I recently took a walk in the woods with two women — one 20 years older than me, the other 40 years older — to discuss the challenges of aging.
We paused when we saw white-tailed deer hop, and then stop, beside us in the thicket. We shared stories about women in our lives, and how they navigated the aging process. We talked about our own changing bodies, changing minds, changing children, changing communities.
We turned our faces towards the sunshine and stopped in our tracks when someone shared a particularly resonant insight, letting it wash over us.
The context was “The Conversation: Jewish in America,” an annual project of the New York Jewish Week. Held in September in Maryland, the 11-year-old project brought together a diverse group of about 55 American Jews who are leaders or potential leaders in their respective fields to talk about the future of Jewish life in this country and what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century.
The format was “open space,” which allows the participants to drive the direction and nature of the conversations, rendering the work of the organizers swan-like; they appear to be gliding seemingly seamlessly upon the water, as their feet paddle incessantly beneath the surface as they strive to create a container for growth.
My small group of three took advantage of the flexible rules (you needed only two people to have a conversation), and took literally the idea of open space, bringing our feet and the wide sky into our discussion about Jewish wisdom and spiritual guidance around the topic of aging.
Perhaps my older counterparts were slightly surprised to see me join this discussion, and I was initially hesitant to join as well. But aging and growing and adapting to an inevitably changing environment — whether it be one’s own body or the world at large — is perhaps the most relevant conversation we need to have as a Jewish community today.
Part of that conversation needs to be about facing the inevitability of death, of ceasing to exist in the way that we know. And it is a conversation we need to have across the gaping divides of decades and states, degrees and denominations.
Where better to begin than on the wet earth of the Pearlstone Retreat Center near Baltimore, in the week before Rosh Hashanah, with our group of three?
It is no news that we are living in a rapidly changing world. Nor is it new; it has always been so. We are, though, living in a particularly acute moment of change, in which we are awake to the nature of those changes, and to what is at stake.
The demographic reality of rapidly declining Jewish numbers, the immediate future of the state of Israel and the Google+ nature of the global world — in which Judaism is one circle amongst many — are issues so pressing and so enormous that we don’t yet have the mental, structural or even spiritual, tools to navigate them.
We are currently struggling as we attempt to figure out what is most valuable to us as a community, and how to maintain its vibrancy and vigor, as it grows older — and as the world seems to grow younger around it.
The Internet age has radically changed the nature of knowledge sharing. Knowledge is no longer rare and valuable. It has been democratized and flattened, and this has created a crisis in education — what should we be teaching our children, and how?
A recent article in the New York Times Magazine’s education issue suggested that character education — the development of traits such as curiosity, optimism, self-control and gratitude — is perhaps as important, if not more important, than teaching letters and numbers and methods and facts.
The Jewish people are not alone; we, as a society, have become unsure what it is we want to convey to our children to prepare them for the future, and our own structures of making those decisions are failing us.
That’s why taking a walk in the woods with women from different backgrounds and generations seems like as good a plan as any to help us figure out the next steps.
Perhaps our next step as a community facing the aging process is to diversify our structural portfolios, to bring in the voices from all walks of experience to help us better understand the woods in which we are walking, and where to head next.
As Jewish educator David Bryfman wrote recently: “… not only is it more productive to innovate with others who are not exactly like you … [but] the Jewish people’s very survival may depend upon using a diverse multiplicity of voices in every endeavor moving forward.”
Innovation is simply another word for aging with grace and wisdom, for renewal, for teshuvah (repentance). We renew ourselves each year as Jewish individuals, yet even the most intimate moments of repentance are done in a communal setting. We must bring this spirit of connectedness into our communal work as we strive to preserve our traditions and values.
None of us should be left to age alone. The creation of diverse and pliable new structures which incorporate multiple perspectives is necessary for the learning and growth that will encourage and sustain renewals in the Jewish world, and make meaningful our collective teshuvah, our attempt to grow and thrive, to walk strong and shining from the woods into each new year.
Maya Bernstein, 33, is director of education and leadership initiatives at the S.F.-based UpStart Bay Area, which aims to inspire and advance innovative ideas that contribute to the continued growth and vitality of Jewish life. This piece first appeared in the New York Jewish Week.