‘Do not let my world grow old around me’

It was erev Shabbat Noach. Earlier that week I went to Giant Eagle for my annual flushot. The store, the customers and the pharmacy staff all seemed unchanged from previous visits. What made this year different was the form I was handed to fill out. There on thevery first line was my age, typed in as 79!

My father did not live to be 79, nor did either of my grandfathers. Here I was on an otherwise ordinary day staring into the ninth decade of my existence, scheduled to commence with my birthday next June. It kept my attention for the better part of the day, far more than the easy physical response to the injection.

I was reminded of echoes of many years ago, rooted in my childhood impressions of the High Holidays. Perhaps the most poignant is the plea in Sh’ma Kolenu by the senior members of the congregation: “al tashlichaynu le’et zikna …” — translated as “Cast us not away in old age; when strength ebbs forget us not.” It is a powerful and personal appeal.

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Today, decades later, I find myself much closer to the literal parameters of those words. I too might understand this verse as a request to put up a hand of “Halt!” to the normal process of aging and decay, of slowing of limb and ebbing of energy, of declining strength and diminishing life forces: loss of energy, loss of hair, loss of hearing.

But I offer a new reading of these familiar words, perhaps because the literal interpretation is so scary as it looms ever closer. Let us read the verse we see as, “Cast me not off in time of old age,” as “Do not let my world grow old around me.” Do not let the values and priorities of my life lose their place in the world. Do not let things change so much that I am like a cast-off on my own private island; a stranger on my own property; a foreigner on my own turf.

Let me after all these years be at home among my people and comfortable in their midst. Then I’ll take every flu shot they permit me. PJC

Rabbi Stephen Steindel is a former senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom.