‘Aren’t you dead yet?’ Thoughts of a feather-duster - opinion

The Paris demonstrations are focusing world attention on what the age of retirement should be. It all reminds me that some years after my own retirement, a former congregant met me and asked, “Are you still alive?” Heavens! It recalled to mind an incident when I was a child in Melbourne. My mother was ill, and the next-door boy, with the cruel tactlessness of childhood, shouted over the fence, “Isn’t your mother dead yet?”

In Paris, it seems that you are expected to die in your sixties. Me, I am no longer so young. The Bible spells it out in Psalms 37:25: “I was young, now I am old.” It echoes in Psalms 71:9 with its heart-rending sentence, “Cast me not away in time of old age”. According to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who is still vibrant and busy at the age of 80-plus, the verse is saying, “Don’t cast me into old age… Don’t let me be old before my time.” 

Years ago, when I worked for the Association for Jewish Youth in Britain, a know-all teenager told me, “Everyone over 20 is a has-been.” I guess that teenager is still alive – a “has-been” himself, now well into his sixties or beyond. In my case, I’m over 80, still alive and active, and not dead yet.

How do we define old age?

In Psalms 90, life expectancy is “70 – or if you’re strong, 80.” These days 60, 70 or 80 is nothing special. Contrast the cusp of the Common Era when the average age was 22, and males rarely passed their forties.

To get to 60 was an achievement. Not long ago, that was when you could get into an old age facility. People who prayed probably said, “Bless me to reach 60 (in good health if possible).” Modern life expectancy has long since passed 60; 70-plus is on track for Moses’s 120.

The biblical Levites retired at 50 (Numbers 8:25-26) when they were no longer so strong and energetic. They were not lost to the community as scripture says, “They shall serve with their brothers.” Maybe that means they supported their fellow Levites. Perhaps they had less onerous duties; they could still lock the Temple gates, sing in the choir, teach the children, and supervise loading the wagons. 

These days, people are generally still strong and well long past the conventional 60 or 65, so there is no need for a set age for retirement. Older people can continue to work, even at a slower pace. Society should find ways of retaining the expertise and experience of its older members. 

MOST OF us have two or three post-retirement decades; we are mostly healthy without serious deterioration. We spend as much time in retirement as we did in studying and preparing for a career. We have a professional life of about forty years, sandwiched between two lengthy stages when society supports us, though the working population complains that youngsters and retirees are a burden on the taxpayers. 

Yet, unlike ancient Sparta where the elderly were expected to go off somewhere and fall apart, gray power can still contribute to society. Starting with Moses, whose public career took off at 80, many famous leaders (think of Winston Churchill, Konrad Adenauer and Shimon Peres) have assumed or held office well into old age. When a public event was planned in Britain to mark Sir Robert Mayer’s 100th birthday, the organizer told him, “Robert, if you die before your birthday, I’ll never speak to you again!”

The retiree generation isn’t dead yet. They have their fears, especially of falling. They have financial worries.  They go to the doctor quite often. But they’re still capable of using their talents, energies and experience for the benefit of the community, in order to keep busy and to contribute to society – unlike the past, when grandparents were expected to sit home on a cushioned armchair and creak through their anecdotage. 

As time unfolds and you become elderly, you lose some of your power, independence and self-confidence. Your energies slip away, but not always, and not entirely. The Book of Ecclesiastes’ chapter 12 depicts developing decrepitude and we old people read it with a grin. We mislay things and lose some of our faculties, but there’s still a lot left.

Casting people on the scrap heap because of chronology is downright foolish. No one falls apart the moment they turn 65 (or some other artificial age) even though an Australian politician, Arthur Calwell, said, “Today you’re a rooster, tomorrow a feather-duster.” 

Old people resent being called feather-dusters or walking-sticks. Their hair has probably gone gray and then white, but they still have a lot to give, even at a reduced pace. Most still have their marbles. They can’t run, jump or hop like they did, but they still have their skills and can be productive and creative if society lets them – in its own interest as well as their own. Not only in all the many and varied walks of ordinary life, but in public affairs and governance too.

In Sydney, I marked the late Sir Asher Joel’s retirement from political life by suggesting that every parliament should have a second chamber called the House of Eminent Citizens. I wasn’t joking. I nominated Sir Asher as a founding member. I was sufficiently lacking in modesty to hope that one day there would be a place in that House for me too. Or if I took note of Psalms 23, I would say, “Let me dwell in the House of the Lord as long as I live.” There is still time.

The writer, emeritus rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, is past president of the rabbinate of Australia and New Zealand and of the Rabbinical Council of America’s Israel Region. He is over 80 and is an (unpaid) full-time researcher and writer living in Jerusalem.