Los Angeles Jewish Home

As we begin the New Year and consider how to boost our physical and mental health, we need to include another important component of wellbeing: our spiritual health. Just as there are steps we can take to boost the health of our bodies and our brains, there are ways to enhance our spiritual fitness, regardless of our age.

In fact, Rabbi Rita Hertzberg, the Los Angeles Jewish Home’s Campus Rabbi for Eisenberg Village, believes our spirituality has the potential to expand as the years go by.

"As the body ages and the mind ages, the spirit grows," she says. "It’s the only part of us that doesn’t decline."

Scientists disagree on how and whether spirituality and religion influence health. Some studies have concluded that religious faith increases our ability to cope with illness, disability, loss, and mortality. Others have reported lower blood pressure and depression levels and longer lifespans among individuals with a strong personal faith who regularly attend religious services.

At the same time, some researchers believe there is not enough scientific evidence to conclude that spirituality is associated with health.

But perhaps it doesn’t matter whether the scientific evidence is conclusive. Experiences of residents at the Los Angeles Jewish Home clearly demonstrate that spirituality affects emotional health and quality of life.

"If we can get [spirituality] to kick in and to grow brighter, this becomes a light that can ease the darkness we feel that is natural in the aging process," says Rabbi Hertzberg.

Working with residents, Rabbi Hertzberg and her colleague Rabbi Anthony Elman, the Home’s Jack H. Skirball Director of Spiritual Life and the Campus Rabbi for Grancell Village, have both seen tremendous changes in individuals who have discovered or enhanced their sense of spirituality.

Rabbi Elman recounted the story of one resident who had lost her eyesight quite abruptly. Despite her loss, he said, "She is full of thanks to God for God’s help and to the Home for giving her a place to thrive and for gifts such as having the ability to dress and do other things for herself."

Another resident who was 85 years old and declining rapidly went through the process of having a Bat Mitzvah. She learned verses of the Torah and read them in Hebrew. "It was very meaningful for her and for her family," says Rabbi Elman.

Rabbis Elman and Hertzberg say that there are multiple avenues to spirituality. Certainly religion can be one path. "There's a statement in the Talmud which says that when two or more people study Torah, God is present. I believe that," says Rabbi Elman. "I [also] believe that prayer and a feeling that somehow I'm not alone – that God is with me – can help."

At the same time, he stresses that religion is not the only path to spirituality. "I try to introduce a sense of awe – which I take to mean opening oneself to something greater," says Rabbi Elman. While that may take the form of thanking God for our blessings, says Rabbi Elman, it can also involve marking occasions, such as Veteran’s Day or Martin Luther King’s birthday, where "people can be lifted to feeling and recognizing something greater than themselves."

Music can also be a source of spiritual enhancement. Rabbi Hertzberg says she sings a lot with residents, and that songs can be "a spiritual connection to the past" for them. "I've found music to be an amazingly powerful and spiritual vehicle," she says.

In addition, she believes many residents feel spirituality in their sense of community and connectedness. They may not know anyone when they arrive at the Home, but they soon establish relationships with staff members and other residents.

Whether through prayer, study, music, community, meditation, or other means, humans have the ability to enhance their spirituality at any stage in life.

As Rabbi Hertzberg puts it, "We don’t stop being a spiritual being until we take our last breath."

Labels: Elman, For the Spirit, Hertzberg, Rabbi, Religion, Spirituality

The Sabbath immediately preceding Passover is known as Shabbat Hagadol, the great (big) Sabbath. What's so great about it? Would you believe it's the length of the service?

In the good old days, it was unusual for the rabbi to sermonize every week. Typically, a rabbi would speak at length only twice a year. The first time, on the Sabbath preceding Yom Kippur, to speak to the congregation about the importance of doing teshuva (repentance) and seeking forgiveness. The second time was on Shabbat Hagadol to teach the complex laws regarding chametz (leavened bread) and preparing for Passover.

Besides the age old yearning for shorter services, there is an additional reason. This week has a special reading from the Prophets, which contains the word "gadol":

Malachi Chapter 3

23. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.

24. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers; lest I come and smite the land with utter destruction.

This messianic prophecy regards the end of days and the belief that Elijah will return at Pesach to welcome the Messiah. The text speaks to the importance of Passover as the foremost of all holidays for the Jewish nation. But, what does Elijah have to do with Passover? He wasn't even born for centuries after the Exodus. Yet, as central part of the Seder is the Cup of Elijah, with our little ones staring at the cup to see if the wine is diminished.

The answer is to be found in a rabbinic disagreement concerning the number of cups we drink this night.

