Mitch Braff appreciates a room with a view. 

The award-winning filmmaker, entrepreneur and founder of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation has at times worked in a windowless office in San Francisco and even had a bedroom without a window.

Five years ago, the San Rafael resident launched LiquidView, a company that sells high-definition screens that resemble large windows, turning a blank wall into a view of a striking coastline in California or a charming city in Europe.

Originally conceived as a design element for offices and homes, the “digital windows” have also been installed at senior care facilities, including Rhoda Goldman Plaza and the Frank Residences in San Francisco and The Redwoods in Mill Valley.

“The windows have been such a wonderful addition to our community at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, allowing us to introduce natural landscapes that are immersive and calming,” said Miki Lamm, a social worker in gerontology and dementia care who serves as director of Seniors at Home, a division of S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services. 

“We wanted to bring elements of nature inside to help residents keep a connection to the wider world,” Lamm added. 

Braff noted that LiquidView doesn’t project images onto a wall. Instead, it uses Sony screens to display a 24-hour loop of the same scene, synced with one’s local time, of local spots like Sausalito’s harbor, Marin County’s Rodeo Beach, the Farallon Islands, Land’s End coastal trail and the Golden Gate Bridge, and more-distant locales, like Hawaii’s beaches, Miami’s bustling Brickell neighborhood, Venice’s canals and France’s coastal city of Nice.

The scenes are recorded in 8K video, Braff said, “and the casing makes it feel like the view is through an actual window.” 

Earlier this year, LiquidView was featured on “Shark Tank,” the reality show where entrepreneurs pitch ideas to wealthy investors. In the end, the investor panel didn’t fund LiquidView, but Braff said his company is “constantly growing,” with dealers in seven states, installations across the country and an international presence. Braff said that he’s talking to several medical centers, including a hospital in Haifa, and that the University of Haifa is conducting a study on the health benefits of the product.

The product isn’t cheap; a screen with three views costs $9,999. LiquidView isn’t the only company that produces a window-like product, though Braff said others offer shorter loops and use cameras with lower resolution.

Three LiquidView panels were installed in a public area at Rhoda Goldman Plaza in September.

“Our residents gravitate to the windows, where they sit quietly, converse or reminisce,” said Lamm, who added that visiting family members are also drawn to the windows.

“The memory care team at Rhoda Goldman Plaza told me they consider the windows a nonpharmacological form of treatment,” Braff said.

The LiquidView digital window at the Frank Residences, installed in May, was championed by Peter Rosenberg, a San Francisco native who now lives in Miami. A son of the late philanthropists Richard and Barbara Rosenberg, he learned about the windows in 2024 when Braff showed him ones on display at the Battery, a club and boutique hotel in San Francisco. 

“It’s such innovative technology — and certainly a good enhancement to senior living. I know this initiative would have been important to my parents,” said Rosenberg. “They supported the Jewish Home and later, the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living, both financially and in leadership.” Richard lived at the Frank Residences before he died in 2023. “He left a large endowment,” Rosenberg added, “and when I encouraged Stacey Lewis, the chief development officer, to consider installing a LiquidView digital window, she agreed.”

The idea for LiquidView occurred to Braff in 2020 when he worked at Liquid Canvas, a company that provides animated digital art that can be streamed to screens. 

“A client had good views out the front and back, but otherwise he was looking at the side of a neighbor’s house,” Braff said. “I thought what we needed was a digital window, one that looked like a real window — and that was the birth of LiquidView.”

He went on to found the company in 2021.

“I’m very proud that our windows can help improve people’s lives, and our success in senior living facilities in the Bay Area is really exciting,” Braff said. “That makes me feel fantastic because my heart is in making the world a better place.”

When a beloved children’s author unleashes a brutish antisemitic screed, his career is threatened. His publisher and wife scramble into damage control mode. Will the author back down? Will he apologize?

That is the subject of  “Giant,” which is coming to Broadway in March.

The play is based on true events. In 1983, prolific writer Roald Dahl, who was a giant in the publishing world and towered at 6-feet, 6-inches, reviewed a book about the siege of western Beirut by the Israeli army during the 1982 Lebanon War. His review was widely regarded as antisemitic.

In the play, Dahl’s longtime British publisher descends on his home, along with a representative of his New York publisher, a Jewish American woman. They plead with him to issue a statement explaining, softening or retracting his remarks — anything to offset the damage to his career, the upcoming publication of his next book and his pending knighthood.

Written by Mark Rosenblatt, “Giant” premiered in 2024 at London’s Royal Court Theatre with John Lithgow starring as Dahl. It won three Laurence Olivier Awards, including best new play.

The show has a Bay Area Jewish connection: Aya Cash, who stars as the Jewish American visitor, was born and raised in San Francisco and graduated from the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. 

Provocative at the best of times, “Giant” premiered during a terrible time: the Israel-Hamas war. When my husband and I saw the play in London last June, Israel and the U.S. had also just bombed the Iranian regime, including its nuclear facilities. So the issue of military action was more than timely, as was (and is) the problem of antisemitism. 

For me, the most moving moments were the onstage debates about Jews loving Israel even if they disagree with specific actions taken by the government.

I won’t give away the play’s resolution, though it’s easy enough to find out on your own. Suffice it to say, Dahl was no angel.

The play is disturbing. Both my husband and I got little sleep that night. Few productions I’ve seen have so deeply affected me. To sit there and have hate spewed forth felt so personal, frightening and immediate.

“Giant” challenges viewers to think not only about antisemitism and the State of Israel, but also how we regard flawed cultural and political heroes. Can we admire their work while acknowledging their moral failings? 

Great art, music and literature is sometimes created by people whose personal behavior is morally complex or problematic. Do we stop reading and watching Dahl’s classics — “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Matilda” or “The BFG” (Big Friendly Giant) — with our children or grandchildren? Likewise, should we dismiss Picasso’s paintings because of his mistreatment of women? Do we avoid works by authors like Virginia Woolf, whose writings contained antisemitic bias? And what about the artwork of Caravaggio, who committed murder? 

I don’t know the answers, but “Giant” raises the right questions. I absolutely recommend you see the play when it opens in New York City in March, but be prepared to squirm and think. 

My patient, whom I will call Doris, was estranged from one of her children for 30 years. This is the story of the final chapter of her life and what led to their reconciliation. 

By the time Doris was 86, she had more than her share of medical problems. She had been hospitalized many times for emphysema, and she came into the clinic complaining of trouble breathing. Her oxygen level was dangerously low. I told her she would have to go to the emergency room. She was not pleased, but there was no alternative if she wanted to live.

In the ER, things went from bad to worse. A blood test revealed her clotting time was prolonged. She needed an injection of phytonadione, a form of vitamin K, to counteract the effects of Coumadin, which she was taking to prevent a stroke.

Then a near-fatal medical error occurred. Instead of injecting phytonadione, a nurse grabbed the medication right next to it called physostigmine, an antidote that can be lifesaving in a certain type of poisoning. In this case, the drug worsened her lung condition. She was intubated, rushed to the intensive care unit and placed on a respirator. Doris’ daughter, with whom she had a relationship, was notified of the error. Although the ER staff was apologetic, the daughter was furious. As it was conveyed to me, she warned, “You haven’t heard the end of this!”

After a week in the ICU, Doris was able to come off the respirator. Too weak to return home, she was discharged to an assisted-living facility. When she failed to recover there, her daughter enrolled her in hospice care and brought her home. When I learned Doris was on hospice, I went to visit her. 

A hospice aide led me into the living room, where a bed had been set up. Doris was curled into a fetal position, her daughter wrapped around her. I greeted them. Her daughter raised her head, but Doris did not respond. She appeared moribund, and it took me a minute or two to determine whether she was breathing. She was, but barely.  It was clear there would be no meaningful conversation. So I asked, “How about if I play some music for you on my viola?”

I wrote in a recent column about the first time I played my viola for a hospice patient. Other stories are just as poignant.

This time, I chose a piece called “Liebesleid” by Fritz Kreisler. The title translates to “Love’s Sorrow.” Then something remarkable happened. Doris disentangled herself from her daughter, sat up in bed and began laughing and clapping along to the music. Her daughter watched, tears streaming down her cheeks. 

When I finished playing, I put my viola in its case, waved goodbye and made a beeline for the front door. Having witnessed this intense emotional display of mother and daughter, I felt I was about to drown in a flood of tears.

Less than 48 hours later, Doris’ daughter called to tell me her mother died. She invited me to the funeral. A highlight of the service was a relative singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Afterward, I scanned the room for Doris’ daughter to offer my condolences. I saw her walking arm in arm with another woman. To my shock, she introduced me to her sister, who I didn’t know existed.

The sister, who had been long estranged from her mother, explained that they had reconnected just before her death. Immediately after I had left Doris’ home, Doris felt compelled to call her. Sensing that the time was short, she and her mother forgave each other and expressed their love.

There is a moral to the story here. Because none of us knows when we or those we love will die, don’t let expressions of forgiveness, gratitude and love go unsaid. An ancient Hawaiian ritual of reconciliation called Ho’oponopono offers a simple script: “I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”  

Note: As a result of that ER medication error, the hospital revised its procedure for dispensing medication to prevent a similar mistake from happening again. 

In 1965, I married a man who called himself a WASA, a white Anglo-Saxon atheist, and I drifted away from the Jewish community. 

I was raised in a nonobservant home, so marrying outside the faith wasn’t much of a leap. A local rabbi said he would perform the ceremony if I agreed to celebrate Jewish holidays and raise my children as Jews. I had no idea how. 

