Looking for Yiddishkeit in the Final Years of Life

“Make sure she finds Yiddishkeit,” our cousin Miriam said, the night before we left Florida for my mother’s new residence in Wisconsin. We’d spent a week cleaning my mom’s house, and endured a day listening to the whirring of plastic tape being wound around the lamps and belongings to be loaded onto the moving van. On our final night, my father’s relatives repeated their concern that my 87 year-old mother would find Jewish customs, traditions, and food in her new environment.

A month earlier, when my mom had traveled north to select an apartment, I’d asked a social worker at Jewish Social Services (JSS) for advice about long-term care locations. We had asked about reputation and activities offered—but not connection with the Jewish community.

Luckily, the visit included a Monday, so we were invited to a weekly Lechayim luncheon. The food was kosher, the venuea synagogue social hall. It was decidedly Jewish, and familiar. Still, our decision about an independent living residence was based on proximity to my home. In that year, 2005, space was relatively available without waiting lists. My mother moved to a newly renovated apartment with a small bedroom and built-in storage. The intake person said we shouldn’t be concerned about square footage, because most of my mom’s day would be spent at activities in the common areas. My mom participated in everything, from day trips to movies and art lectures. And, every Monday, she rode in a bus with her co-residents (not all Jewish) to the Lechayim luncheon. She became a regular and claimed a spot at the corner of one table, full of new dear friends.

During my mother’s initial years in independent living, her facility began to hold weekly Shabbat services. The rabbi from a local Hillel organization appeared, and the residents lit candles and blessed challah and wine. Time slowed down as we focused on the rabbi’s messages—for me, visiting, those were the most peaceful hours of the week. The services wereopen to all. Even the facility’s Christian chaplain attended. (A wise and gentleman, the chaplain eventually became mymother’s confidant.)

As time passed, other Jewish calendar events began to be recognized: Chanukah and Passover. Because my mom had developed a collection of jokes andloved an audience, she entered the local’synagogues talent contest for the Purim festival. Other members of the congregation presented skits, and young children performed on musical instruments. My self-confident mother walked on stage and told jokes in her Boston-by-way-of South Florida accent: “This here man …”

At the end of the evening, she was voted the winner of the Purim spiel!

My Madison family benefitted from my mother being among us. One evening, my granddaughter, my mom, and I joined a mega challah bake. We brought mixing bowls to a commercial space west of the city, where round tables were set with yeast, flour, salt, oil, and eggs. As we followed the leader and mixed our ingredients, then rolled out braids of dough, my mom reminisced about her own mother and the shabbat dinners she ’d known as a child. I always loved hearing how the grandmother I never knew ordered an entire crate of eggs that was delivered to their home for Pesach baking. Now, my granddaughter could hear, too.

With family and community supporting her, my mom was enjoying her later years in a distinctly Jewish way. No one needed to say it, but we all hoped that this would continue until the end of her life.

It didn’t.

The Yiddishkeit dwindled. Further from us, at facilities that could support her, he lost nurturing connections with other Jewish residents and visitors. During the first weekend at the next place she lived, the managing nurse told us When other residents gathered for hymn singing or Communion, she sat alone. she had an educational video for all to view. I watched my puzzled mother being con- fronted with the history of the Holocaust, complete with scenes of mass murders. My mom was one of two Jewish people in the room. I recognized the other, a man who’d often read the Torah at our synagogue on Shabbat mornings. Maybe Holocaust history was the nurse’s image of what her Jewish residents needed on a winter afternoon, but this was not what Cousin Miriam had prescribed. My mom felt excluded from weekly prayer sessions and Bible readings that appeared on posted activities calendars. When other residents gathered for hymn singing or communion, she sat alone. As soon as my mother told me she was “different,” I added additional hours to our care schedule: During prayers, I wheeled her to another part of the building—to her own room, or outdoors when the weather was mild.

By the time my mom was in her fourth assisted living facility, she was so muted that she failed to make even her basic wishes known. I learned to arrive early on Sunday morning, to relieve her from her lonely position in front of the common TV, tuned to local church services. My mother’s family had followed Jewish dietary laws. As she grew up and assimilated, she became less strict. She started eating shellfish, but she would never eat pork or pork products. Yet my mother was served bacon, ham, and pork dishes during all the years she resided in assisted living. When concerned caregivers revised posted weekly menus to include substitutions for individual residents, the inevitable alternatives were grilled cheese sandwiches.

During a tense discussion in front of the state’s long-term care ombudsman, concerning one facility’s obligation to offer satisfactory food choices for my Jewish mother, I heard the owner say, “Well, you know, this is a Catholic community.” While Wisconsin regulations for long-term care diets are notably few, they do require assisted living facilities to “make reasonable adjustments to the menu for individual residents ’ food likes, habits, customs, conditions and appetites.”

While I was growing up, I observed how my mom internalized her Jewish identity. All her organizational volunteerism stemmed from a profound religious affiliation. Yet, she also worked to establish herself as a mainstream American adult. Even as she rose through the professional ranks of a national corporation that was not known for accepting Jewish women at management levels, she remained affected by stray comments she said contained anti-Jewish attitudes. Back then, I often suspected that she was overly sensitive— that perhaps she heard echoes of what was not actually being said or intended. Yet today, as we experience a period of heightened apprehension and concern, I wonder about my mother’s prescience. I regret that her last days in a secular environment were not spiritually supportive. She allowed old worries to rise and, from what ultimately became her deathbed, she told me she was not receiving good care because she was Jewish.

When she was aware of being overlooked or mistreated, she sank to her most basic instinct: fear. Seven years after her death, I still regret that in our pursuit of long-term care in what we learned was an unmoderated, loosely regulated industry, my mother was not able to live her last years with more comforting, compassionate Jewishness.

One of Wisconsin ’s first women mayors, Judy Karofsky is the author of DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice, reviewed in Lilith here.