Jerusalem Report logo small (credit: JPOST STAFF)
Jerusalem Report logo small (credit: JPOST STAFF)
Some years after my retirement from my rabbinic pulpit, a former congregant met me and asked, “Are you still alive?” Heavens! It reminded me of an incident when I was a child in Melbourne. My mother was seriously ill, and the next-door boy, with the cruel tactlessness of childhood, shouted over the fence, “Isn’t your mother dead yet?”

My congregant’s question starkly reminds me that I’m no longer so young. The Bible spells it out in Psalm 37:25: “I was young, now I am old.” It echoes in Psalm 71:9 with its heart-rending sentence, “Cast me not away in time of old age.” According to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who is still a vibrant rabbi and educator at the age of 81, the verse is saying, “Don’t cast me into old age... Don’t let me be old before my time!”

Years ago. when I worked for the Association for Jewish Youth in Britain, a know-all teenager told me, “Everyone over 20 is a has-been.” I guess that teenager is still alive – a “has-been” himself, now well into his 60s or beyond. In my case, I’m over 80, still alive and active, and not dead yet.

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