We no longer live in world where people get old and then think of themselves as old, so explains Rabbi Rachel Cowan, co-author of “Wise Aging: Living with Joy, Resilience, and Spirit.” Rabbi Cowan, who is senior fellow and co-founder of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, wrote the book after her own retirement. Through the IJS, she expanded those thoughts and developed, along with Dr. Linda Thal, a Wise Aging program aimed at helping seniors both explore this stage of life as well as cultivate qualities of the soul.
Thanks to the generosity of Miriam and Dan Scharf, 22 individuals were trained last February to facilitate Wise Aging groups in our community. {mprestriction ids="1,3"}Kansas City is one of the pilot communities introducing Wise Aging with a Jewish context into its community, along with New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.
“Those of us who are in our 60s and 70s, as well as interested 50-year-olds and people active in their 80s (and 90s) can all count ourselves a part of an extraordinary, history-making generation.” It is for this reason that the Wise Aging program was created, “to provide new resources as well as support to live our later lives with spirit, resilience and wisdom,” Rabbi Cowan said.
The comprehensive curriculum includes text study, conversations, active listening, self-reflection, meditation, movement and journaling. It has been the experience of the Institute that these sessions include rich conversations with much laughter and helpful insights. Past participants have called the experience transformative as the fear of aging turns into an embrace of possibilities for the years ahead.
As a founding member of the IJS, Miriam Scharf supports the program as does her husband Dan. He said this Wise Aging project is something that has personally touched them because they both believe that “most of us have been in the habit of ignoring the fact that we are getting older.”
Instead of fighting that fact or ignoring it, he said, “this is an approach that embraces getting older and will allow us to do it mindfully and with grace.”
As part of their support for the Wise Aging program, the Scharfs helped bring Rabbi Cowan to the community in April 2014 as a scholar in residence at The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah. By bringing the rabbi here, they hoped to discover whether there was any interest in Wise Aging programming in the community. Miriam Scharf said they learned there was quite a bit of interest.
“This next stage of life can be very exciting and it is an opportunity to do the kind of work that frankly when you are younger you don’t have the chance to do because you are raising a family and working. When you have raised your family and perhaps retired, it is also a time in your life to be more reflective, to be more aware of your body and your emotions and your place in society. It’s also an opportunity to do the kinds of things that perhaps you have put off, whether it be travel or a second career or write that novel that you never wrote,” Miriam Scharf said.
She continued to explain that there are a variety of groups that already help people learn how to age wisely in a mindful and spiritual way. The key to this program is it helps explore all of that with a Jewish approach.
“This is very specific, doing it through a Jewish lens using Jewish texts, using meditation, using the study of Musar, which is the study of equalities — patience, perseverance, generosity, gratefulness, compassion — and how that works in your life and how that doesn’t work in your life and how one might incorporate that and be aware what are the qualities that are coming up for you and ultimately being content with where you are and who you are,” Miriam Scharf said.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for us to use our Jewish sages and heritage to look at how we can age in a purposeful way and age with mindfulness and with meaning in our lives,” Dan Scharf added.
He explained that small groups will get together to study “how aging might affect us as we get older and how we can do so with a positive attitude and with grace.”
“This will help us live the last part of our life with intention and to continue to make a difference in the world no matter what we are doing, whether we are continuing to work, whether we are retiring. No matter what, we want to do it with purpose,” Dan Scharf said.
Groups are forming immediately at the Jewish Community Center, Kehilath Israel Synagogue and Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka. In addition, Jewish Family Services is partnering with two other congregations: Beth Torah and B’nai Jehudah. (See box for specific information.)
Miriam Scharf said they are excited to see the enthusiasm for this program throughout the community.
“This program really speaks to and interacts with the demographic that everyone is trying to think about how to interact with and find ways to continue their involvement in a meaningful way. As Dan said we are all aging and the Baby Boomer population has now aged, there are many of us, and we’re all thinking about how to make this next stage of our lives meaningful and make it count and be worthwhile not for the outside world but where we feel empowered and worthwhile at this stage of our lives.”
Dan Scharf recommends Rabbi Cowan’s book on wise aging, noting it’s a marvelous book to read. He’s even more excited about the formation of the Wise Aging groups here, because he has already participated in several small, test groups.
“We’ve found that the participants became extremely engaged in the conversation and it became a meaningful exercise to talk with other people and to share our experiences and to share our thoughts and hopes for the future,” he said.
For more information about Wise Aging in our community, contact Alan Edelman at the Jewish Federation, 913-327-8104.
Register for a Wise Aging group
The following is a schedule of Wise Aging groups now forming:
The J
• Wednesdays, Sept. 9-Oct. 28 from 6 to 8 p.m.
• Thursdays, Sept. 10-Oct. 22 from 1 to 3 p.m.
Kehilath Israel Synagogue
• Tuesdays, Oct. 13, 20, Nov. 3, 10 from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Congregation Beth Torah and JFS
• Sundays 6 to 8 p.m. twice monthly beginning Oct. 11 through Jan. 31
The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah and JFS
• Thursdays 10 a.m. to noon on the second and fourth Thursday of the month beginning Oct. 8 through Jan. 28
Temple Beth Shalom, Topeka
• Third Sunday of the month from 2 to 3:30 p.m. beginning Sept. 27
Contact each institution for registration information.{/mprestriction}
