Choices in Life
Kol Nidre 2026, 5287
By Howard Rock
Two years ago, I gave a Dvar Torah on a parsha of the Book of Numbers that describes a census of the Israelite people. As I considered the meanings of this parsha, of counting, my thoughts shifted to another meaning of counting: what counts for us. And then I thought of a middle school concert I had attended in which my grandson played bass clarinet. I recalled looking around the auditorium, seeing multiple generations. There were the students, and then the parents, and then the grandparents, my generation.
Let’s look at them for a moment. What counts for my grandson’s generation as it attends high school and college is the opening of many worlds, the wondrous, challenging world of the mind, the entrancing, entangling, and loving world of relationships. All doors are open, major decisions still to be made, many choices.
What counts for them is openness to human experience, spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional.
And then my children’s generation. For them, many choices are already made: the majority have spouses, children, and a profession. They are in the middle of their lives; many doors have closed, many yet remain open. They are still physically able, yet far more mature than they were as young adults.
What counts for this generation is the ability to use the wisdom and experience of their 40 or 50 years to care for their families and their work and to explore new horizons. To accept life’s limitations and disappointments while building a greater understanding of what a good life really is.
And then there is my generation and that of many in our congregation. Largely retired, many with children and grandchildren, for us, if getting old brings maturity, we are very mature. What counts at this moment in our lives? That is what I wish to focus on tonight, though I believe what I will say has meaning for every generation.
This is Yom Kippur, so I begin with spirituality and fellowship.
For me, Jewish spirituality is the quest to find meaning beyond the limitations of our own lives. When we attend Shabbat or High Holiday services, we seek something beyond ourselves, beyond our egos, beyond our personal existence.
For the Orthodox, this happens through a connection with God, through prayer to an omniscient all-powerful presence and through obedience to God’s commandments.
For the non-Orthodox, the traditional Avenu Malkenu, our father, our king, does not work. In its place modern Jewish theologians have put forward new understandings of divinity. For example, the sense that during Covid, God was present, even that God was the presence of the courageous work of the doctors and nurses and staff in the emergency rooms of overcrowded hospitals.
Others have sought solace in a natural God or in a limited God who is not responsible for fatal birth defects or the Holocaust, and though God cannot prevent them, he can be and is at the side of people in need.
Spiritual transcendence can be found through fellowship with others who seek dialogue with God or who find fellowship in and of itself the spiritual connection that they seek. In the warmth and acceptance of a loving community, wealth, status, and other trappings are replaced by our presence together, by our common support. This living Judaism, found in communal celebrations of Passover, Hanukkah, Shabbat and other holidays, links us to three millennia of Jewish civilization, giving our relatively short lives greater significance.
More than fifteen years ago, Sam Book, of blessed memory, a member of the BJC, gave a talk in which he connected fellowship with worship, that God emerges from our personal relationships. That has always stuck with me. The great Jewish theologian Martin Buber, in his famous book, I and Thou, saw God revealed in the most profound relationships between two people.
A second theme of what counts for our generation is the life of the mind. Young students often have little interest in history; what came before doesn’t count, death is far away and not very meaningful. People of our age are sensitive to history and want to know more about it – in many cases about our genealogies; to be part of a continuum that came before and will go on after our years on this planet gives greater meaning to our lives, a sense of immortality.
Using our minds, we delight in the greatest achievements of mankind in literature, music, theater, and fine arts. The arts ask the most profound questions about the human condition, taking us to places that we could never reach on our own. As we have fewer days, we are anxious to read the books we never got to, travel to historic locations. How much more do we now appreciate a work of Rembrandt or a play by Shakespeare.
It’s just that there isn’t enough time, there never is.
My third and final theme of what counts is how we confront the aging process.
How do we deal with our bodies when they no longer function as they once did? How do we face disabilities? Is it possible to live a meaningful life when confronted with significant pain and serious illness? Many of us are not very good at this and that includes myself. If we are in physical distress, often that is all we want to talk about. What counts in the challenge of aging, to the extent that it is possible, is to not hyperfocus on what is going wrong. There are times when that is not possible. But when it is possible, to remain a part of our fellowship. To not let our conversations be dominated by our physical problems. This is a difficult challenge.
Preparing for tonight’s talk I read The Art of Aging by Sherwin Nuland, born Shepsel Ber Nudelman, author of the well-known book, How We Die, a cardiac surgeon who turned to writing later in life. Sharing his words will add depth to my discussion of finding spirituality and fellowship, keeping our minds alive and especially coping with the aging process.
Central to The Art of Aging is an exchange of letters between Dr. Nuland and Ruby Chattergee, a 73-year-old Indian woman. After reading How We Die, she wrote Nuland a letter:
When one has lived a full life with both happy and sad experiences and feels that the capacity of enjoying life is slowly ebbing away due to old age, should not one end one’s own life? I think that would be a happy ending. My vision is badly impaired. I cannot see in one eye and the other a very limited angle of vision.
Ruby wrote that when she left home she had to “depend on somebody else most of the time” and that her hearing was failing. She could only move slowly. Consequently, she reasoned that, though her mind was okay, “I feel it is time I should die. It needs to be done secretly or it would cause pain to others. What is the easiest way to do it secretly by one’s own hands?”
