Los Angeles Jewish Home

Every form of giving begins with personal involvement.

Like many people whose lives are forever touched when a vulnerable parent is lovingly cared for, the Heslovs, Lynne and Michael, came to regard the Home and its staff almost as an extension of their family.

It is a relationship they cherish to this day.

Several years ago, life took an unexpected turn for the Heslovs when Michael's father, Arthur, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. His mother, Jerrie, went through several difficult years of caring for Arthur, but as he became more dependent and withdrawn, Michael and his brothers feared her health would give under the strain.

“We feared we could lose both our parents to the demands of the disease,” Michael says. “Then we learned about the Jewish Home's Goldenberg-Ziman Special Care Center for seniors with Alzheimer's and related dementias.”

As marvelous as the Home's acclaimed Goldenberg-Ziman Center is, the choice to move an ailing parent from their home is rarely as easy one.

“It is an agonizing decision,” says Lynne. “You have guilt. But when we brought Arthur to the Home, we knew he was in such good hands. It made the decision easier.”

“The quality of care at the Jewish Home was far better than it would have been at home, under the best of circumstances,” adds Michael, who was introduced to the Home by former Board of Directors Chair Dave Swartz. “They were so much better equipped to deal with his needs.”

The Home provided all the medical and physical care Arthur required, freeing the entire Heslov family to provide love and support he needed and deserved.

“We told my father he was going to a place for a few days for some testing,” Michael recalls. “Though we told him his stay would be temporary, my father was so expertly cared for and engaged that he never expressed a desire to return home!”

In her daily visits, Michael's mother, Jerrie, noted how carefully groomed Arthur was, his clothing always freshly pressed. The Home's staff members were as loving and involved in his concerns as if they'd been members of his own family.

Lynne recalls that the staff took Arthur out to the garden, which he always loved, and to music and art presentations. “Things like this gave us all such peace of mind,” she says.

After two years at the Home, Arthur passed away. In appreciation for the care he received, Jerrie took on the responsibility of co-chairing the Home's gala Reflections dinners in 2007 and 2008.

Michael, who is a co-partner in the real estate development company of Soboroff Partners, has contributed his expertise to the successful effort to establish the Home's new Gonda Healthy Aging Westside Campus.

As chair of the Board's Budget and Finance Committee, Michael understands the Home's financial challenges and the need for creative solutions. “Some 75-80% of the Home's residents are subsidized by the generosity of the community,” he says.

After serving for two years, Michael was elected to the two-year position as Chair of the Home's Board. At 39, he is one of the youngest executives ever to hold this position.

Michael points out that the exceptional level of care and attention our seniors receive is due in large measure to the contributions of the community.

“It is an honor,” he says, “to commit my time and energies to an organization that is doing so much to improve life for our most vulnerable seniors and their families. Both Lynne and I are passionate about the Home's care for our elderly, at every stage of need.”

Robin Heffler is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose writing and editing span the fields of health, social services, education, law, the environment, religion, arts, and culture. Her work has appeared in the research publications of UCLA, USC, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, as well as in the Los Angeles Times and The Forward.

Labels: Alzheimer's, Board of Directors, Feature Articles, Heffler, Heslov, Why We Give

In the Jewish tradition, life-cycle rituals such as becoming Bar or Bat Mitzvah serve as turnstiles, ushering us from youth to adulthood. It may also happen that ritual thrust us forward into the next stage of life, whether we are fully prepared or not.

There is, however, no specific time that ritual identifies to mark the passage from adult middle age into our elder years. Nor do we wake up one morning and say with certainty, “Today is the day I shall become old.” Instead, we recognize in gradual stages the process by which we come into our own as fully mature human beings.

For many of us, this time of life may be accompanied with physical or cognitive changes and challenges. Setbacks to the body can come at any time or age through accident or illness, whereas the full flowering of our awareness — our awakening to wisdom — is earned through years and years of experience and is never attained before its time.

The challenges of aging are not to be underestimated. The smoothly-running, well-trusted body that has been our companion faces an inevitable decline. It is not surprising that age-related depression is frequent among the elderly — we are not wrong to mourn our losses.

But what is truly the primary function of that beloved body? According to Jewish tradition, it is the vessel in which the soul dwells. The soul, or essence, of a human being is eternal. It lives on after the body's demise, not only in the memories and deeds of those it has left behind on the earthly plane, but in the great infinity that is its Creator.

Judaism teaches that ever since G-d breathed life into Adam, the original human being, it has taken three entities to create every person — the father, the mother, and G-d himself.

The divine spark that is the innermost essence of the human being's soul at birth cannot be extinguished by the years we record in this life. I suggest, rather, that our souls advance through the decades of life in a direction counter to the “age-related” decline of the human body.

Indeed, the eternal soul present at our births grows brighter as the years pass, gathering spiritual experience with every breath allotted to us in the course of our days.

