On Aging - Erev Rosh Hashanah 5785
Two weeks ago, I turned forty. And although to some of you, this only underscores just how young your Rabbi still is, for me, it is a big milestone. One for which I have lots of thoughts and feelings.
This year there were no shortage of issues in the zeitgeist, be they yesterday’s attack on Israel by Iran, our post October 7th world, antisemitism or the election. And thankfully I’ll have four more opportunities to address some of those to you. But I want to start tonight by reflecting a bit on a big issue that I’ve been thinking a lot about and was a centerpiece of the national discourse this summer: aging, growing older, and the inevitable loss that comes with that process.
If we paid attention in any of our adulthood, we’ve faced the losses that comes with the passage of time. Aging is a series of setbacks, things big and small. And the thing that separates those who weather the process of aging well from those who don’t are the ones who can mourn those losses and learn to live with them and find a comfortable spot the “new normals.”
To give just a small example, I remember the exact moment and mirror when I realized I was going to go bald. If you knew me in my teens, I had a great, full head of hair. Then came the time during my sophomore year to shave my head for swimming. As if ripped right out of Seinfeld, I noticed that after the event, when it was time to grow the hair back, it was not coming in evenly. I tried as much as I could to slow things down, even buying and using hair thickening, horse shampoo. But nothing worked.
It took a while to come to terms with the fact that I will never get my hair back. True, there are advantages. I’ve looked forty since I was twenty-five, something I’ve affectionately called being “age ambiguous.”
But in the end, even knowing the benefits, it took me a long time before my lack of hair was no longer the first thing I noticed when I looked in the mirror.
You may be surprised to hear this, but Judaism isn’t always so helpful when it comes to dealing with the reality of aging. Rather than face aging head on, the Bible tends to mythologize those who overcome it.
Women like Sarah go through menopause, only to miraculously have a child at the age of 90. Moses’ great end-of-life miracle was that he died at the age of 120 with "his eyes undimmed and his vigor unabated’ (Dt. 34:7). There are legends that he didn’t just walk up mount Nebo toward his death but he bounded up it.
A millennium after the Torah, the ancient Rabbis also viewed aging through rose-colored glasses. In their description of each decade of life, they label each positively:
Forty [is the age] for understanding, Fifty [is the age] for [giving] wise counsel, Sixty [is the age] where one can be called an “elder”, Seventy [is the age] for a hoary head, Eighty [is the age] for [superadded] strength (Avot 5:21).
Only at ninety do they finally admit that someone might walk a little stooped over.
For our Rabbis aging is not something to be feared but is a gift. According to one Midrash, God only brought aging into the world after Abraham requested it. He and his son Isaac looked alike and people were confusing them. Hoping there would be a way to distinguish between himself and his child, Abraham asked God for the “gift” of strangers knowing right away that he had lived longer and accrued wisdom, just by looking at him (Bereshit Rabbah 65). He hoped his wrinkles would tell his story.
But as all of us know, that’s not always the experience of those who are growing older.
This summer we watched firsthand a national conversation about aging. After a dismal debate performance the country began questioning whether President Joe Biden had the acuity and stamina to run for another term in office. It was a painful debate to watch, in part, because many of us have been there. It triggered in us memories of loved ones (or ourselves) struggling with forced retirements, arguing over giving up the car keys, downsizing to homes with fewer stairs.
One has to imagine that the reason it was so heartbreaking for President Biden to admit that he was done was that it meant admitting he would never, in his whole life, get back to his pinnacle. He had to mourn the person he once was, since he’ll never be that person again.
At forty, I’m only beginning the process. I love to run, but as the years have gone on, I’ve watched my times slow ever so slightly. I love playing with my kids, but I as time moves forward, I will more and more have to be careful I don’t tweak my back in the process.
I remember in college a friend of mine saying at the end of his final swim season, “It’s crazy to think that I will never again be in this good shape.” I remember thinking how sad that was, but also knowing it was true. The longer we live, the more “never agains” we will encounter.
I often talk to wedding couples about what makes a marriage successful. I truly believe that the number one thing that keeps couples married for decades is their ability to weather the inevitable changes brought about through time. Because we are constantly changing, you are never married to one person for the duration of a marriage. You have multiple marriages to the same person. If you can change together, your marriage will last. If you cannot, it will fail. Happiness is found in not holding on to the image of what your partner used to be but learning to love the person they are constantly becoming.
And that’s true for our own sense of personal wellbeing. I am not the same person I was when I was 20. And I will not be the same at 60 or 80 as I am now.
Growing older can be a wonderful thing. I was recently talking to a congregant who explained that they took the same vacation with their younger kids as they did with their older one, but that with the passage of time and knowing it was going to be their last of these trips, they appreciated it more. That’s perhaps one reason that being a grandparent is so wonderful. With a little perspective you strip away a lot of the anxiety and fear of being a first-time parent and knowing it might be your last go around with little ones, you savor your moments with them in a different way.
