Community Corner

Sayva means wisdom, sagacity, depth. According to the Talmud, it is a quality that comes in our later years. Unlike American culture, Jewish tradition never saw old age as a time of diminishment, disability and loss. The old were never retired, removed or isolated.  The Jewish tradition recognized that elders possess a capacity to see life from higher perspectives. The tradition honored and celebrated the unique contributions of elders to our collective life. This is an ideal we can embrace as the foundation of a new initiative in our community.

In 1900, the average American life expectancy was 47. In the 1930’s, it grew to 65; so Social Security and then Medicare were set to that age. By the end of WW2, the life span extended to 72. The additional years we live are not distributed evenly over the lifespan. Rather, we add new “life-eras” to our lives. This extended American lifespan generated “adolescence” – a life-era that never existed before. Adolescence brought its own music (the Beatles), fashion (jeans), institutions (the mall), and a set of developmental expectations – finding oneself, establishing identity, asserting autonomy, exploring intimacy and sexuality. We have a cultural script for adolescence.   

Not just “adolescence.” With our additional years, we added “retirement” to the life cycle. Retirement came with its cultural forms and expectations. One's later years were meant to be “golden years,” a second childhood devoted to play and relaxation. “Leisure World” and “Sun City” sprung up, enclaves exclusively for the old to allow them the escape they purportedly desired. 

But then, something wonderful happened. By the 1990’s our expanding life expectancy extended again. Today the average American life expectancy is 77. However, if you reach 65, you can expect to live well into your 80’s or 90’s.  Every year, Hallmark sells 85,000 “Happy 100th Birthday” cards. With these extra years, the American idea of retirement is obsolete. Many of us will live 30 years, a full third of our lives, after age 65!

That presents a challenge. While we live much longer, our culture has no script, no map, no concept for all these later years. We knew what becoming teenagers meant.  We anticipated adulthood, beginning families, and building careers. We even knew what reaching middle age meant. What does this time of life hold for us?  We don’t even have a name for this time of life. It is sometimes called “Later Adulthood”; “Third Chapter”; “Adulthood II”; “Encore Years” – that period of life between the end of work and end of life. For many, it is a time of (relative) physical and mental capacity, of independence, mobility, financial security, and sociability. But there is no social map to help us find our way through this time of life. 

The goal of Sayva is to make Later Adulthood joyful, interesting and purposeful – a time of life to be celebrated and anticipated, not dreaded or denied. More than accumulating programs, we aim to create a new culture for this time of life, in the same way that American culture once developed a pattern and a plan for adolescence. This new culture of Later Adulthood  would be characterized by its own developmental tasks, and offer its own special opportunities, experiences and values. Our objective is to launch a center of programs that will generate this new culture, embracing people in their Later Adulthood, and offer them a way of life to be celebrated. 

What will Sayva offer?

The best scholarship on Later Adulthood tells us that people of this age wish to continue growing, remaining active, giving back to the world, celebrating being alive, and staying connected.  Sayva will be organized around these themes:

1. Learning. Growing and learning is key to making Later Adulthood fulfilling. Opening the mind to new ideas, opening the hands to new skills, opening ourselves to new experiences lends life a quality of joy and excitement. Release from full-time employment offers this special opportunity. Many of us would like to return to college to enrich our education. But college can be intimidating for older people. Recognizing this, universities are beginning to offer programs for elders.  The PLATO Society at UCLA is a model for lifelong learning, as is the The University of the Third Age in the UK.
   
   We aim to produce a Jewish version of these programs of adult learning, especially focused on Jewish topics for older people. We can also offer guidance to those elders who wish to pursue higher education elsewhere, making learning available to all.  

2. Create. Everyone is an artist. Art is an important part of human existence. All of us have a capacity to express ourselves in some medium. Creating art of all kinds is among the most joyful experiences, and again, an opportunity afforded once our working years are concluded. 
   
   A Sayva Center for the Arts devoted to elders offers elders a way to find and express their creative impulses.

3. Giving Back. In the 2015 film, “The Internship,” Robert De Niro plays a retired executive who takes on an internship in a design firm run by a group of younger people. The young are slow to recognize his gifts of patience, experience and wisdom, but soon he insinuates himself as a valued part of their working and personal lives. In turn, he recovers a sense of being needed, of being of service.
   
   Adults in their later years want to feel useful. They want to serve, to contribute, to give back. Most especially, they want to direct their energies to the well-being of future generations. Their accumulated experience, patience and wisdom, positions them uniquely to do so effectively. What they need is an institutional structure to make placements, offer guidance, and on-going support. Sayva Placement Center would offer resources and guidance for late-adulthood second careers, particularly in the helping professions, for paid and unpaid internships for elders, for sustained and spontaneous volunteer service opportunities. The “Koreh-LA” program was an effective model of what can be done. Placing volunteers as reading tutors in public schools offered students much-needed help and support. And more, it offered retired people a sense of being valued for their service and contribution. 

4. Play. Play is a critical part of the human soul. As we get older, our culture suppresses play in the service of work and responsibility, and  “maturity.” Later Adulthood offers the opportunity to recover the joy of play by releasing us from the need for performance, the fear of failure, the embarrassment of trying new things.
   
   Sayva should offer opportunities for play, for engaging activities valued simply for their own sake. Walks, trips, games, affinity groups, hobby groups, all would enrich the lives of elders.

5. Intimacy and Relationships. The most important element in successful aging is connection with others. Maintaining old friendships, making new friends among peers and among younger people, sharing oneself with family, are critical for this time of life. Every program or function of Sayva must carry the priority of connecting individuals into relationships. Sayva will conduct a sustained effort at developing  groups of every kind and affinity simply to connect people and push back the loneliness that affects so many older people – walking groups, Mahjong games, investment clubs, book groups, travel groups, restaurant crawls, theater groups, etc. 

6. Transition. The move from working life to Later Adulthood, the movement through Later Adulthood toward Old Age can be fraught. As change comes to our daily routine, as body and mind change, as relationships change, our identity changes, leaving us feeling out of place in the world.
   
   In the same way that the VBS Counseling Center engages adults as para-professional counselors, offering personal support, Sayva will build a cadre of counselors to help people through all the transitions that come with growing older, but most especially, the task of finding meaningful ways of living during this time of life.  

7. Ritual. One of the most important things we can do for elders is to organize rites of passage for the significant moments that attend our later years.  Bar and Bat Mitzvah anticipates and initiates adulthood, we need a “Bar and Bat Hochmah” to celebrate this time of life, to frame it in sacred symbols, and to invest it with sacred values.  

When we deviate from the car’s navigation route, the screen reads, “Recalibrating,” or “Re-Routing.” We are not interested in retiring, retreating, or removing ourselves from life. We are ready to recalibrate, re-route, renew, and reveal new capacities, new interests, new values. This is the goal of Sayva. 

Sayva is a program of Valley Beth Shalom, Temple Judea, Temple Ramat Zion, the Jewish Home for the Aging, and the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles. For information, please contact Rabbi Ed Feinstein, efeinstein@vbs.org.