philadelphia | After Bernice Bricklin retired as a family law attorney, she remained active on several organizational boards and attended Mishkan Shalom, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Philadelphia.
But she discovered that she had a problem: When Bricklin attended Torah study classes with her daughter, people all but ignored her.
“I’m invisible,” she said, shaking her fist.
On paper, however, she’s not: As Jewish birthrates drop and life expectancy rises, Bricklin and millions of other elderly Jews represent a growing slice of American Jewry.
The National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 estimated that a quarter of America’s 5.2 million Jews are 60 or older, and that the very old are growing as a percentage of the Jewish population.
Of all Jews, 19 percent are 65 or older — compared to only 12 percent in the general population — a marked increase since the 1990 study, when the same group comprised 17 percent of the general Jewish population. Their median age is 75, up from 71 in 1990.
“That’s a big change. We’ve got an aging population,” said Allen Glicksman, director of research and evaluation at the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging and one of the foremost experts on the demographics of Jewish aging.
The effort to raise the profile of Jewish aging came as surveys show that nearly half of Reform synagogue members are 50 years old or above.
These older Jews “represent a new wave of congregational entities that are only going to grow,” said Rabbi Richard Address, Sacred Aging’s director.
Rabbi Dayle Friedman, director of Hiddur: The Center for Aging & Judaism at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in Wyncote, Pa., and a leading figure in Jewish chaplaincy and pastoral care, said the group aims to convince the community that older Jews are an untapped resource that can enrich Jewish life, not a liability.
“Hiddur’s humble mission is to transform the vision of aging in our community,” she said.
For years Friedman worked in and taught geriatric chaplaincy at RRC, which so far remains the only seminary of the major Jewish streams to offer courses on aging. Like Reform’s Sacred Aging project, Hiddur also is striving to become a clearinghouse of Jewish aging tools for the community.
Founded in 2003, Hiddur continues to raise funds, train rabbinical students, and produce kits that non-Jewish staffers in senior-care facilities that serve only a few Jews can use to help those seniors celebrate Shabbat, Chanukah and Passover.
Those on the front lines of Jewish aging welcome these moves. Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow, a chaplain at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged in Boston, said she feels the community treats its residents “like an island” of Jewish culture.
She urged synagogues and others to run programs involving seniors, especially at nursing homes likes hers where residents are hungry for spiritual nourishment.
The home could be “a center for Jewish learning,” she said. “We have perpetual care for gravestones, but not for people.”
Much of the problem revolves around the perception of aging, said Rick Moody, director for the Institute for Human Values in Aging.
While being old once meant retirement and infirmity, many elderly people today embark on new careers, tackle new pursuits and remain healthier longer.
Still, “we have no meaning for this latter part of life,” he said.
Abraham Joshua Heschel said the way the aged are treated is the truest reflection of a society. But respect for previous generations also is key to Jewish survival, according to Rabbi David Gutterman, executive director of the VAAD: Board of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia.
The Fifth Commandment says to honor your mother and father, but it really means the “collective parents of the Jewish people,” he said.
“We must have a relationship with those who came before,” Gutterman said.