In my childhood home, our celebrations, Jewish or otherwise, were mostly about food. I didn’t even know the Motzi, the blessing over bread. So my husband and I chose a Unitarian minister to perform our ceremony. We decided to raise our children Unitarian, which like Judaism encourages questioning. Some call Unitarianism, which does not accept the divinity of Jesus, the “demilitarized zone.” It worked for our family.

I loved my church community, but I kept flirting with a return to Judaism. I even wrote a series on Jewish Renewal as a reporter for the Oakland Tribune. Still, as a woman who married out and hadn’t raised her children as Jews, I feared that I wouldn’t be welcomed. It took the end of my 23-year marriage for me to jump in with both feet. 

Fortunately, I was welcomed back, though I occasionally heard murmurs, “How could you have abandoned this?” Once, at a synagogue meeting, an elderly woman lamented the rise of intermarriage. I raised my hand. “As long as we give people who marry out the message that they’re not welcome in our synagogues, they’ll find other settings where they’ll feel at ease,” I said.

Suddenly, the person I was raising as Jewish was me. I studied elementary Hebrew, learned the blessings over the candles (and bread), joined a Jewish singles group and went on Jewish retreats where I experienced Havdalah for the first time. I hosted a Passover seder with the help of an Israeli friend, who also gave me a Jewish name, Nataniela. In 1998, I finally celebrated my bat mitzvah.

But I still had moments of discomfort. A man I was dating told me that if his child went to prison, he would be upset but would still acknowledge him. If his child came out as gay, he would be uncomfortable but wouldn’t abandon him. But if one of his children married a non-Jew, that would end the relationship.

“A parent who cuts off a child in that way cuts himself off from God,” I said, looking him in the eye.

He returned my gaze. “Janet, do you really believe that?”

“Yes, I do,” I replied.

I eventually remarried — a Jewish man, this time — and together we navigate questions of family, faith and tradition. 

My husband tells the story of George, a neighbor who, like Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” cut off contact with a child who got engaged to someone who wasn’t Jewish. I wonder: Did George ever see his grandchildren? 

I hope he softened in his stance. In my family, when my cousin was about to marry a Catholic woman, his parents decided not to attend the wedding. My mother intervened and persuaded them that if they wanted grandchildren in their lives, they needed to be there from the start. Thank God they were.

Times have changed. My synagogue, like many others, includes many intermarried couples who have opted to raise their children Jewish. I also have friends who raised their children as Jews, yet their grandchildren are being raised in another faith. To me, grandchildren of any faith are a blessing. We can show them our values and share our traditions without minimizing theirs.

The other night at dinner, my companions expressed concern about the increase of intermarriage. “What will become of our community?” they worried. My husband and I, who had both previously married non-Jews, replied that intermarriage need not close doors. 

Am I sad that my choices a half a century ago mean I don’t have descendants who identify as Jewish? I’m not as sad as I would be if I had no grandchildren or great-grandchildren. Between us, my husband and I are blessed with eight grandchildren and a great-grandson.

At some point, they may wish to explore their heritage, on their own. In the meantime, we will share our holidays, our blessings and our chicken soup. 

Nitzayah Schiller and Tim Cunningam didn’t know each other six months ago. After all, she’s a 24-year-old San Francisco transplant working in landscape architecture, and he’s a senior living at Rhoda Goldman Plaza. But when they met, they hit it off immediately.

It wasn’t happenstance — both signed up for a program of Jewish Family and Children’s Services that matches 15 young adult volunteers with 15 senior residents at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, an assisted living and memory care complex in San Francisco.

The pairs meet three times over several months, during which the volunteers interview the seniors and learn their life stories. JFCS NextGen volunteers then write up the stories, which are displayed alongside color-pencil portraits of the seniors by San Francisco artist Carly Francis. The program culminates in a gallery reception where the work is on view and participants and family members can meet one another.

Francis, 29, loves the creative role she plays in the Intergenerational Portraiture Project. “There’s something about a face that I love,” she said. She also sees beauty in older people and points to “a really backwards mentality we have with getting older and what we consider beautiful or not.”

Growing up, Francis was close to her great-grandmother, who fled Austria in 1939 and lived until she was 101. “She was my favorite person and I was her favorite person, which is really funny, considering she was 98 and I was in middle school.”

Francis was already volunteering in another intergenerational JFCS program as a NextGen volunteer and had been meeting weekly with Vera Gertler, 90, when she noticed a photograph of Gertler’s mother hanging on the wall. She took a photo of it for reference and later returned with a finished colored pencil sketch.

Gertler, who was battling dementia, recognized it instantly.

“That’s my mom,” Gertler told Francis.

That prompted Francis to reach out to Danit Hetsroni, JFCS’ senior program manager, to explore how she might bring her artistic practice into her volunteer work. The Intergenerational Portraiture Project, which just completed its second round, was led this time by Sara Feinman and Carly White, members of the JFCS NextGen Council.

The program “fills a void of loneliness in the most Jewish way,” Hetsroni told J. “‘L’dor vador’ [generation to generation] is really the best way to describe it. We’re able to learn directly from a living tradition and fulfill a mitzvah.”

For many participants, the experience has evolved beyond a one-time project. That is true for Schiller, who said she was initially drawn to the project’s setup. “I really loved the idea of highlighting someone’s life,” she said.

After completing a questionnaire and interview, she was matched with Cunningham, 83, a retired industrial designer. They had much in common, it turned out.

Cunningham was born in Tucson, grew up in Southern California and later relocated to Pittsburgh to pursue his career in design. He fell in love with the city and stayed for years, until illness, the loss of both his first and second wives and a stroke reshaped his life. Eventually, Cunningham’s daughter, Sachi, brought him back to California, and six months ago he moved into Goldman Plaza.

When he learned about the portraiture project shortly after his arrival, Cunningham signed up eagerly.

“I wanted to meet as many people as I could,” he said. “So I said yes.”

He and Schiller connected immediately. They discovered shared design interests, overlapping university ties (both attended Brown) and a mutual curiosity about each other’s lives. Their meetings unfolded over dinners at Goldman Plaza, where conversations flowed easily. So easily, in fact, that Cunningham joked he ended up interviewing her just as much as she interviewed him.

“It didn’t feel like an age difference,” he said. “We had no problem finding things to talk about.”

Through their conversations, Cunningham learned about Schiller’s upbringing in New Orleans, her professional life, her international travels and her partner’s family abroad. She, in turn, learned about his career, his family, his marriages and the values that mattered most to him. She was especially touched by his deep pride in his daughter and his commitment to remaining curious and social.

Cunningham said he sits at a different table each day in the dining room to meet more people. And even though he is not Jewish, he said he has enjoyed learning about Jewish culture, rituals and customs. “That curiosity doesn’t stop when you move into a senior home,” he said.

For him, the project demonstrated the importance of creating spaces where younger and older generations are intentionally brought together.

“The only thing wrong with Rhoda Goldman,” he joked, “is that there aren’t enough young people here.”

Schiller has continued to visit with Cunningham through JFCS’ Friendly Visitors program. At the gallery event in December, their worlds came together when their family members were introduced.

“My whole family was here,” Cunningham said. “They all got to meet her.”

Cunningham added that he’s eagerly awaiting his framed portrait, which will hang on the wall in a public area — a visible reminder of a connection that began with an interview and became a friendship.

As I grow older, I know to expect a certain number of aches and pains. As my late, stoic cousin Martin wryly said at 92, “If it weren’t for my legs, I’d feel like I’m 80.”

I expect some health challenges. I didn’t expect problems with my healthcare providers. Yet after a summer-long, not-so-merry, merry-go-round of tests and medical appointments, I was blindsided by blatant ageism from two doctors. 

I’ve always had a bad back, but in recent months I’ve started having extreme difficulty and pain walking up stairs. With each step, it’s like I’m teaching my right leg (and my brain) the “art” of limb lifting. I practically need to lift my right leg with my arms. It’s slow. It’s painful. It’s no way for an active person to live.  

And it’s not like I lead a sedentary life. I work out with a skilled trainer twice a week, and I’m a Pilates class regular.

The stair problem was on abundant display this past spring when my husband and I traveled to Spain, a step-climbing, steep-hilled tourism country if ever there was one. At the Alhambra, the palace and fortress in Granada, I hobbled up to breathtaking vistas, barely taking them in. In the historic, restored Jewish quarter of Girona, I stumbled along steep streets. And in Barcelona, even the few steps at the famed Sagrada Familia made me debate my zeal for viewing the stunning kaleidoscopic interior. 

In Córdoba, aching, numb and sweating, I stood in front of a statue of Maimonides and wondered not about this great physician and Torah scholar’s achievements, but instead what medical advice he might have offered me! 

Once home, I immediately scheduled an appointment with an orthopedic back doctor. After waiting five weeks to see him, I was ushered in. After three minutes, he ordered a battery of tests and referred me to a hip specialist.  

After seeing that doctor, who ordered more tests, I spent almost three months getting poked, prodded, needled, bent this way, bent that way, questioned and re-questioned. I was EMG-ed, MRI-ed and X-rayed so many times I was sure my skin, bones and internal organs had been fried. 

Finally, the big week arrived with followup appointments with both doctors. The two orthopedic docs had allegedly consulted with one another, and I was going in for the big treatment plan “reveal.”

I had already told them that I’d tried physical therapy to no avail and that I was taking anti-inflammatory medication. What was next, I wondered.

Happily, I knew beforehand that there was no surgery required. I presumed the ortho duo would recommend nasty steroid injections into my hip and/or back. 

But instead of a compassionate plan…

I was greeted with indifference, a lack of responsibility, ageism and, most likely, a nasty side of ageism’s sister “ism,” sexism.

First up, the back doctor: “It’s a hip problem. Go to the hip doctor.” 

“But…” I tried to interject with a few questions.

The back doctor was done and already halfway out the door.

I pressed on. But answers, I did not get. Instead, he dismissed me with a referral for PT and a lecture that began with the words “As we age” and ended with “live with it.”

The next day I went to see the hip doctor. 

“It’s not a hip problem.” 

“Uh, but how do you explain the test that showed nerve damage? The doctor who conducted the nerve study felt that it was a significant problem requiring attention,” I said. “What’s causing the nerve damage?”

“I don’t read nerve study tests,” he said. “Go back to the back doctor. He’s the guy for that.”

“But …” I sputtered.

He handed me a PT referral and a prescription for an anti-inflammatory.

“I told you PT isn’t helping, and if you reviewed my chart, you’d see I’m already taking that medication.”

Without missing a beat, he jumped to the “as we age/live with it” speech and walked out.

In the weeks since then, I kept wondering: If I had been a 16-year-old or even a 36-year-old, with a similar complaint about being unable to walk up stairs and in pain, would the doctors have summarily dismissed me with the “live with it” line?

It doesn’t require the wisdom of Maimonides to know the answer to that question.

What I experienced was a classic case of ageism in the medical profession. An analysis of multiple studies shows that 20 percent of older adults experience this type of prejudicial and harmful treatment.

Doctors may assume that older patients are frail or incompetent, may offer limited or sometimes excessive treatment options based on age, may use condescending elderspeak language (“sweetie,” “dear,” “young lady”) and may fail to provide adequate pain management at the end of life. 

Ageism in medicine can also result in missed or delayed diagnoses, more emergency room visits, more frequent hospitalizations, a shorter lifespan and reduced quality of life.

All in all, it’s a prescription for disaster.

To combat ageism, medical professionals should — among other things — challenge their own stereotyped assumptions, treat older patients with respect and include them as partners in developing treatment plans.

As for us patients, we should not tolerate the behavior I suffered. Go in prepared with your questions. Write them down. Consider bringing an ally with you. 

Somehow, although I did all that (minus the ally part), I failed to get the attention and care I deserved. Since then, I have written a letter of complaint to that medical group’s CEO, and I’ll be seeing a new doctor. 

Meanwhile, I can only echo my cousin Martin: If it weren’t for my back and hip, I’d feel like I’m 80. Of course, I’m only 71, but still.

Dating was the furthest thing from 88-year-old David Fankushen’s mind when Judi Wyant first reached out.

Wyant, 83, sent a simple message five years ago on Facebook: “Do you remember me?”

If he were being honest, Fankushen could barely place Wyant, but her name sounded familiar, and he vaguely recalled their kids being friends decades earlier.

Fankushen wrote back, and the two became fast pen pals. When they met for lunch soon after in Palo Alto, conversation flowed easily, as if they’d been friends for ages. 

During the Covid pandemic, they kept in touch over Facebook. Fankushen, who lives in San Anselmo in Marin County, was delighted each time Wyant, who lives more than two hours south in Aptos in Santa Cruz County, sent hearts in response to his Facebook posts. After pandemic lockdowns ended, the two began meeting frequently for lunch.

“They would just sit on a bench eating ice cream and just giggle. They had so much fun catching up,” Laurie Okamura, Wyant’s daughter, told J.

In spring 2023, Wyant and Fankushen shifted from friends to romantic partners. Much to their surprise, they say they’re experiencing love in their 80s in a way neither of them has felt before.

“It’s like a missing piece of a puzzle, really and truly,” Wyant said. “We never argue. We communicate really well. It’s perfect.”

“It’s like an unbelievable gift for both of us,” Fankushen added.

While Fankushen had a hard time recalling how he once knew Wyant, his two daughters and son remembered her well.

“I remember going over to Judi’s house with my mom,” Laura Fankushen, David’s oldest, said.

In the early 1970s, when both families were living in Saratoga in the South Bay, Wyant was a friend of Fankushen’s then-wife. Their sons were the same age and played together.

Early in their current relationship, when Wyant first visited Fankushen’s home, she recognized an old plastic plate sitting on his drying rack, with a hand-drawn Snoopy lying atop a log. It’s a dish that Laura made as a kid, and one he uses often. Wyant remembered when it was made — at her home, some 50 years ago.

Both Fankushen and Wyant divorced in the late 1970s. Fankushen moved up to San Anselmo in the 1990s, and Wyant opened an antique jewelry store in downtown Santa Cruz. She also remarried. Her second husband, Larry Franich, died in 2015. 

“My mom was heartbroken when her husband had passed,” Okamura told J. “It honestly just makes me so happy to see them finding love at this age.”

The couple, soon approaching three years together, commute across the Bay Area on alternating weeks to visit each other, spending five days a week together. When Wyant drives up to San Anselmo, she brings her two Havanese dogs, Zoe and Piper.

“Sad to say, we don’t go up Mount Tam or stuff like that now, but we do have a nice walk along the bay by my place, where there are a lot of benches,” Fankushen said. 

They enjoy going to each other’s congregations, Chadeish Yameinu in Santa Cruz and Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon. For date nights, they dine at local restaurants

“They talk to people at other tables,” said Okamura, who joins them for dinner every two weeks. “They’re always making new friends.”

The couple have had frank and serious conversations about money, health and mortality.

“Everything’s totally understood,” Wyant said. Other than Fankushen’s bad back, the two feel they are in good health. “We are lucky so far.”

“I think being happy in your old life keeps your mind off of your body,” she added. 

Every morning, the couple plays the New York Times Spelling Bee and Wordle games, which brings out Fankushen’s competitive side. They compare scores with Okamura and her husband.

“At eight o’clock, we send in our results,” Wyant said. 

“There’s a joyfulness and youthfulness to him that he’s always had, and I’m just very happy that he’s met someone who really appreciates him,” Laura Fankushen said. 

She added that the same is true for her mother, who also has a love-after-80 story of her own. “They’ve been going out for two years.”

When I began my career at Kaiser Permanente in 1981, I noticed that there was an empty appointment slot every day at noon. I asked my medical assistant why, and she informed me that time slot was reserved for making a home visit. 

Soon thereafter, I received a phone call from a patient (whom I will call Jacob) with a cardiac condition that made him too weak to come to the clinic. I decided to make a house call.

Jacob, a gray-whiskered Dutch American in his late 60s, was a pleasant man. While I examined him, his wife and son stood together in a corner of the bedroom, their faces fraught with worry. Jacob had a heart condition called cardiomyopathy, and there were not many treatment options for him. I made some minor medication adjustments. He died about two weeks later.

His wife was so appreciative that I had come to see him that she knit booties for my newborn twin daughters. She was also my patient, and she continued to bring booties to every medical visit for years. Jacob’s son became my patient too, and 30 years later he told me he still remembered and appreciated my visiting his dad.

I spoke with medical colleagues after I made that home visit, and their reaction surprised me. They explained that the home health department sent out nurses for home visits, and if a patient really needed a visit from a doctor, there was a home health physician assigned that role. In other words, it was not the culture for doctors to make house calls despite having an open slot in my schedule. 

It took more than a decade for me to find the initiative to see patients in their homes again. But it began to bother me that I never had the opportunity to say goodbye to patients whom I enrolled in hospice care. 

Whenever a hospice patient of mine died, I was notified by a hospice nurse. Even though I always telephoned a family member to express my condolences, I still felt a lack of resolution. I needed to rectify this.

The first hospice patient I visited was an Italian woman whom I will call Lucia. She was in her mid-70s and dying of metastatic endometrial cancer. I felt self-conscious just showing up to say goodbye, so I asked her family members if I could bring my viola and play some music for her. They were delighted. 

Playing music for a patient seemed like a perfectly natural way for me to express my care and affection since I have played either violin or viola in community orchestras most of my life. Following a Sunday afternoon concert, I came in my tuxedo to visit Lucia. She lived on a quiet street in Hillsborough, and oddly, it was hard to find parking. I thought to myself that someone must be having a party. 

When I rang the doorbell of Lucia’s home, I was ushered in by her son and led to her large bedroom. There must have been at least 40 family members and friends gathered, apparently waiting for me. Then I understood why I had trouble finding a place to park.

Lucia was propped up in her bed, and she was wearing bright red lipstick that contrasted with her pallid face. She was alert and appeared comfortable. I thought about what I could play for her considering her condition and the mood of her visitors. I decided to play some selections from J.S. Bach Suite No. 1, in G major.

When I finished playing, Lucia’s family expressed their gratitude and then escorted me to their kitchen for a glass of Chianti and a slice of fresh homemade peach pie. While my tastebuds sent off pleasure signals, I had the added reward to learn more about Lucia while I ate. 

Sadly, she died two days later.

During my medical career, I made 20 such farewell visits. Playing music for a hospice patient is analogous to the ending of a musical composition called a coda, a final passage that gives a definitive and satisfactory conclusion. 

I have played in numerous concerts throughout my lifetime, and the private performances for my patients at the waning time in their lives have been among the most moving of all for me.

My daughter urged me to get on the stick earlier this year when a friend’s hoarder mother passed away and left behind the unenviable task of clearing out her home.

I’m definitely no hoarder, but I finally realized that it was time to downsize, donate and discard.

Starting this summer, Freecycle and Trash Nothing patrons began carting away redundant cookware, canning supplies and costumes from our Palo Alto home. I sifted through a century of books that filled seven bookcases. I even sold an autographed copy of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” to Faith Bell, owner of Palo Alto’s Bell’s Book Store, and shared a cherished family story. 

In 1962, when my father was director of sales at Viking Press, he came home from the company Christmas party filled with excitement and three special gifts: the Steinbeck novel, a stuffed French poodle with a “Charley” tag and a Chinese lacquer chest filled with $50 in nickels. Some weeks before, my father had made a $50 bet with Viking publisher Tom Guinzburg that “Travels with Charley” would become a Book of the Month Club selection. Dad won, and Steinbeck inscribed the book: “To Bob Silver, The only man I know who literally has a nose full of nickels.” Faith bought the book, the toy and the chest. 

Unlike my father, I didn’t have a nose full of nickels. But I had a kitchen, an attic, closets and a garage full of stuff that I didn’t need and my children didn’t want. My husband and I began with the easy stuff, borrowing a friend’s slide scanner to digitize our family’s photos. With that accomplished, I hauled heirloom china to UPS for packing and shipping to married granddaughters in Texas. I trekked to Goodwill with black bags full of clothing. We placed items nobody wanted on the curb for our neighborhood’s Big Cleanup Day.

The act of downsizing did more than clear out our home. It actually spurred our decision to move into senior housing. Just before the High Holy Days, after a grueling drive home from San Diego, I looked at my husband and said it’s time. Without missing a beat, he concurred. We are old. Eighty-something is not the new fifty-something. If we were going to move into a senior community, we realized that we should do it while we are still reasonably able-bodied and young enough to enjoy the activities.

Since we had friends and fellow synagogue members at Palo Alto’s Moldaw Residences, which shares a campus with the Oshman Family JCC, we began to explore its independent living facilities. Friends invited us to visit their apartments and to join them at a Labor Day buffet, and sales director Stacy Guthmann welcomed us to an outdoor pre-Rosh Hashanah celebration. 

By mid-October, we were sold. By the first of December, amid piles of boxes, we were ensconced in a top-floor apartment with views of spectacular sunsets.

It may be months before everything in our two-bedroom apartment is where I can find it, and storage is at a premium.  As I write this column, my husband and his daughter are installing shelf units and pullouts in the closets and under the sinks. 

It’s a process, and an adjustment. Before taking my first shower, I accidentally bumped into a hanging pullcord, which set off an alarm. I immediately called the concierge, who said she would alert the nurse’s station that the alarm was tripped by mistake. But she wasn’t quick enough. I hadn’t heard the knock on the door when I walked out of the bathroom stark naked to confront a visitor.

“Just checking!” said the female intruder from the nurse’s office as I grabbed a towel.

“You were lucky it wasn’t the fire department,” a woman remarked over dinner. 

There’s gonna be a learning curve.

When I arrived at Rita Semel’s apartment on the evening of her 104th birthday, bouquets of flowers and birthday cards adorned the room. A potted white orchid was placed on the coffee table between us. “These are from Nancy Pelosi,” said Semel’s daughter, Elisabeth. The former House speaker, a friend dating back more than 50 years, always sends a birthday gift.

Semel celebrated her Nov. 15 birthday with relatives and close friends over dinner at Troya, her favorite Turkish restaurant in San Francisco, a quieter birthday compared with the big celebration for her 100th.

Semel, who served as executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area in the late ’80s, is most known for pioneering several initiatives fostering dialogue and understanding across faiths and races. She is the co-founder of the San Francisco Interfaith Council, which she began in 1988 with Father Eugene Boyle, a “maverick” Catholic priest. 

Still, her brief stint in journalism in the 1940s, working for the San Francisco Chronicle as a “copy boy” and later as associate editor of the Jewish Community Bulletin (one of the former names of this publication), holds a special place in her heart. She left the Bulletin in 1950 when Elisabeth was born. Two years later, she welcomed a second daughter, Jane, who died at age 18 in a tragic accident.

Elisabeth Semel recalled growing up with a front row seat to the Civil Rights Movement, thanks to her mother’s activism.

“When Martin Luther King came to San Francisco to speak at the Cow Palace, my parents took us. When John Kennedy came to speak at Cal, my parents took us,” said Elisabeth Semel, now a professor at UC Berkeley Law and co-director of the school’s Death Penalty Clinic. She noted how her mother took part in demonstrations along San Francisco’s “Cadillac Row” on Van Ness Avenue, protesting employment discrimination by auto dealers against Black Americans. And in 1965, during the Delano grape strike, when farmworkers protested for fair wages and working conditions, Semel brought her daughters to march with Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in California’s Central Valley.

J. sat down with Semel to hear about the challenges and successes she’s experienced over her 104 years.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You and I are both proud Barnard alumni, many, many decades apart. You majored in political science when you were at Barnard. What got you interested in politics?

I thought it would be a good background to being a reporter.

So you and I were the same. You knew you wanted to pursue journalism after Barnard. 

It was unusual for women to be reporters in my day, but I tried, and I was a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. I remember going in the street to ask people about how they felt about World War II ending. And the men that I stopped to talk to thought I was trying to pick them up. I mean, it was very unusual in those days for a woman to be a reporter. But anyway, I managed to get through it. I had an assignment where I went to see them sign the U.N. charter in San Francisco in June 1945. That was very exciting. I enjoyed my days at the Chronicle.

Was being a reporter a dream come true?

Yes, absolutely, it was a dream. I got to meet different people. I got to learn about different things. It was a way to see the world in a different place.

In 1964, you organized the inaugural San Francisco Conference on Religion and Race, bringing people of different races, ethnicities and faiths together who were all committed to desegregation. What got you interested in interfaith work?

I guess I’m a busybody at heart, but I wanted to know what was different about each religion, what was the same and what we all believed and what we didn’t believe. And I still feel that it’s very important to get to know people of other religions and other faiths, because you never should stop learning. There’s always something new to learn. Even at my age, I feel like I still learn something.

Being a reporter, you must know that you’re always looking for a good story. And so I got introduced to this Catholic priest, Eugene Boyle, who had a very good story, and we became very close friends. In those days everybody was sort of in their own closet. I felt that it was time for people to come out and meet each other, because there were certain things we shared. There were differences, of course, but there were more similarities than people realized.

You’re a longtime member of Congregation Emanu-El.

I go every Friday.

Besides the recent major renovation of Emanu-El, does synagogue life feel like it always has, or have things changed?

It’s much more open than it used to be, and that’s probably true of most. How is it at other houses of worship? I mean, there was a time when someone who went to a Catholic church never met anybody who went to a Protestant church. But I think that’s changed somewhat. Not enough. I started an organization called the San Francisco Interfaith Council, in which we brought in people of different faiths to meet each other, and we found that we had more in common than anybody ever thought. When you think about it, what’s the reason for being anything — Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim — is to make the world a better place. That’s something we all want to do.

Did those experiences change the way you saw intermarriage, which was much less accepted in the mainstream Jewish community a generation ago?

I was fortunate to marry someone who was Jewish, but if I found someone who wasn’t Jewish, I would have married him. I think that, and we have to learn from each other. I hope the time is over when if you didn’t marry someone of your own faith you were ostracized. I hope that’s no longer happening.

Someone who has long embraced the Jewish community and celebrates connections across faiths is Rep. Nancy Pelosi. 

What you said about her is very true. She and I are old friends. She was one of the best. I worked very hard to get her elected. She’s done a wonderful job in Congress. 

Early in your life, what are the things you set out to accomplish?

I wanted to make the world a better place. And I was very fortunate. I had a husband who — he probably would have preferred a housewife, but he didn’t have one. He had me. But he was very willing to let me do the things I needed to do. So we had a good marriage. 

Are those pearls that you’re wearing from your late husband, Max? They look special.

He gave them to me a long time ago.

It’s pretty remarkable to live past 100. 

It’s interesting that you say it’s remarkable. I guess it is, and I never really thought about it that way. Here I am, I just make the best of it.

What’s a typical day like for you?

I wish I had more to do. I’d love to get a job, but who wants to hire me?

What kind of job would you take?

I’d love to work for a newspaper.

I’ll let J.’s editors know.

People often say I don’t look my age. They mean it as a compliment, and I take it as such. But lately I’ve been wondering: Is it really a compliment? And why does it make me so happy to hear it? 

Actually I know why I take such pleasure in hearing it. Vain me takes it to mean that I look younger than my actual age and that “young” is a universal good. Right? It’s a goal that we almost-oldster gals are supposed to aspire to and that advertisers cater to.

But that’s why I’m wondering whether it would be more sincere and more accurate for well-meaning people to say something like, “You look well today” or “I like that sweater you’re wearing.”

Best of all, wouldn’t it be better if someone complimented me (or any of us) by noticing some good deed I had done, however small? 

Judaism teaches us to focus on our character. “Eshet Chayil,” or “Woman of Valor,” which is traditionally recited to women during the Shabbat blessings, describes the worth of a reliable, industrious, generous, wise and kind wife as “far beyond that of rubies.” (Proverbs 31:10)

By contrast, our wider society teaches us a very different lesson from a very early age. Who doesn’t know the famous line from the Evil Queen in “Snow White”: “Magic mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

From childhood, I have memories of uncles and aunts showering me with exclamations of “What a shayna maidel!”/“What a pretty girl!” and “Such a shayna punim”/“Such a pretty face!” (As for those infernal cheek pinches that smarted for hours, fuhgeddaboudit. Sorry! I’m mixing my Yiddish with my New Yawkese.)

