"Until a Hundred and Twenty"

An elderly couple walked into a CVS and told the pharmacist they wanted to get married. "Do you 

sell heart medication?" they asked. He said that of course they do.

"Then how about medicine for circulation?"

The druggist replied, "All kinds."

"Do you have drugs for rheumatism, arthritis, memory problems and scoliosis?"

The pharmacist assured them that they had a wide array of medicines for all of those problems and more.

"And you sell wheelchairs, walkers and canes?"

"Absolutely," said the druggist. "We sell whatever you need."

They looked at each other and smiled. "Great!" the bride-to-be said. "We’d like to register here for our wedding gifts."

This week we are told that Moses has reached his 120^th birthday. This is the age that we Jews traditionally aspire to live. It is a custom in some Jewish circles, when giving ones age or mentioning someone else’s, to add after it – “ad meah ve-esrim” – until 120!  The Torah itself teaches in the Book of Genesis, ““G-d said, “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for he also is flesh; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years”.

I would like to live to be a hundred and twenty years – if I could be healthy, like Moses. The Torah tells us that at his death, ‘His eyes had not grown dim, nor had his vigor abated.” The oldest person that I ever knew personally was Morris Goldstein, who was part of my extended family growing up in Scranton.  He died four years ago at age 102. When I last saw him at the shiva for my mother, in 2012, he was 100 years old and still working afternoons at my cousin’s store behind the counter. In Pirke Avot, the ancient Jewish text known in English as “The Ethics of the Fathers”, Rabbi Yehudah ben Teima describes the ages of man. One hundred, he says, is the age as if one is already dead, passed away, and ceased from the world.” Curious to know what the experience of an actual person who had reached this age, I asked Morris Goldstein what was the best thing about reaching a hundred? “No peer pressure,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

If Moses died at age 120, that meant he was 80 years old when he led the Jewish people out of Egypt. At 80 he climbed Mount Sinai twice to receive the Ten Commandments and endured forty years of life in the wilderness after that, leading a people that gave him a lot of tsuris, let me tell you!  But if we need inspiration in order to understand that we can still accomplish things past 80, we don’t need to look as far back as Moses to find it.

Man Kaur is a 102 year old woman from India who just won a gold medal in the 200 meter race in the 100-104 age group at the World Masters Athletic Championships in Malaga, Spain. She completed the 200 meters in 3 minutes and 14 seconds. She also won a gold medal in javelin. She was not a life long runner. She took up track and field at the age of 93 at the urging of her son, Singh, who is also her coach. Since beginning her competitive career, she has participated in events in Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan. She has amassed 32 gold medals (often she is the only competitor in her age group). Man Kaur goes to the track to train every day. Three days a week she focuses on shot put and javelin. The other days she concentrates on runs and sprints. In inclement weather, she goes to the gym to lift weights. 

All that practice has paid off. In 2017 she completed a 100 meter run in 74 seconds. Now her time is down to 70 seconds! Not many champions shave 4 seconds off their best times in less than a year.

Of course there are many other inspiring stories. This past summer, Middy and I attended a jazz concert featuring Freddy Cole. Mr. Cole is 86 years old and still performing around the world. Middy and Ariel saw 81 year old Puerto Rican Jazz great Eddy Palmiere perform in Chicago earlier this year.

Why do we have to die at all? The upside of death is that it focuses us. We know we do not have forever on this earth. This is the time of year when this fact should be uppermost in our minds. It is said that Yom Kippur is a rehearsal for death. The white shrouds, the empty pockets, abstinence from food and drink all evoke the spiritual world.  In the Unetaneh Tokef we are reminded of our impermanence: “We are like a fragile vessel, like the grass that withers, the flower that fades, the shadow that passes, the cloud that vanishes, the wind that blows, the dust that floats, the dream that flies away” . This thought should motivate us toward forgiveness, toward reconciliation.  The story is told of a young man in his forties who passed away very suddenly. At the funeral, his brother-in-law broke down sobbing uncontrollably. He and the deceased had not been on speaking terms for over ten years. He couldn’t forgive himself. He kept saying, ‘What did I do to myself? Did I really think we would both live forever?’”

May we all live to be 120! But may we all live as if tomorrow could be our final day on earth.

Shabbat Shalom