Birthday Message for May

Here we are celebrating the birthdays of many fine congregants who were born in the month of May.  Perhaps it seems incongruous that we are also reading a Torah portion that begins with the words, “Vaydaber Adonai el Moshe acharei mot shnei bnai aharon….The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron.”  In the commentary in Aytz Hayim it suggests that these words are designed to help us confront our own mortality and reflect on the direction of our lives.

Yes, it’s true that we read this section on Yom Kippur, which is a day designed for such self-reflection, but I think that as we age, we are also drawn to such thoughts with each passing birthday.  Obviously for most children and young adults, thoughts about mortality are not at the forefront of the topics that concern them.  For those of us who have moved into our senior years, the topic does start to be one with which we grapple as we greet each new year of life with thoughts of the past and hopes for the future.

I’ve been reading a book which I’d strongly recommend to anyone who is thinking about the aging process.  It’s called Being Mortal and was written by Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.  In his book, he aims to show that the “ultimate goal of our journey on Earth is not a good death, but a good life- all the way to the very end.”  What constitutes a good life, by his definition is to maintain the integrity of one’s life, to remain connected to who you were or want to be even in the face of sickness and old age.  The struggles of aging and illness make the task difficult, but our job is to expand people’s choices in the name of living a worthwhile life. As we age, it is natural to begin prioritizing the ways in which we want to spend our time and the individuals with whom we want to share our time.  Gawande reminds us that our priorities in life actually go beyond just being safe, they point to sustaining the meaning in our life.

For many, those priorities include keeping in touch with family members and dear friends.  When we started our monthly celebration of birthdays our hope was to indicate to all of you who have chosen to share this special time with us that we are grateful for your lives.  We hope that being part of Tifereth Israel will help provide meaning to your life by allowing you to connect with others who do care about your well-being.  May the relationships you form here, always be part of your experience of what it means to live a good life. May we continue to enjoy the time we spend together, grow from our relationships, and create a community that values each and every one of us no matter how able bodied we are.