Those relatives never seemed to praise me for being a “good” girl, a “smart” girl or a “clever” girl — only a pretty one. I remember this distinctly. 

Likewise, I recall overhearing my mother having a heated fight with an uncle who refused to send his three daughters to college. He said it wasn’t necessary because all they needed was to be attractive, not educated, to find success (in other words, to find a husband). 

Although I lucked out and had parents who valued women’s education and women’s careers, I ironically had a career that placed a premium on appearance — TV news. Also, let’s face it (no pun intended), society favors pretty girls. So, I dealt with “shayna punim” pressure, grade pressure and career pressure combined. I managed. 

But now, I’m pausing and wondering. In particular, I’m focusing on another, less famous line from Eshet Chayil. It reads: “Grace is deceptive; beauty is illusory. It is for her fear of the Lord that a woman is to be praised.” (Proverbs 31:30)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more people learned that passage? 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not ready to abandon my mascara, lipstick, vanity table or vanity itself. Still, I think it would be a big improvement if, after seven decades, I could turn down the level — even a notch or two — on my need for compliments. 

Yes, as we women age, we all would do well to paste a copy of “Woman of Valor” to our mirrors or frame a copy of it beside our cosmetics piled high on the counter. Surely, we can find a space beside the seven shades of lipstick, blush and anti-aging creams. 

And while we’re at it, we should probably get additional copies framed and give them to our daughters, granddaughters, sons and grandsons. It’s a message worth remembering and repeating.

Nancy Gonchar, 73, peered into the nervous faces of three University of San Francisco students on Zoom, unsure how to begin the conversation. Gonchar, an art curator and political activist, had come to be interviewed by the students, but someone needed to break the ice.

Gonchar had been invited to take part in the semester-long course “Honoring our LGBTQIA+ Elders,” part of USF’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, in which small groups of students are paired with an older queer Jewish San Franciscan. The students interview their assigned elder each week, asking personal and often intimate questions about their lives.

Gonchar was up for getting personal. But first, she could see she needed to get the ball rolling.

“How many of you really wanted to take this class, or had to because it was a requirement?” she asked them. The students appeared unsure how to respond until she said, “That was a joke! Jews have a lot of humor, and they tease.”

Gonchar is among the two dozen queer Jews, 60 and older, who have volunteered to be interviewed by students about their life experiences. Topics have included coming out to friends and family, San Francisco during the AIDS epidemic, and feelings about aging and death. The interviews are recorded, and students edit them into roughly 12-minute documentaries.

Now they’re available for anyone to view.

More than 40 student-produced legacy videos came online on Oct. 1, the start of LGBTQ History Month. They are part of the digital exhibition “Honoring Our Queer Elders,” the latest installment of “Mapping Jewish San Francisco,” an ongoing digital humanities project within the JSSJ Swig program.

Rabbi Camille Angel, USF’s rabbi-in-residence, developed the course five years ago. (Though she is just shy of 60, her video profile is also online with the others.)

“I thought about the importance of the value of mi’dor l’dor, from generation to generation, the importance of giving people an opportunity to transmit their legacy,” said Angel, who served as rabbi of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, San Francisco’s historically queer synagogue, from 2000 to 2015. “Whether they’ve raised children or not, everyone has that obligation to transmit their Torah to another generation.”

Most students who take the course aren’t Jewish, she noted.

“If only the Jewish community would invest more in educating the non-Jewish world about Jews and Jewish values,” Angel said. “It’s a pretty amazing investment.”

The exhibition is the latest installment of “Mapping Jewish San Francisco,” a project developed by JSSJ’s program director, Aaron Hahn Tapper, which also includes online exhibitions about the history of Karaite Jews and of the House of Love and Prayer, a countercultural experiment in the 1960s.

“We’re trying to educate people of all ages about marginalized Jewish communities in the Bay Area, and the history of these communities,” Hahn Tapper told J.

Steve Fritsch Rudser, 70, has participated twice so far and is planning to host a Shabbat dinner for the whole class at his home in December. Rudser first took part last fall, eager to talk about the experience he and his husband, Ron, had in raising three children as a gay couple. 

In the 1970s, when Rudser came out as gay, “the idea of people starting families as gay or LGBTQ people was further away than marriage [equality]” in terms of public acceptance, he said.

“Giving people a structure to ask intimate questions that can lead to intimate answers is a really fast way [of] acknowledging somebody else’s humanity, getting interested in them, caring about them,” Rudser said. “It felt really special, really warm.”

In addition to weekly interviews, the students and elders go off campus during the semester to tour historic places in San Francisco, such as the AIDS Memorial Grove and the Castro District.

Each semester, the elders are invited to appear before the entire class in a live interview conducted by the students in their cohort. At the end of the semester, the elders and students come together to watch each completed legacy video. 

About 28 students enroll in the course each fall and summer. Its popularity has been growing, Angel said, so she has started keeping a waitlist. 

She said the course has been a way for some queer students to work through their own religious-based trauma.

“Every semester, students [enroll] who have been disowned from their families,” she said, and others “who, if their families or parents knew that they were taking a class like this, they would be cut off.”

Sydney Wright, 19, said when he first met Gonchar in fall 2024, he was nervous about asking a stranger personal questions. “It was kind of scary,” he said. 

But Wright, who is nonbinary, said connecting with a queer person decades older filled a void for him.

“It didn’t necessarily feel at all like she was a grandparent figure, because age didn’t feel like a relevant thing,” he said. “It was more her experience and the wisdom she could provide us with.”

Also, Wright said, “I really enjoyed the aspects of Judaism in the class. I feel like I take a lot of those Jewish values now with me,” especially around education and learning.

Many students have maintained contact, and often lasting friendships, with their elders long after the class has ended.

Lydia Scott, 25, was a USF junior in fall 2020 when she took the course during the pandemic. Scott and her two classmates interviewed Joss Eldridge, now 75, and her partner, Sandra Marilyn, 79. 

“I call them my San Francisco grannies, because anytime I’m in the Bay Area, I visit them,” said Scott, who now lives in Indiana. They catch up most Sundays, she said.

“The greatest gift that Joss and Sandra ever gave me was that they showed how extraordinary an ordinary life could be,” Scott said. 

Mike Shriver, 62, said he was touched when a student came to his adult bar mitzvah in 2022 and even brought a gift.

“We still keep in touch. For me, that’s the ‘honoring’ piece — it wasn’t a one-off, one-semester meet and greet and chat and make a video,” Shriver said.

The introduction to the “Honoring Our Queer Elders” project describes the participants, many of whom have been in San Francisco for decades, as “living sources of invaluable history” who have had “profound experiences that shaped the queer nexus that San Francisco has become over the last half-century.”

Marcy Adelman, 79, was one of the first openly gay therapists in San Francisco in the 1970s, “a political act” that she said came from her involvement in the Gay Women’s Liberation Movement. She currently serves on the California Commission on Aging and has devoted her career to supporting LGBTQ seniors. Adelman and her late partner, Jeanette Gurevitch, founded Openhouse SF in 1998, which provides affordable housing and resources for San Francisco seniors in the LGBTQ community.

Mark Leno, a former San Francisco supervisor and the first openly gay man elected to the California Senate, has participated in the class several times. In 2011, Leno authored the FAIR Education Act (SB 48), now a law in California, ensuring that the historical contributions of LGBTQ people are accurately and fairly portrayed in the classroom and included in the state’s educational requirements.

Rabbi Allen Bennett, considered by many to have been the first openly gay rabbi in the United States back in 1978, joined the class in the fall 2023 and talked about that moment in history.

“There were no other openly gay rabbis anywhere on Earth,” Bennett told his student interviewers. “Organized Judaism began getting its knickers in a twist, because they didn’t know what to do with somebody who wasn’t going to keep his mouth shut and who they thought was going to embarrass them to death by being truthful about who I was,” he said, noting that some 200 rabbis came out to him as queer within a couple of years of his own coming out.

Shriver, a gay rights activist who participated in ACT-UP’s 1989 die-in on the Golden Gate Bridge, has participated over five semesters. He likens the experience to the Jewish tradition of chevrutah, when small groups study Jewish text together. When Shriver visits USF’s campus to meet with students for interviews, he marvels at the fact that such a course exists at USF, a Jesuit University.

“It sort of closes a gap for me in my upbringing in the Catholic Church, when homosexuality was … an ‘intrinsic moral evil,’” said Shriver, who converted to Judaism 15 years ago. “To now be able to go on campus and meet these students for whom that isn’t their common parlance, that isn’t their belief, and queer is not a pejorative, it’s this breath of new life for me,” he said.

“This is one of the most important things I think I’ve ever done,” he added. “Our job is to make sure the story gets told to the next generation, so that they can pick up the story and carry it forward.”

My mother-in-law is almost 100, but she doesn’t define herself as old. 

Dorothy Saxe continues to serve on the boards of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Pilchuck Glass School in the Seattle area. She regularly sees friends in the Bay Area. She was still driving well into her 90s. 

The most common adjective that everyone uses to describe her is “amazing.” 

I recently spoke with Dorothy to get her insights into healthy aging. Her advice is to eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep and maintain social relationships.

“I’ve been lucky and blessed. I live gratitude,” she said.

In brief, she feels positive about aging.

Dorothy typifies what Yale professor Becca Levy describes in her 2023 book, “Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long and Well You Live.” 

Levy’s research found that people with positive perceptions of aging live on average 7.5 years longer than those who feel otherwise. She found that this advantage remained valid after controlling for age, gender, socio-economic status, loneliness and functional health.

