Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 261

“The effort to restore the dignity of old age will depend upon our ability to revive the equation of old age and wisdom. Wisdom is the substance upon which the inner security of the old will forever depend. But the attainment of wisdom is the work of a life time.”  (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 84)

The first sentence above, delivered 63 years ago is as true today as it was then and, possibly, more urgent now than it was in 1961. It was an interesting time to deliver this talk, January of 1961 before the inauguration of the youngest President ever, John F. Kennedy, especially as his inaugural speech was about the “passing of the torch” to a new generation. We heard these same words from President Joseph R. Biden Jr. who became the first sitting President to not stand for re-election after winning the nomination in the primaries. The oldest and the youngest Presidents both spoke about “passing the Torch” to a new generation and both know/knew the equation between age and wisdom. Barack Obama knew this equation as did George W. Bush-both of whom chose ‘older’ men as their VP’s. Both of whom had them as the last voice in the room before making decisions. Just as President Biden has kept his ‘younger’ counterpart as the last person in the room before he makes his decisions.

It is incumbent upon us older adults “to revive the equation between old age and wisdom”. It is our responsibility to not try and emulate the young, not try so hard to be hip, slick and cool -because most of us already are:)- it is our job to impart the wisdom of our experiences to the next generation. It is our job to give them the best data possible so they can make the most informed decisions possible. This is true as parents beginning when our children can understand more than “because I said so” and is true as employers, supervisors, employees, etc. We all have something to pass on to the next generation and it will only happen if we “revive the equation of old age and wisdom.” This doesn’t mean we have to be ‘old’ to “revive the equation”, it means we have to be open to this revival, we have to stop “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”, we have to realize we are where we are because we are standing on the shoulders of the generational wisdom of our ancestors that gives us a new and higher(hopefully) foundation upon which to build/rebuild our society. This is why “the good old days” is such a deceptive phrase. The “good old days” prior to Kennedy’s Inauguration were about Jim Crow, inequality, restricting the voting rights of non-white people, anti-semetic quotas, etc. - Is this what made America Great??

“To revive the equation of old age and wisdom” means to be in truth about our treatment of one another, it means to see how we have advanced the promise of Declaration of Independence, the promise of the God in the Bible, the promise of the ways of living that the prophets called upon us to live. We, the elders, have to end our self-deceptions, we have to be real about our own failures in advancing these promises, in being selfish and self-seeking in our endeavors and how these paths have led to the destruction of another’s dreams, another’s opportunities, another’s freedom as well as the harm these ways of being have brought to our inner life, to our spiritual being. We have to acknowledge the ways we have failed to be human and the ways we have achieved this goal. “To revive the equation of old age and wisdom” means listening to the younger generation and engaging with them rather than dismissing them or being afraid of them.

In dialoguing with the younger generation, we have the opportunity to use our history and the history of the world and society to impart the lessons we have learned at the “school of hard knocks”. Not everything can be solved by a mathematical equation, not everything can be transmitted electronically, not everything posted on the internet is truth and, as Mark Twain says: “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes” and this was before the Internet!! Helping the younger generation discern between truth and lies, helping them live in the nuances of life can only come about when we, the elders, are more interested in helping than defending. When we, the elders, are more interested in making things right than in being right.

It also takes the younger generation to realize and accept that the older generation is doing the best it can, which was true at all times in their existence. No one does less than one can because of the myriad of forces that go into any and all decisions. We need to understand that parental guidance comes from the parenting we received and we all do a little better than our parents, I believe. All of the decisions made, even the ones we disagreed with, like Vietnam, were made with the best intentions of the people making them-no one sends their kids into a war lightly except despots. The majority of our founding fathers did not believe in slavery and knew they could not defeat the British without the Southern colonies so they made a compromise that Lincoln undid and then the “good old days” “good old boys” decided to undo in subtle and not so subtle ways. These errors are the ones we of the older generation have to atone for, because we have allowed these subtle and not so subtle ways of discrimination and non-freedoms prevail in our lifetimes as well. We need the younger generation to let go of their judgmental attitudes and engage in real dialogue without prejudice.

I am thinking of how much wisdom I missed because of the death of my father at such an early age. No matter who reached out to me, and there were many elders who did, I could not hear them through the grief and my desire to keep my father as “my guy”. What did any of them know about me, about my father’s ways when they were his siblings and his contemporaries-how foolish and ignorant of me. My recovery has been about seeking, using, engaging with the ‘older generation’ to learn from them, to argue with the “wisdom of the elders” not to be right, rather to understand. I love the tradition in Judaism of “arguing for the sake of heaven” rather than for the sake of being right. Now, as I am one of the elders, I continue to admit the errors I made and the errors of my generation, the highs and ‘victories’ of my generation as well so the next generations behind us can and will build on the foundation of repairs we made for our errors and the concrete progress we have made. “Old age and wisdom” have given me the vision to see everything in a new light-knowing that every good action I took had a twinge of bad and every bad action I took had a twinge of good- the truest example of both/and we live in. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark