced in years, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him.
  I Kings 1:1
  28c. I am now eighty years old. Can I tell the difference between what is good and what is not? Can your servant taste what he eats and drinks? Can I still hear the voices of men and women singers? Why should your servant be a burden to my lord the king?
  II Samuel 19:35

  28d. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”: before the sun and the light and the moon and stars grow dark and the clouds return after the rain: when the keepers of the house tremble and strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few and those looking through the window grow dim: when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades: when men rise up at the sound of birds but all their songs grow faint: when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets: when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets. Remember him – before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken: before the pitcher is shattered at the spring or the wheel broken at the well and the dust returns to the ground from which it came and the spirit returns to G-d who gave it. Meaningless, meaningless says the Teacher, everything is meaningless.
  Kohelet 12:1-8

• List the problems that the Bible suggests can happen to the elderly.
• Now, individually, participants read one of the Anna Yezierska stories mentioned in the bibliography. Particularly recommended are: “A Window full of Sky”, or “The Open Cage”.
• After the reading, return to the list about the problems of the elderly that the group made.
  • Are there any additional items that should be added to the list in view of the protagonist’s experiences in the story?
• Each individual now writes a personal response to the narrator, Anzia, explaining their feelings and reactions to the points that the story makes and seeing if there are words of comfort, or encouragement, to be offered.
• Share some of those responses.
• Each person now writes a letter to her or himself, in which they make a reckoning of the way that they treat the elderly around them (family, parents’ friends, others).
  • When they examine their reactions are they pleased with what they see?
  • Is there any room for improvement?
  • Are there any resolutions that they feel they need to make?
• Review: Ask participants if they are prepared to share what they have written. This should lead into a concluding discussion about our reactions to the elderly.