In her book, Levy describes her pathway to a career in aging research. She recognized her own prejudices about aging at the age of 21 when she worked in the geriatric ward of a psychiatric hospital. She assumed that mental illness was rampant among older persons and could not be treated successfully. 

Instead she wrote, “Contrary to my initial assumptions, mental illness is actually much less common in older than in younger adults, and that most older persons with mental illness can be successfully treated.” Ageism is the most widespread and socially accepted prejudice today, according to the World Health Organization, and one out of every two people in the world hold anti-aging attitudes. Levy has dedicated her career to investigating how the mind-body connection influences aging and how to combat negative aging stereotypes. 

Levy explains that having positive self-perceptions of aging is not the same as whether someone is an optimist or pessimist. Our perceptions are strongly influenced by the culture in which we live. For example, Japanese culture venerates old age, so it should not come as a surprise that Japanese men and women have among the longest life expectancies in the world. Levy writes, “In Japan, old age is treated as a time to enjoy rather than to fear.”

Here are examples from Levy’s book about how positive aging beliefs translate to better health.

In one of her experiments, participants who were primed with positive age beliefs immediately showed faster walking speeds and better balance, compared with those who were given negative stereotypes of aging.

A blood marker for inflammation called C-reactive protein (CRP) rises with cumulative stress. Positive age beliefs predicted lower CRP levels, leading to longer survival.

The APOE gene has variants that influence our susceptibility to Alzheimer’s. The riskiest variant is APOE4, which 15% of the population is born with. Those who carry this variant but had positive age beliefs were 50% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than those with negative beliefs. In other words, their risk of developing dementia was as low as those born without the risky gene. 

Levy describes 14 negative stereotypes about aging. I will highlight two of them.

One false stereotype is that older people are bad drivers. According to Consumer Reports, the number of crashes involving older drivers is low. Additionally, older drivers are more likely to wear seatbelts and follow speed limits and less likely to engage in distracted driving.

There is also a false stereotype that all types of cognition inevitably decline in old age. Episodic memory — the kind of recall of a specific experience at a particular time and place — may decline, but procedural memory (like riding a bike or playing the violin) stays the same. Some forms of memory even improve, such as semantic memory, or the recall of general knowledge. Older people often excel in pattern recognition and in taking into account multiple perspectives.

Levy’s finding of greater longevity with positive aging beliefs has been replicated in 10 countries including Australia, China and Germany.

How does one develop a positive mindset about aging? The first step is to become aware of your own age beliefs and to reject ageist stereotypes. Here are some suggestions from the American Heart Association on how people can improve their attitude about aging: Maintain a sense of purpose such as caring for grandchildren or volunteering. Recognize that practicing healthy behaviors is important at any age. Stay socially active. Try something new. It’s never too late to explore new interests.

My mother-in-law, whose 100th birthday is just around the corner on Feb. 10, exemplifies Levy’s research findings that possessing favorable self-perceptions of aging leads to increased longevity. With a positive attitude, we all have the potential to be amazing.

I don’t buy lottery tickets or even have a lucky number. Yet I’m obsessed with numbers.

What kind of numbers? The age that people die. 

It’s morbid, I know. 

People back in Biblical times had it easy. The early chapters of Genesis mention people living for nearly 1,000 years. They didn’t have to start worrying about death till they hit 900. By Genesis 6:3, our lifespan was trimmed to 120 years. But that’s still much higher than any of us can expect today.

So I find myself reading obituaries and carefully noting the age of the deceased. If they’re younger than me, I’m sad and wonder about the cause of death. I murmur about the inexplicable mystery of why some people die young. If the person is older, I count the years they outlived me and cheer their longevity. I read their obituary avidly for insights, hints and clues about how they made it to such a long life. Good for them! If they can do it, I reason, so can I.

But the deaths that completely seize my attention are the folks who pass at my exact age: 71. Yikes! That’s too close for comfort. Too personal. 

What happened? Was it cancer? A heart attack? 

These obits I read with laser focus, like a detective, seeking detailed forensic evidence about their demise.

This sudden numerical obsession is silly and ungracious. I hope it is a passing phase.

It is only rivaled by a second later-in-life obsession. I call it “Dead Musicians Mania.” Although not listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, I suspect that it afflicts many people around my age.

I describe it as both the prolonged mourning that occurs when beloved musicians of our youth die — and the grief felt each time we hear their music. This sensation is greater than nostalgia. It is acute, deep and painful to the ear and heart.

It’s bad enough that the musicians we love wrinkle and sag. But the fact that they inevitably shed their mortal coil and leave us mourning anew each time a favorite song plays — well that’s just cruel. It’s a nonstop playlist of our own mortality. Who needs that?

The most recent whammies for me were Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who passed away within days of each other in June. Both were 82. And to think, I’m still missing Leonard Cohen, who died nine years ago also at age 82, and Marvin Gaye, who died 41 years ago at age 44, much too young.

One day, I vow I will go through my music collection and weed out all the dead artists, but I’m guessing that would shrink my music collection by three-quarters.

I blame this musical mourning, at least partially, on my parents, may their memories be a blessing. It was their love of old-time Broadway show tunes that drags my music collection toward the Great Beyond, almost to the actual Great Depression.

Meanwhile, to prove that I am not a complete downer and that the eternal beat goes on, my musical tastes are evolving.

I can now truthfully brag that I listen to hip-hop and rap.

Thanks to the students I work with at the local university’s journalism school, I am decidedly au courant on the latest rappers — who are mercifully young and healthy. So I’ve found some “safe” musical ground! (They are also l-o-u-d, so my geriatric ears can actually hear the lyrics.)

As to the appropriateness of my recent oddball behaviors, I try not to judge myself too harshly. I recognize them for what they are — a way of coping with fear about aging and death.

I recognize I should handle these inevitabilities with greater grace. I know that I should thank HaShem for each day of good health and equally that I should turn to religion, instead of rap, for comfort and solace. Yet for the moment, I’m content(ish) in embracing rhythm, rebellion and actuarial charts.

When Renaldo Thompson hugs Miriam Ofer — a frequent occurrence whenever the two hang out at the JCC of San Francisco — it looks as if he could lift all 80-or-so pounds of her with one finger. 

Instead, the towering one-time football player lifts Ofer’s spirits with his abiding love for the 92-year-old Holocaust survivor.

Ofer returns the favor with a smile, a touch and sometimes a quip that seems to come out of nowhere. 

“I’m half dead myself,” she says to him with a mischievous grin. 

“You’re too cute to be half dead,” he replies.

Thompson, a 57-year-old former construction worker left disabled after a workplace accident, says that Ofer, though beset with dementia, lifts his spirits with her undimmed zest for life. Three times a week, he drives his 20-year-old Mercedes to the memory-care wing of the Frank Residences at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living. There he picks up Ofer and drives her to the JCC. The two have lunch together. She orders pancakes; he gets latkes. Then they take a swim class, during which he keeps her smiling and moving.

“We walk back and forth and we dance,” says Thompson, who says swimming is the only activity that provides him with relief from chronic pain. “She just makes me happy when I see her. We talk about everything.”

There is a lot to talk about.

Over their five years of friendship, Ofer has shared her dramatic life story with Thompson — a story told to J. by Ofer’s son, Abraham Ofer. 

Miriam Ofer was born Miriam Brichta in 1932 to a Jewish family in Bratislava (now the capital of Slovakia). After the Nazis invaded in 1938, Ofer and her two siblings were sent to presumed safety in Hungary in 1941. Their parents were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz, where their mother was immediately murdered. Their father perished on the infamous 1945 death march as the Allies closed in.

Ofer told Thompson how she and her siblings survived the war by hiding, eventually making their way to British Mandate Palestine in 1946, not long before Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. 

“Mom was in an orphanage for girls in Jerusalem,” recounts her son. “She liked it. [During the blockade of Jerusalem], she got to Tel Aviv. Then she and her siblings lived in Jaffa.”

Upon Israel’s victory, the siblings put down roots in the Jewish state. In 1960, Miriam, by then married to a fellow Holocaust survivor Ben Ofer, immigrated to New York City and then to San Francisco with their two children.

Thompson likewise told Ofer of his own upbringing in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. The youngest of six children, he graduated from George Washington High School, married and became the father of two daughters. 

As a Black man in America, he says, he has faced racism and discrimination, a pain that has helped him relate to his older friend.

“Most people who see us think it’s strange we’re friends, but I don’t see why,” he says. “I’ve always known about the Holocaust. The Holocaust and slavery were similar.”

Over time, Thompson learned more of Ofer’s history. Once settled in S.F., the Ofers obtained funds from Hebrew Free Loan in 1961 and bought Label’s Delicatessen on Clement Street between Arguello Boulevard and 2nd Avenue. 

“I cooked seven days a week in the restaurant,” Ofer recalls. “I made everything. Kreplach. Kugel. I made the bagels.”

When asked where she learned to cook, Ofer replies, “God knows!”

“My mom was a terrific cook,” recalls her son. “She made blintzes, cheesecake, chopped liver sandwiches. People came from all over. They owned it for three years,  and then dad went into real estate.”

The Ofers prospered. Their kids, Abraham and Naomi, attended George Washington High — just like Thompson, though they didn’t overlap. After the Ofer kids grew up, they moved to the East Coast. When their father died in 2002, their mother carried on with her life in San Francisco including exercise at the Jewish Community Center. 

Then, Thompson entered her life. In the JCC pool one day, Ofer approached him and said, “I like your smile.” 