In Exodus 6 we read of the promise of redemption:

Wherefore say unto the children of Israel: I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments;
and I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a G-d; and ye shall know that I am the LORD your G-d, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Eyptians.
And I will bring you in unto the land...

Should this last verb, "bring you", be included as a term of redemption, thus requiring a 5th cup? Or is it not about redemption but the promise of the holy land made to Abraham, thus only 4 cups?

The question remained unanswered, and according to tradition, the prophet Elijah will resolve all disputes at the time of the coming of the Messiah.

We honor the dispute itself by pouring a special 5th cup, we call the Cup of Elijah. We welcome this prophet of peace to acknowledge that people can have honest disagreements without vilifying the other. And, as Malachi said, the hearts of parents and children will be turned to one another. What better place than the seder table?

Rabbi Sheldon Pennes is the Jack H. Skirball Director of Spiritual Life at the Los Angeles Jewish Home, where he oversees the many services and activities that educate, illuminate, and enrich the spiritual life and needs of those living in, or served by, the Home.

Labels: Chametz, Cup of Elijah, Elijah, For the Spirit, Gadol, Judaism, Malachi, Messiah, Parshah, Passover, Pennes, Pesach, Redemption, Religion, Seder, Sermon, Shabbat, Shabbat Hagadol, Word of Torah

While health care professionals are proficient in physical and even mental caregiving, few receive training or coaching in how to provide spiritual care. A holistic approach to care and interpersonal relations requires that not only the needs of body and mind are tended to, but the spiritual as well.

How does a health care professional provide spiritual care in a multi-religious or even a setting devoid of religion? The answer is to become aware of spiritual needs rather than focusing on religious requirements. What is the difference? While not everyone may practice a religion, every person has a spirit.

Four specific needs are suggested in an article titled "Spiritual Needs of Patients: Are They Recognized?" (Highfield, Carson. Cancer Nursing 6 1983: 188). These primary human needs are spiritual, but not specifically religious. While many persons fulfill these needs through religious practice, many others do not. But virtually everyone, whether practicing a religious tradition or not, has these same fundamental spiritual needs.

1. The need for meaning and purpose

Everyone needs a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Many of the best dementia care units provide "chores" that residents are responsible for (like watering the flowers or sweeping the room) as a method of lending meaning, motivation, and purpose to the day at hand. People who are aware of no purpose in their lives often become listless, depressed, angry or withdrawn. "Why can't I die? I am no good for anyone anymore!" are familiar laments by people who have lost their sense of meaning.

2. The need to give love

A person needs to give love, not just to receive it. In fact, many depressions develop not because the individual has no one to love them, but because of an inability or lack of opportunity to love others. Instead of having a focus outside of themselves, the focus of these people is directed inward – to a recent health setback, a perceived slight, or the latest ache or pain. All of us have a very real need to be concerned, connected, and involved in something beyond ourselves and our immediate interests.

3. The need to receive love

All people have a need to be loved. Many studies suggest that if infants are not cuddled they do not thrive. The same is true for people of advanced years. Sometimes love is hard for a person to receive out of fear of becoming dependent or indebted to someone else. Yet the need to be loved, and know that we are loved, remains an essential component of our well-being.

4. The need for forgiveness, creativity, and hope

Finally, there is the need for forgiveness, creativity, and hope. Every person needs to feel as though their future is open and holds possibilities. Sometimes, people need to be able to release and forgive the past in order to move on. But every individual needs to feel as though they are a player in the creation of their own future. We all need the hope that tomorrow will be livable and worth living for.

Each one of us is trying in some way to fulfill these spiritual needs through what we do, how we feel, and how we respond to life's twists and turns. If any one or more of these needs are unfulfilled, spiritual distress arises, a distress that is often beyond the purview of physicians and nurses, but makes perfect sense to the spiritual caregiver.

Within every social or caregiving encounter we have with a senior, we have a new opportunity to become aware of and attentive to their spiritual needs – looking not only at the body and mind, but also at the spirit, with an approach that respects the needs of the "whole person."

Rev. Donald Koepke is the director emeritus of the Center for Spirituality and Aging (CSA), a program of California Lutheran Homes and Community Services, headquartered in Southern California. Rev. Koepke has presented many workshops on spirituality and aging. He is also the producer of the DVD, "Caring for Elders: Body, Mind and Spirit," which presents the concepts of the author, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, as applied to aging. For further study on spirituality and aging visit the CSA website at http://www.spiritualityandaging.org/.

Labels: Feature Articles, For the Spirit, Koepke, Religion, Spiritual Care