
Welcome to 2025! Yes, we are living in interesting times. I am sure many of us have watched media retrospectives on 2024, the highlights and low lights of this past year. No one of us can predict with any certainty what 2025 will bring. One thing we do know is that for those of us who are part of the Jewish Sacred Aging® community, we will be presented with more challenges and possibilities. What will it mean to grow older in this new year?
The first wave of Boomers are now in their late seventies and touching 80. Many of our children find themselves approaching the age of AARP membership. The late stage Boomers, now rushing to sixty-five give evidence that the older adult cohort now really is a multi-generational community that can present so many different approaches to growing older. Indeed, this reality forms part of a new book by James Chappel of Duke University, titled “Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age”. One of Chappel’s arguments is that for too long our society had examined aging from a medical model. In his book he calls on our society to expand this view to even include the theological perspective. The there is no pill that can guide us in our search of meaning and purpose.
If the 2020 Pew study of our community is in any way reflective of reality, then at least half of our total community are now over fifty years of age. We are very reflective of that multi generational profile. We have people n their mid fifties who may be prepping for the Bar or Bat Mitzvah of their child. At the same time their parents in their sixties may be off on a cruise or still working and also may be deeply involved in caring for an elder parent who may be in their eighties or nineties. Indeed, one of the fastest growing cohorts of our community are the people over eight-five.
What we have learned in this past decade of Jewish Sacred Aging® work is that aging is very personal. There is no “one” definition, or approach. We bring our own universe of experience, our environment and genetic history into our own aging. Even the vocabulary of aging needs to be reexamined.
So, as we enter this new secular year, let us give thanks for medical technology, public health advances, vaccines and to the many people that help support and make possible our living longer and living better. It is also a time to consider a major emphasis on the theology of aging. Longevity has given us a gift of time to seriously consider our place in the universe, what we wish to leave behind, the serious challenges in the quality of life discussion that now looks at the tension between health span and life span. Key to this spiritual foundation may very well be (and I believe it is) the power and place of the relationships we have. Studies now indicate that the social aspect of aging is a determining factor in the spiritual foundation of aging. It is what I call the “theology of relationships” and it is, I believe, a major factor in how we embrace and live our individual futures.
There are still huge challenges that remain for us as we age. The challenges of caregiving, costs, access to heath care, isolation , etc. However, let me suggest that one of the approaches we may wish to explore as a Jewish community and as a society, is how our own Judaism can support, embrace and accompany us on this journey. Medicine and tech has given us huge gifts, but in this new secular year, let’s try, as a community, to find meaning through acts of kindness, “chesed” and seeing in ourselves and everyone else that spark of divinity. Without each other our souls will remain in exile, even if our bodies are strong. More to come.
Have a sweet, safe and healthy 2025.
Shalom,
Rabbi Richard F. Address
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