If the soul ultimately returns to G-d, does it not make wonderful sense that its divine spark would be enlightened through worldly experience when it comes to dwell in its eternal home?

I sometimes picture our years of earthly life as a time in which the soul grows in brilliance until the physical self can no longer contain its radiance and it returns at last to the sheltering arms of the Divine Parent.

From this perspective, if we approach eldering as a time not of age-related physical decline but of age-related spiritual abundance we can find comfort, strength, and hope to assuage the assault of worldly years on the body.

With a creative outlook on the soul's advance through life, we shift our point of view from a focus on the body's decline to one of embracing the realization that we are all fueled by the ever-evolving power of the soul.

When we do so, we can all claim our elder years as a rich harvest and a comfort, partake of the bounty of the maturing spirit, and delight in the fruits that ripen for us even as our physical existence is challenged.

For, in the end, we all become pure spirit, sheltered under the wings of a wise and compassionate Creator, at rest in our true and everlasting home. And we, along with those whose lives we have touched, will be wiser for the journey.

Rabbi Rita Hertzberg leads synagogue services and provides spiritual guidance and pastoral care and counseling for the resident community of the Jewish Homes Eisenberg Village Campus. Among her well-attended spiritual education and outreach programs are her weekly Judaism class and the popular “Get Together with Rabbi Rita.”

Labels: Aging, Feature Articles, For the Spirit, Hertzberg, Judaism

I was about to board my flight back to Los Angeles and turn off my cell phone — I was being thrifty with the battery since I had forgotten where I left my travel charger — when a journalist called urgently asking for a comment on Paul McCartney's recent admission that he was having trouble remembering the lyrics to some of his old songs. I envisioned him singing “She loves you — hey, hey, hey …”

“So you're trying to get me to go on record that Paul McCartney is getting Alzheimer's? I won't do that,” I said in anticipation of where the interview was going.

I flashed back to 1993 when Ronald Reagan announced that he was suffering from this devastating illness, which robs the mental life from millions of Americans. Back then, reporters kept asking me to speculate about whether Reagan might have been slipping mentally while serving as our commander in chief.

For our former president, his senior moments may have been early warning signs of further cognitive decline. In fact, an analysis of his progressive extemporaneous speech errors during debates over the years pointed to such subtle progressive deficits.

But for the average aging Baby Boomer like Sir Paul, middle-aged pauses and senior moments do not necessarily mean that rapid mental decline is inevitable. The risk for Alzheimer's disease is only about 10 percent for people age 65 or older. Misplacing keys or struggling to find a word is what we all joke about as we age.

Sure, our memory abilities are not quite what they were when we were in our twenties, but age-associated memory impairment is an expected and quite common experience of aging. Approximately 85 percent of people 65 years or older complain that they often recognize a face but can't recall the name that goes with it.

How can we tell if this normal memory loss will progress?

It's not easy, even for doctors. We often look for risk factors: age, family history, or other illnesses like diabetes or Parkinson's that predispose someone to neurodegeneration. If your memory challenges symptoms begin to interfere with your everyday life, if others start commenting on them, or if you find yourself worrying about them, it may be time to discuss it with your doctor.

Because of the general fear and denial about Alzheimer's disease, many people ignore early symptoms. That's not always a great idea, since the earlier you get help, the better your chances of staving off future symptoms. Clearly, it's easier to protect a healthy brain than to try to repair one once damage has set in. We don't yet have a miracle cure for Alzheimer's disease, but there are treatments that improve symptoms and keep people functioning better, longer. In general, earlier intervention translates to better outcomes.

The emotional impact of the illness is huge. We may joke about our memory lapses, but behind the humor is anxiety and fear. I have spent a good part of my career studying and caring for patients and families who have had to cope with this tragic mental struggle. And although I'm an expert, I initially refused to accept the fact that the illness was causing subtle personality changes in a close friend and mentor. I looked for almost anything else that could explain his symptoms — a possible medical condition, a depression, or maybe a drug side effect — but I eventually had to face the fact that his mind was drifting away and I couldn't stop it.

When Sir Paul McCartney was 16, he wrote “When I'm Sixty-Four.” Now that he's 67, I'm not too worried that he may not remember a few of his old lyrics – chances are that his senior moments won't progress too quickly over the years. I, on the other hand, wish I could remember where I left my cell phone charger.

Originally posted on Huffington Post. Copyright Gary Small, M.D.

Dr. Gary Small is a professor of psychiatry and director of the UCLA Center on Aging at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior. His research, supported by the National Institute of Health, has made headlines in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today. Scientific American magazine named him one of the world's leading innovators in science and technology. Dr. Small lectures throughout the world and frequently appears on The Today Show, Good Morning America, PBS, and CNN. He has written five books, including The New York Times best seller, The Memory Bible.

Labels: Aging, Alzheimer's, Feature Articles, For the Mind, Memory, Small

Labels: Chinese Medicine, Feature Articles, For the Body, Schneider, Traditional Medicine