REHOVOT, Israel — Victor Pessin is not a happy man. Before he came to Israel in 1990 from what was then Leningrad, Pessin was both an engineer in a government research institute and an after-hours sports writer. Now he is a security guard at a Tel Aviv school.
Although Pessin is a vigorous 62-year-old, he is considered “too old” to get a job that utilizes his professional skills. In fact, he is lucky to get a job at all.
His situation is typical. In the last decade, some one-fifth of the immigrants from the former Soviet Union were over 60 when they touched down at Ben-Gurion Airport and, as Pessin puts it with more than a touch of bitterness, “they were consigned to the trash basket.”
Nonetheless, he admits, had they remained in the former Soviet Union, most people their age are not only jobless but also starving.
Here, at least, there is a security net for them, as there is for all older Israelis. And the number of aging in Israel is rising, as it is in other Western countries.
Since 1955, the population of Israelis over 65 has increased sevenfold, while the general population has increased just a bit more than threefold. Israeli citizens in this age group now account for 10 percent of the population, up from 4 percent in the ’50s. Among Jews alone, those 65 and over represent about 12 percent (as compared with 3 percent among Arabs).
Even more startling is the increase in the number of “old-old” — i.e., those who have already celebrated their 75th birthday. Now there are some 250,000 such men and women, 10 times as many as in the ’50s.
Many of the so-called “old-old” move about in wheelchairs, but Weizmann Institute Professor Shneior Lifson rode a bicycle until his recent death at 87. Moreover, he rode it to work.
Lifson first saw the light of day even before the advent of the British Mandate, having been born in Tel Aviv, when this country was still part of the Ottoman Empire. On graduating from high school, he spent 11 years as a kibbutznik in the Valley of Jezre’el. Only afterward did he embark on his scientific studies, which brought him first to the Hebrew University and then to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot.
“Here at the Weizmann Institute,” he had said in an interview, “retirement officially begins at 65, after which a professor can no longer hold administrative positions. But from then until the age of 80, he can, if he so desires, ask for permission, year by year, to go on working — if he can find outside funds to finance his research. In rare cases, like my own, a department head may allow somebody in his unit to continue on even after 80.”
When Lifson looked around the Weizmann campus, he saw a flourishing institution. This would not have been the case had he remained a kibbutznik, for a significant percentage of Israel’s collective settlements have been in decline. With more than 50 percent of kibbutz-born children leaving, some kibbutzim are turning into virtual old-age homes. This is the case, for example, with Hulda, midway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Moshe Sheskin, like most members of Hulda, is officially a pensioner. A Montreal-born educator, he had planned to come here in his 20s, but actually made the journey from Canada to Israel when he was in his late 40s. That was in 1976, and some months after his arrival he and his wife joined Hulda. It was still in pretty good shape then, but, as Sheskin puts it, “the kibbutz has disintegrated before my eyes.”
The kids have left for “well-paying jobs in nearby cities, and they haven’t been replaced by new people, thus causing our membership to decline from over 240 to under 120. Moreover, many of those still here are unable to do a full day’s work, or are even bed-ridden.”
The situation, Sheskin said, “is particularly heartbreaking for the old-timers, most of whom were among the founders of the kibbutz. They spent their entire lives striving to create a new kind of egalitarian society for themselves and their children. Now they see their children leaving and the society itself, with the introduction of differential wages, jettisoning its core values. So they suffer not only from the aches and pains common to the elderly everywhere, but also from a profound sense of failure.”
While kibbutzniks are experiencing economic difficulties, some Israelis are enjoying unprecedented prosperity, enabling them to spend the last years of their lives in high-level, expensive retirement homes. Those facilities have proliferated over the last decade not only because of growing demand, but also because they promise handsome profits to investors with $25 million or $30 million on hand.
Their earnings stem from the fact that people who want to occupy one of its apartments must typically pay not only a monthly fee, but also a deposit of from $70,000 to $200,000, part of which is returned to their heirs. That money, exploited by those who financed the project, permits them a quick return on their investment.
Dr. Aviva Kaplan, the dynamic gerontologist who runs the Ad 120 retirement home in Rishon LeZion, south of Tel Aviv, points out that the people who live there enjoy the amenities of a five-star hotel. The rooms are quite large and the public facilities impressive. They include a restaurant and cafeteria, game rooms, a gift shop, a beauty shop and a grocery store. There is also a big hall that can be used for lectures or parties.
Most of the residents are veteran Israelis of European origin like Hanna Herzberg. Originally from Holland, she spent the Second World War, as did Anne Frank, hiding in an attic with other members of her family. Fortunately, however, they didn’t suffer the fate of the Franks.
Herzberg’s life included some stormy episodes afterward as well. She was interned by the British in Cyprus for a year together with thousands of other Jewish “illegal immigrants” who had been trying to reach pre-state Israel and she subsequently fought in the 1948 War of Independence. Afterward, she settled down to a more peaceful life as a mother, lab technician and author.
Asked why she and her husband decided to come to Ad 120, she said, “It wasn’t an easy decision, for we loved our little home. But my husband had a stroke and I finally decided after 2-1/2 years that I couldn’t go on taking care of him all by myself. So we came here, where there is excellent medical care round the clock.”
The great majority of elderly Israelis can’t afford luxurious retirement homes like Ad 120 and they have to look to other alternatives. Now very popular — though again just available to people with reasonably high incomes — is hiring live-in Filipino women to help them cope with the problems of age and infirmity.
Though the National Insurance Institute funds a limited amount of home care for the aged, hiring a full-time caregiver is out of the question for the majority of old people because their total monthly income is less than what they would have to pay out in wages. Those who depend solely on National Insurance Institute pensions will not starve, but not much more than that.
Among Israeli Arabs, changing demographics have contributed to instability for many of the elderly. The Arab community is no longer based on multigenerational extended families that include the grandparents, all their married sons and their offspring, according to Faisal Azaiza, a member of Haifa University’s Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Studies and the mayor of Daburriyah.
“Attempts to establish and develop social services in the Arab sector to cope with this new situation have been beset with difficulties,” Azaiza said. “A prime factor has been the attitude of the elderly themselves and of their families toward the formal services offered by official bodies, because, according to long-standing Arab tradition, the responsibility for caring for the old rests with the family.”
Israel’s 1988 Community Care Law, according to Azaiza, was not accepted in traditional Arab circles because of objections to outside caregivers in the home.
The welfare agencies “hit upon a solution,” Azaiza said. “Allow the grandchildren [or other close relatives] to take care of their forebears. As a result, the rate of Arab pensioners receiving home-care aid under the law is higher than among elderly Jewish beneficiaries.”
While social and health services have brought benefits to elderly Arabs, Azaiza said, “their social status has deteriorated. They are no long the prominent figures they once were, no longer able to determine everything regarding family matters.”