He responded: “Well, I like your smile.”

That’s all it took.

“He’s an exuberant personality, a genuinely decent human being, a real mensch,” says Abraham Ofer. “They developed a genuine liking for one another and understanding. He’s very patient with her, and he likes to be around her. Even though she has dementia, she’s bright about day-to-day situations. She’s very with it in that way.”

For example, Ofer turned Thompson on to classical opera, while he introduced her to the soul music of Curtis Mayfield.

Says Thompson of the friendship, “It means everything to me. My mom would have been the same age as her. I truly believe my mom’s spirit is telling Miriam to take care of me. She treats me like her son. She tells me that all the time. She gives me hugs, she kisses me, everything a mother is supposed to do.”

Ofer and Thompson’s friendship has drawn attention. Whether in the pool or the center’s spacious atrium, people approach them, all smiles, to say hello. Local TV news KPIX aired a feature on the pair last month, and soon the JCC will launch a bus ad campaign featuring a photo of a smiling Thompson.

All that attention doesn’t divert the two from their main mission: keeping their friendship afloat, both literally and figuratively.

“To be able to hang out with somebody who has this much knowledge, who has been through so much pain, and to be so happy and so giving — ‘blessed’ isn’t even the word,” says Thompson. “She’s a beautiful soul, and she makes you feel better.”

I like to start my day with a kvetch and a stretch. I get my aching mind going and then my aching body in gear. Yet as any “almost oldster” knows, resilience is the key to getting through life. 

Recently — coincidentally on the same day — I met two models of resilience who supercharged me with inspiration and delight.

The first one I met was at dinner. My husband and I joined a long-ago work colleague who was in town with his wife. We had never before met the woman (whom I’ll call Linda for the sake of privacy). Linda is undergoing chemotherapy.

We spotted Linda first at the restaurant. She was wearing a funny, furry, floppy hat, making her hard to miss on a sunny day in a casual, all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant.

Even before we sat down and introductions were made, Linda rushed to say, “I have hair. Lots of hair, but I just got a massage, and my hair’s a mess. That’s why I’m wearing a hat.”

That hair comment was the only reference to Linda’s health made during the entire meal. The woman and her spouse were completely focused on the moment and the meal.

They were the most lively, joyous people I have spent an evening with in a long time. They spoke of their travels and the books they’re reading, and they peppered us with questions about our lives, work and interests. 

Linda took the lead in ordering. She ordered sushi like she was preparing for a party of 20. The waiter even asked if more people were joining us and if he should move us to a larger table!

Smiling, she said, “No, I just love sushi.”

And, wow, could that woman eat sushi. I never saw anyone eat like she did. Gusto is too mild a word for the way she chowed down. I, who shudder at the sight of fish, cooked or raw, giggled as she oohed and aahed nonstop.

When the meal — including three kinds of mochi for dessert — ended, Linda jumped up and said, “Gotta go.”

I worried that she was sick from eating so much, but no, she explained, she had just gotten a notice that a package she ordered had just been delivered.

“I never was good at crafts,” she said, “I can’t knit or sew, but I just read about punch sewing, which is a dumbed-down craft. I’m going to try it. I’m making coasters.”

And with that, our ebullient new friend and her husband sped off into the night.

May we all, in the face of life-threatening disease, live so fully, getting massages, wearing outrageous hats, eating heartily and trying new projects. That’s resilience.

Two hours later, I headed over to a sleep laboratory for a sleep study. That’s where I met my second resilience inspiration.

In this instance, it was a young person — the 27-year-old technician who works the night shift at the sleep lab. She has the laborious job of attaching the bazillion sticky wires to patients’ heads and bodies to track their brain waves and breathing. And then she monitors them throughout the night. 

Now, attaching those wires is no speedy task, and so Yolanda (not her real name) and I had a long time to talk. And talk we did. My young tech told me all about her life. She’s the mother of two, including one child who has a developmental disorder. She is in the middle of a second divorce, works full time and is going to nursing school. 

Was she exhausted? Bitter? Struggling? No. No. No. Just the opposite. She was all spunk and joy. She told me proudly that her 8-year-old son had just learned to say “mama” and how much he loves dinosaurs. She told me how much she loves her job and about her pride in going back to school. She spoke of her gratitude toward her parents for helping with her children so she could continue working toward her goals.

Now, as I age, I realize that resiliency is the skill we all need to cultivate even if our obstacles seemingly pale in comparison to those of others. We all have to be heroes of our own stories.

What does it mean not just to grow old, but to grow into an elder? 

That’s the question at the heart of From Older to Elder, a nine-month program that invites participants 64 and up to explore the challenges and opportunities of aging, all through a Jewish lens. The program is run by Wilderness Torah, a Berkeley-based nonprofit that focuses on earth-based Jewish experiences, traditions and teachings.

Ellie Schindelman, a longtime Wilderness Torah participant and From Older to Elder’s organizer, said the program is rooted in two central themes: radical acceptance and resilience.

“Instead of thinking only about all the problems and difficulties and things we don’t like about getting older, it’s thinking about the opportunity to be of service, to harvest what we’ve learned in our lives and find our calling in this last part of life,” said Schindelman, 75, a personal coach and organizational consultant who has lectured at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

From Older to Elder wrapped up its inaugural session in March with almost 40 participants, ages 64 to 86, and will start up again in September for its second. Two information sessions about it are set for early June.

The program explores multiple facets of aging in classes led by rabbis and other Jewish thought leaders — as well as through discussions, readings, art projects, movement, song circles and rituals. Some activities  take place at beaches, in parks and in other natural settings.

Attendees share their visions for the later stage of life and the legacies they want to leave. They reflect on ways to nurture intergenerational relationships and embrace their accumulated knowledge and newfound freetime. They also confront tough topics, such as internalized ageism, fears around declining health and death, and concerns about the world their children and grandchildren will inherit. 

Being an elder means “embracing a view of ourselves where we have a responsibility to bring our wisdom and what we’ve learned in service to the world,” Schindelman said. 

The program is open to anyone who identifies as Jewish or is connected to Jewish life. The first session drew some participants with little Jewish practice, others highly involved in synagogue life and one who was finishing cantorial school at 82. 

Naomi Baran, an Oakland psychotherapist who belongs to the East Bay Renewal congregations Chochmat HaLev and Kehilla Community Synagogue, was drawn to the program as a way to widen her circles and to consider the complexities of aging from a Jewish perspective. 

“Being with my tribe was deeply meaningful for me,” said Baran, 70. “And to be telling my grandparents’ stories and reflecting on them and my heritage with other Jews was poignant in a particular way.” 

Baran said she also appreciated the bonds she forged with fellow participants and the honest, vulnerable exchange of ideas. 

“There were sometimes difficult conversations, there was curiosity, there was a sense of humor, there was thinking about how to grow your own intuition and expand your own wisdom,” Baran said. “It was rich.” 

She participated in the “hybrid” version of From Older to Elder with in-person classes and two four-day retreats where group members built ancestral altars full of photos and keepsakes, sang Jewish music, recited Hebrew prayers and called one another back from solo outdoor wanderings by sounding the shofar. 

There’s also a virtual-only option for those who live outside Northern California or may not be mobile.

Shelley Riskin, a 75-year-old librarian from the Chicago area, joined the online program last year. 

“I really, really would have loved to go on an in-person retreat, because when I heard about what they were, they just sounded phenomenal,” she said. “Having said that, I felt very connected.” 

Schindelman co-created the program with Jerry Falek, a storyteller and movement teacher. The pair studied similar programs and conducted focus groups to see which topics would resonate most before crafting their own curriculum. 

Many people who are growing older feel invisible and disempowered, Schindelman said.

The program “actually leads you to have a positive perspective about what it means to be older and not just, ‘Oh dear, my aches my pains, my this my that,’” she added. “It’s a beautiful transition, a transformation actually.”

Bob Smith, 68, a retired law enforcement executive from Davis, said the program helped him clarify who he wants to be in this next phase of life. 

“I have a deeper understanding and awareness of my capacity and role as an elder, and a greater sense of how I wish to harvest my own personal wisdom and life experiences,” Smith said. “That mindfulness feels more present and integrated in my day-to-day living and serves as a backdrop in many, if not most, of my interactions with others.” 

A guitarist, Smith led the music component of From Older to Elder alongside Baran, a singer. Both alums remain connected to the program and, come September, they’ll serve as mentors to the smaller peer groups that meet in break-out sessions. 

Guest teachers in the upcoming group will include Rabbi Dan Goldblatt, co-founder of the AriYael Jewish Healing Center and his wife, Zoë Francesca Goldblatt, a facilitator at AriYael, who will talk about dying as a sacred transition. In addition, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, an author and Jungian therapist, will speak about staying connected to ancestors, both living and deceased. 

The hybrid program costs $2,600 to $3,500, based on housing arrangements at two four-day retreats at Mt. Tamalpais in Mill Valley. The virtual-only program comes with a suggested sliding scale from $475 to $675. 

Free virtual information sessions about From Older to Elder are set for 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, June 3 (register here) and for 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. Wednesday, June 11 (register here).  

When I was in kindergarten, I ate an apple on the school bus and tossed the core into the street in front of P.S. 13. The principal, who in my 5-year-old eyes loomed 10 feet above me, made me pick it up. Then she boomed out, “The girl with the apple core!” And she directed me to a garbage can. 

Not so long ago, humiliation was a routine disciplinary tactic. In fourth grade, I asked a boy who sat next to me why he wore the same checked pants every day. He raised his hand, telling the teacher what I had said. 

