For a year in 2016 Granny had been missing. She was normally seen regularly as one of a pod of orcas, otherwise known as killer whales. Granny had stewarded her pod of whales, showing them where to fish, keeping them in order, leading them as they graze the Northern Pacific Ocean off Vancouver ever since her reproductive years which must have ended many decades ago.
Granny, less sentimentally known by marine biologists studying her pod as J2, had been followed since 1976 when she was already past calving. Analysis suggests she may have been 105 years old – born before the outbreak of the First World War. Her life, which had to be assumed to have ended at the turn of 2017 ,helps us to understand what the elderly potentially are in our communities, as she was in her pod of over 70 orcas – guides, holders of important memory, stewards of community values.
Rabbi Michael Strassfeld writes in his Book of Life (p431), that we should consider the lives of those who are the elders of our communities to be a treasury, people who can look at a situation, examine a relationship with the perspective of a lifetime. We close our ears to the elderly at our moral peril.
This week at Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue we experienced the funeral of our oldest member for many years – Esher Collins, who died just before Christmas at the age of 107.
She had been a member of EHRS for 55 years, as her son Sheldon still is.
At the end of January on Sunday 28th we will be hosting an extraordinary event to recognise another of our very senior members, Kurt Marx. It will take place just after our EHRS choir will be the featured choir at the Barnet Holocaust Memorial Day Commemoration.
Kurt is 98 years old and joined EHRS thirty years ago. On that afternoon, the day after the national Holocaust Memorial Day, EHRS member and renowned sculptor Frances Segelman will be turning Kurt into clay. She will live sculpt Kurt, who is a Shoah survivor, right in front of us as we hear about his life and what his early experiences in Germany left him with as he came to the refuge of Britain. Kurt will be the eighteen Shoah survivor whom Frances has sculpted. While that unmissable event is taking place members of the Synagogue with artistic skills will be running craft stalls and we will enjoy tea together. Please book your place on the EHRS website.
Kurt knows that he will not be able to tell his story of his childhood in Cologne and his arrival in London on the Kindertransport 85 years ago for much longer. He has spoken here at EHRS and at the Borough of Barnet Commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day, to schools in Britian and in Germany, even in Cologne, and to other groups. In two week Sammy Muller, a young member of the EHRS tech team will be recording a video of Kurt so that we never lose his words.
Kurt has a moral legacy to pass on which we must hear.
This is what Jacob was doing in our Torah portion. According to the Torah account he was 147 years of age so it is not surprising that he knew he was close to death. He was given the opportunity that not all of us have – to have all of his children around him, apart sadly from his daughter Dinah from whom he was estranged some years before, and to be able to give them all parting words of blessing and critique. Some of these words are lovely – to Judah “your brothers shall heap praise on you, the sceptre shall not depart from Judah.” (Genesis 49:8-10), Dan “will plead his people’s cause as one of Israel’s tribes” (16), “The bounty of the timeless hills let them be on Joseph’s head” (26).
Some are condemnatory, to Rueben “you are excessive in exalting yourself” (3), to Simeon and Levi “Cursed is your anger so fierce and your fury so harsh.” (7)
Biblical scholars suggest that what we are really hearing in Jacob’s blessings and condemnations is a state of the tribes of Israel at some point in their history from the perspective of a courtly critic, but the scene in which these words are put is truly touching, a man’s sons and grandchildren there to hear their patriarch give them the benefit of his years of life experience and the wisdom and insight that that those years have given him.
Talmud Pesachim 56a has it that from this encounter comes the way in which we say the first two lines of the Shema. It is as if the sons of Jacob were able to reassure their father that they would continue his legacy of the Israelite religion and relationship with God that became Judaism by saying to him on his deathbed “Shema Yisrael, hear O Israel (the alternative name for Jacob), Adonai Eloheynu (the Eternal One will be our God), Adonai Echad (the Eternal God is one). Then Jacob, hearing his sons, said in his faltering now quiet voice “Baruch Shem Cavod Malchuto l’olam Va’ed” – Blessed be God’s glorious name, now I know that His Kingdom will last forever and ever. That perhaps is why we say the Baruch Shem Cavod in a quieter tone than the first line of the Shema every day apart from Yom Kippur.
Jacob’s were good final days – with the chance to express what he needed to and the opportunity to hear those whom he had brought into the world assuring him that the values he had established would continue. L’dor vaDor, from generation to generation.
Dr Atul Gawande, Professor of Surgery and Public Health at Harvard Medical School published his book Being Mortal in 2015. In this book he critiqued the way in which our western society deals with our final years. He says that our way to support someone at the end of their life is to take things away from them in the name of health, giving the example of people with Alzheimer’s who want a nice biscuit being given pureed food in case of choking. He writes that our old age homes and hospital set up for caring for the very elderly have the tendency to look after people by their symptoms – their end of life problems, not by their personalities and choices, they are not sufficiently known as people. We extend life but severely compromise the quality of it.
He says that this need not be an inevitable consequence of our society where our economy is based on enabling young people to be free to work and live where they want, generating pensions which mean that in their own old age they can live without family. We could work harder to give the very elderly choice and hear their understanding of the trade-offs that they are willing to make in order to continue living life with quality. He writes that the focus in recent years, and especially in recent weeks in the UK, on the question of assisted dying has made us forget that it is assisted living that we all will one day need.
The Prophet Zechariah paints a beautiful vision of the future of relationship between generations. Zechariah (8:4-5) speaks of a perfect future when : Old men and old women shall again dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for the fullness of days. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets.
Judaism is a religion of L’dor va Dor – from generation to generation, from Jacob to his children and grandchildren, from each of us to the children who are part of our community and from them back to us – what an appropriate Hebrew name for our congregation with over 500 young people under 21 and also 500 senior people over 85. Eshter Collins sons, having witnessed with wonder their mother passing through her 105th birthday, still well able to do her party trick of standing up and touching he toes, and still going up and down her stairs at home several times a day, were sure that she would manage Joseph’s life span in our portion of 110 years. But it was not to be as she passed away peacefully in her son Sheldon’s home, staying over for the winter holidays.
We treasure them when they are gone but well before this may our oldest generation be as close to our hearts as our youngest.
