Welcome to our newly redesigned site. (Read this month’s message for more on our new site.) By using WordPress as our publishing platform we hope that you will be able to access all of the resources here more easily.
We’ll be offering tips and tricks in the weeks to come, to help you get the most out of our site. Please post comments and reactions to the articles and commentaries from our contributors. Our hope is to offer an important gathering place for conversation and dialogue about aging issues in a Jewish context.
Close to 20% of the contemporary North American Jewish Community is age 65 and older. Medical technology and health awareness has now produced the longest living, healthiest, most mobile, affluent and most spiritually challenging cohort of older Jewish adults that has ever lived. Indeed, this multi-generational cohort has done much to challenge stereo-types of aging. Now, that group is being joined by the first wave of their children’s generation; then baby boomers. According to United States census figures, as of January 1, 2006, one person turns 60 every 7.5 seconds. The baby boom generation, itself a multi faceted and decades long “generation” is now entering its 60’s. What generational “baggage” will they bring to the aging process? Some three decades ago these two generations may have been in conflict over issues such as civil rights, Viet-Nam, Watergate and the trilogy of “sex, drugs and roc and roll”. Now, however, they are more likely to be joined in concerns over social security, entitlements, health care and changing social systems. How do we begin to grasp the implications of a Jewish community that is graying at such a quick rate and with such dynamism and creativity? How do we begin to understand how Jewish traditions and texts can impact such issues as care-giving, medical technology and decision making, health and wellness, new rituals and the ever growing search for one’s sense of meaning? It is the hope of this site to share ideas, “best practices”, stories and resources from the deep reservoir of Jewish communal experience. We welcome your input, your participation and thank you for joining us.
Shalom,
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min
Jewishsacredaging.com
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.
Rabbi Address:
Just wanted to write a little note saying how wonderful your service was this holiday.
Ron and I were congregants at the JTA Service in Jackson, New Jersey, and also we are the couple that approached you about Rabbi Jim Simon. I thought your sermons were very emotional and thought provoking, and your study group was enlightening.
We would love to hear back from you with a short response note I could send with the “Snow Globe for Rabbi Simon!
Ellice & Ron Gerson