Our teacher angrily chastised me in front of the whole class, telling me that his attire was none of my business. Then she changed my seat to another table. The boy and his friends applauded.

Was I in the wrong? Certainly. But our teacher’s transgression was worse because she humiliated me in front of the class. Even at age 82, I tear up at the memory. 

Classroom humiliation did not dissipate as I grew older. Mrs. Smith, my sixth-grade teacher, was notorious. She lashed out with scathing tirades in a high-pitched voice that often reduced children to tears in front of the class. I recall one rant in particular.

“Dear little brother Alexander, wasting his time again. You’re going to get along fine in junior high,” the teacher said, dripping sarcasm. “Just remember, young man, it’s your funeral. I get my check at the end of the month just the same.”

Alexander went on to become a successful Long Island businessman. At our 50th high school reunion, he let me know that he still remembered Mrs. Smith’s rants and that his school years after sixth grade were considerably less harrowing.

I never saw anyone wear a dunce cap. However, the command to “stand in the corner” had a similar effect. During the Cold War, my social studies teacher took a more sophisticated approach. She would tell an impertinent kid to “go to Siberia,” which happened to be an area at the back of the classroom. My friends who attended Catholic schools report even worse experiences, including corporal punishment.

In the song “Sabbath Prayer” in “Fiddler on the Roof,” the Jews of Anatevka call upon God to “shield you from shame.” That’s because shaming or causing embarrassment is viewed as tantamount to a killing in Jewish tradition.

The principle of never causing shame is derived from Leviticus 19:17: “‘You shall certainly rebuke your neighbor, and don’t bear sin because of him.’ Even when we rebuke a fellow for a sin he has done, which itself is a Torah command, we must be careful not to embarrass the individual — lest we ‘bear sin because of him,’” according to an interpretation on Chabad’s website.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, aka the Velveteen Rabbi, writes: “Someone who embarrasses another person in public causes their face to turn paler (… hilbin et panav) as the blood drains away. When you shame someone, the Talmud says, it’s tantamount to wounding them and shedding their blood.”

A few years ago, I attended a Shabbat dinner at the Palo Alto home of Chabad Rabbi Yosef Levin. After the meal, a young woman who was a guest began singing alone. In most Orthodox homes, it is not the custom for women to sing in mixed company among non-relatives. 

The rabbi refrained from reproving the woman in front of others, but later he turned to me and simply said, “She doesn’t know.” Her misstep was innocent. But for him to embarrass her would be a serious transgression on his part.

I grew up in a home in which humiliation was not off limits. I wasn’t much of a dancer, and my parents would occasionally ask me to perform the military tap, to the tune of “Dixie,” in front of their friends. It took me a while to realize they were making fun of me. It has also taken me awhile to recognize that my own behavior is not above reproach. 

Years ago, when I was a fashion editor, I wrote a column describing my former husband’s unusual sartorial combinations. Was he upset? Of course. Did I learn a lesson? I’m still learning.

In my present marriage of 25 years, my husband has told me more than once not to make comments in front of others about matters that would embarrass him. Fortunately, he has the grace to reprove me in private.

My friend, whom I will call Sue, is in her late 70s. She recently turned over in bed onto her left side and got very dizzy. She felt like the room was spinning. This persisted for less than a minute, but when she slowly got out of bed, she also felt nauseous.

Over a span of four decades, this was the fourth time something like this happened to her. Sue instantly recognized the symptoms and knew they would recur multiple times a day until she got help.

Many years ago she saw an ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor who performed a certain maneuver in his office that helped resolve her issue. However, that ENT doctor has since retired. When she tried to make an appointment to see a different ENT physician, she found out it would take two months and was instead put on a waiting list. Sue began to consider other options.

The complaint of dizziness has always triggered a whirlwind of diagnostic possibilities for me. When I started my medical career at Kaiser South San Francisco, I had a large number of Filipino patients. Frequently, dizziness was on their list of concerns. Not understanding what to make of it, I would thoroughly evaluate their complaints. It took me many months to realize that the complaint of dizziness in my Filipino patients actually meant that they felt woozy, light-headed or simply unwell. 

Occasionally, there is a different presentation in a patient with dizziness: Someone, like Sue, who upon turning their head after waking up in bed, develops a terrible feeling of the room spinning. Typically, this sensation lasts less than one minute but then recurs throughout the day with certain head movements. Sometimes, it is associated with nausea and vomiting.  

The name for this condition is benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). For some patients, it is moderately annoying. For others, it is quite debilitating.

There are two main types of dizziness: One is a nonspecific feeling of lightheadedness. The other is vertigo.  

The symptom of lightheadedness can be minor or very serious. Minor conditions might be due to getting up too quickly from a seated or lying position, hyperventilation, the effect of having one too many alcoholic drinks, a side effect of medication or a simple matter of sleep deprivation. If lightheadedness persists, it should always be checked out. I have seen serious cases of lightheadedness due to gastrointestinal bleeding or abnormal heart rhythms that patients were unaware of.

Vertigo, which is the other type of dizziness, is a sensation of spinning. It is a symptom, not a diagnosis. Anyone can experience vertigo by turning around rapidly many times.

From my experience, the most common cause of vertigo is BPPV. In a survey of 5,000 Germans, BPPV was shown to increase with age. It was seven times more common in those who are 60 and older, compared with those who are 18 to 39. It was also two to three times more common in women than in men. And for some reason, osteoporosis is associated with developing BPPV.

BPPV is attributed to the displacement of calcium carbonate crystals in the semicircular canal of the inner ear. Most cases of BPPV are idiopathic, or arising spontaneously without a known cause.  

Known causes of BPPV include prior head trauma or whiplash injuries, an ear condition called Meniere’s disease, herpes zoster, prior ear surgery, migraine, stroke and sudden hearing loss. The median duration of BPPV is around two weeks. But if symptoms persist or if they are associated with other neurological symptoms, you should be evaluated to see if something else is going on.

I recall one patient in his late 60s who called me because he thought he’d had BPPV for two days. But when he mentioned that he had loss of balance, I saw him immediately. His neurological exam was abnormal, and an immediate brain scan unfortunately showed a small brain tumor in his cerebellum.

Treatment for BPPV usually involves particle repositioning maneuvers. The most successful one is called the Epley maneuver. In one study of nearly 1,000 patients, a single maneuver was effective in 85% of patients. If you are interested in doing the Epley maneuver at home, here is a helpful YouTube video:

Getting back to Sue: She thought about doing the Epley maneuver at home, but it seemed too complicated. Fortunately, one week after the onset of her symptoms, Sue was able to get an ENT appointment when another patient cancelled.

The ENT doctor identified the problem as arising from Sue’s left ear, so she performed the Epley maneuver three times, focusing on Sue’s left inner ear. The day after her ENT appointment, Sue turned over in bed and she no longer felt dizzy. Sue was also given a referral to see a physical therapist who specializes in treatment of inner ear disorders. 

As Sue’s story illustrates, BPPV can be successfully treated most of the time. If you have doubts about what is causing your dizziness or if you have lingering BPPV, it’s important to see a doctor. Hopefully you can see one in a timely manner.

Indisputably, people are living longer lives, but longevity without health is not necessarily a blessing. 

I just lost two close friends. Now, in addition to mourning the passing of their steady and cheery companionship, I am confronted with unexpected questions about the decidedly different ways their lives ended.

One died a “natural” death after a long, debilitating neuromuscular disease, marked by ever-increasing physical and mental incapacity, a loss of independence and dignity, and a rise in emotional distress — all shocking to witness in a man once imbued with grace, wit and power.

The other — a funny, sweet, man, once bouncy and larger-than-life — suffered in horrific pain from cancer, unable to eat or drink. He had successfully recovered from one exhausting series of chemotherapy treatments, only to have the disease return, super-charged and unstoppable. 

With no hope of cure or relief, this friend decided to exercise control of at least one last measure of his life: its end. Surrounded by his children, he opted for a medically assisted death. I am writing this the day after his death, as I mourn.

Medically assisted death is controversial among many segments of society, including religious communities. In Judaism, the debate begins with the belief that every person, having been created in the image of God, is sacred and that there is value in every moment of every life. 

For Orthodox Jews, that view renders the idea of assisted death as unacceptable. But over recent decades, the perspective of Conservative and Reform Jews has slowly evolved. According to a recent J. story on assisted death, Conservative Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff published a responsum in late 2020 arguing that “in a limited number of cases … we should allow aid in dying.”

Philosophically — from the vantage point of youth — I always thought it was a person’s right to choose dignity over pain and suffering when the end was inevitable and near. But now that I’m older, these decisions are starting to hit closer to home, and it all feels much more complicated.

Thinking about my friend who literally just opted out, I feel sad and also a bit conflicted. 

First of all, let me be clear, I don’t judge him. I’m profoundly grateful that he is no longer in pain. I’m also grateful that his children won’t have to continue to witness his torment. I’ve been there with my mother, and I remember that particular sadness and feeling of utter helplessness all too well.

Yet, this notion of willfully ending our one dance on Planet Earth is such an immense — and — when you think about it — brave step. With no pun intended, I can say that it takes my breath away. 

Again, I don’t judge. I haven’t faced the abyss of agonizing, relentless pain that my friend was staring down. I haven’t known the terror of terminal cancer’s ticking clock. All I know is that I am grateful that people in a handful of states have a right to make a choice and that, in my friend’s case, he had a supportive family with him.

Life is hard. Dying is too. From what I’ve seen so far, too few of us go easily, and in the end, isn’t that what we all wish for?