But having that kind of presence in the face of growing older isn’t always an easy thing to do. If the Jewish tradition claimed the Abraham was the first one to grow old, it also imagined that his son Isaac was the first person to be pained by the process.
Many of us know the most famous story of Isaac’s aging. Isaac, blind with age, decides that he is going to give his favorite son Esau a blessing. Catching wind of the plan, his wife Rebecca convinces his other son Jacob to pretend to be Esau, dressing up like him and even covering his arms in animal skins to appear hairy like his brother. In his blindness, Isaac is tricked and gives Jacob the blessing meant for Esau. Esau grows rageful at his scheming brother and Jacob has to flee home to avoid his brother’s wrath.
One of the ironies of the story, however, is while the blessings feel like a final act in a life well lived, Isaac actually lives an additional 20 years more. Noticing this, the 12th century biblical commentator, Rabbi David Kimchi, points out that when Isaac grew blind, he assumed his life was over. He couldn’t imagine a world where he could live fulfilled yet unable to see. Not able to pivot with this major change, he stopped making plans and readied himself for the end.
I imagine that’s also the reason he was willing to let Jacob leave home after Esau found out about his trickery. If there was nothing to look forward to and his life would be lived yearning for what was rather than planning for what could be, then there was no reason to envision a future with his son around.
The Bible says nothing of Isaac’s final two decades because one has to imagine, he didn’t live it in a way that was worthy of recording. What might it have looked like if he was able to take the aging, with its lumps and setbacks, and carve a new approach to life?
It would be naive for me to get up here and say that the answer to aging is ignore its issues and embrace its virtues be they the wisdom and perspective aging brings, the deep relationships one can only get with time, and the gratitude that one gets when one reflects on the many years of good living that came before. These are important but they aren’t the only part of the story.
There is loss in growing older and you don’t have to like it.
I’ve always admired the famous Talmudic story of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yochanan. One day Eliezer grows sick and Yochanan comes to comfort him. Upon seeing his friend, Eliezer bursts into tears. Yochanan starts probing his friend to see what is the matter: “Is it because you didn’t accomplish what you wanted to do in life?” “Was it because you are grieving past losses?” Eliezer looks at him and says no. Eliezer continues: It’s because I look at you, Yochanan, and know that one day, we both will die. Our time on this world will end. You remind me that life is too short and even the best of us run out of time.
Soon the two are crying together. Then, pausing for a moment Yochanan asks his sick friend a question, “Is your suffering dear to you?” “No” Eliezer replies, “not it, nor it’s reward.”
In that moment of vulnerability, Eliezer is ready to be healed. Yochanan takes his hand and stands his friend up.
Yes, there are rewards in growing older, but that need not overshadow the profound sense of loss that can come with time.
There is a famous Talmudic debate about what to do with our fears and pain. Two thousand years ago, two rabbis, Ammi and Assi, engaged in a debate about the merits of speech (Talmud, Sanhedrin 100b). When faced with anxiety, when haunted by the fear of growing older, how should we act? Assi responded that we should “banish it from our minds.” Ammi disagreed. He denied that downplaying, positive thinking, and distraction is the right approach. Instead, he said, we should “speak about it to others.”
These High Holy Days don’t be afraid to be honest about how you feel about growing older. The way we deal with aging isn’t by listening to Rav Assi by banishing it from our minds and pretending it isn’t happening. It’s in noticing the effects of time and seeking out community that gets it.
We can only have the space to see the beauty of the passing of time when we deal with the baggage that also comes with aging.
Once we can admit that it’s not always wonderful to grow older, once we’ve processed those emotions and dealt with them, can we then turn our attention to the fact that if we can make that pivot, mourning the changes time has wrought, the “new normals” can hold real meaning for us too.
I recently did a funeral for someone who understood how to do this. Their family explained that as their body began failing around them, they learned to adjust to a smaller and smaller world. As they stopped traveling, then driving at night, then driving all-together, then were confined to their house they processed the feelings those setbacks brought up and were present in the moment they were in.
As this person’s daughter explained, channeling the story of Yochanan and Eliezer “where sometimes a person sees a flower and is saddened that the changing of the seasons will mean it will wither away, my mom could see the flower, be present with it, and appreciate it’s beauty in that particular moment.”
Not all of us will be able to move past that sense of loss as artfully as this person, but all of us are capable of it. And the ability to pivot past it is what will bring joy to our lives.
There is something I’ve always appreciated about watching nonagenarians eat cake. I’m not sure why, but they seem to like it more than us younger people. As their world gets smaller, it also somehow makes more room for the joy found in tasting that sweet treat.
I’m only at the beginning of the process, tip-toeing into middle age and like most, I think of myself as a lot younger than I actually am. But at the same time, I’m trying my best to let go of the fantasy of staying young forever.
There is a lot to look forward to at every age provided we don’t hold on so tight to what was that we can’t step into what could be.