A cry for help or a carefully considered decision? Nuland chose to see her letter as an attempt to establish a connection with a person who might suggest a way out. He responded:
Sometimes… it is necessary that we live for others. Yes, it is true that the various incapacities that are taking hold of your body are due to gradual changes of age. But it is perfectly obvious that you do not have any major disease process that is likely to cause you a great deal of suffering, at least not in the foreseeable future. You are very important to your son and your granddaughters. I cannot suggest that a person as basically as you, whose mind is clear enough to write such a beautiful letter, should even consider taking her own life.
Instead, she must “live for the sake of those who love you because they need you.” Ruby’s child and grandchildren needed the reassurance of her physical presence on earth. If his grandmother had taken her life in her mid-70s, Nuland declared, he would’ve been devastated; “it would have had a profound effect on my ability to face the future.” What, he asked, could he do “to encourage you to think optimistically with the assurance of how important you are to those few people who really matter in our lives, the few that surround us in a loving circle of a family and close friends?”
But Ruby was not fully convinced, responding again that she just felt that she had little left to offer. Dr. Nuland replied:
I have to disagree with you that there is little that you can give to benefit any other person. Our very lives benefit others simply by the security of their knowing that we are there. Think of this in your own experience – think of the people whose contribution to you was simply that they existed as stars in your firmament, because their presence in the world steadied you, gave you a sense of direction. I’m sure your granddaughters and your son feel this way about you. I am also sure you make a far more real contribution to their lives than you can imagine. Just try asking them someday.
Ruby rallied but then wondered if most family members that care for their aged parents do not see them as a burden, feeling relief when they die. Grief, she pondered, is only strong when it is an early death.
Dr. Nuland dissented:
I’m afraid I can’t agree with you when you say my life is my own and I am free to do what I want with it… Life is precious, a gift of extraordinary value, which is given to us and which we in turn give to others, and not to be compared to inanimate goods. I do not believe that our lives belong only to ourselves. Once we have formed relationships, our lives become of great importance to others.
He cautioned Ruby that the way that people express their grief may not always expose the deep wound that they may be unconsciously submerging. In addition, a decision to die “cannot be made without being shared with those who love us; it is, in a sense, a community decision...” Ruby, he reassured her, was a woman who was yet very much “part of this world.” She, like so many others, made contributions that were “beyond your ability to appreciate.”
The dialogue continued for many years. In the meantime, Ruby traveled to America seven times to see her children and grandchildren, and to England, Dubai and Delhi. She visited Sherwin at his home in Connecticut. When the book was published in 2006, she was in her mid-80s. At that point he asked Ruby what she would tell people who had questions about continuing to live. She replied that she was now a far different woman that the one who had written that first letter and that she would tell others:
that there is meaning in life. We should have patience and look at life from a different angle.… That we should give more thought to those with whom we have a loving and emotional relationship. That is the essence of life. That is what keeps me going. I love to travel and visit interesting places, but I can no longer do this. I enjoyed having good food but that is now severely restricted. What I have is more than 80 years of experience of life. What I have learned from this helps me face the future.
The Art of Aging is full of wisdom. As I conclude, I want to share just a few of Dr. Nuland’s observations that relate to the story of Ruby Chatterjee as well as my earlier remarks. He urges us to find acceptance of the aging process. As the years pass and our horizons are limited, we should consider just allowing them to do that, and then to understand that these new boundaries or limitations actually permit us to appreciate and cherish more than ever loving, learning and family. Learning this allowed Ruby to continue her life with even more depth.
Second is the joy of giving. Nuland was a prominent cardio surgeon and over his long career gave many people more years of life. Looking back, he now believes that, following a successful operation, it should be the surgeon who thanks the patient. Why? Because the joy of giving or extending a person’s life is incalculable. Whatever the pay, and the pay is good, the joy of giving life is much deeper and fulfilling, incalculable. In Ruby’s case she learned just in time of the joy in giving to her children and grandchildren; it made her life worth living.
Finally, there’s the issue of frustration. Too many people over 65 are clinically depressed, victims of a serious illness. They needn’t be. Frustration is one of the greatest threats within the aging process. Ruby nearly succumbed to it. Whether it is remembering to exercise or sticking to a diet, older men and women are as good as any generation at carrying out a decision to change harmful behavior. We can change for the better, step by step, in every chapter of our lives. Isn’t that exactly what the High Holy Days are about?
Today is the day that the book of life is sealed. It is a day we spend pondering the meaning of our lives. We can learn from the dialogue of Shep Nudelman and Ruby Chatterjee: life is precious. And it is not only our own. We are deeply connected to so many others; what we do affects them, what they do affect us. This web of relationships makes our lives meaningful.
This is not to say that the aging process is easy or that it is not a time of grief and disappointment and both physical and emotional distress. Of course it is. But it is to say that even with limitations that will come, there are also many days, weeks and hopefully years in which we will find both love and fulfillment.
So, within the framework of Jewish spirituality that surrounds us on this sacred day, let us return to where I started a few minutes ago, what counts in life. In the presence of God, of divinity, however you understand it, and shaped by the centuries-old traditions of Judaism that are deeply woven into our identity, go forward with joy to the days you have left. Drive up to the Parkway and really see the mountains, listen closely to music you love, lose yourself in a great book, and spend precious hours with close friends and family. As we age, we appreciate every single day, we appreciate that the sun rises and that the sun sets, and we appreciate each other. Yes, that’s what counts, to be grateful for the truly miraculous blessing of life which is, after all, a religious experience.
I hope these high holidays and the coming days and years in which our names are yet inscribed in the Book of Life will bring each of us the satisfaction and fulfillment of a life well lived.