What’s Age Got to Do with It?

By Chana Shapiro
June 11, 2025

Longevity has been on my mind lately because so much is being said about former President Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline, a reminder that aging isn’t the same for everyone. We pray that living a long time will not render us dependent, weary, or “out of it.” We want to age with lively grey cells, good health, and — if we’re blessed with good mazel — a purpose.

Judaism offers models of purposeful aging. Biblical Moses is our model of longevity. (He was 80 years old when he led the Israelites out of Egypt, and he lived an amazing 40 more years handling things in the desert.) It’s not just that he lived a long time. We bless each other with “you should live to 120” because the blessing includes the unspoken wish that Moses-type vitality should be part of that long life. He walked with a cane (staff), but he had guts, grit, and purpose.

There’s Noah, who spent 200 years constructing a gigantic three-story ark — by himself and without power tools — and he wasn’t a kid when he started. Methusaleh, Noah’s grandfather, lived 969 years.

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On the subject of extreme aging, I came across some interesting longevity facts this weekend when I read a layman-friendly magazine, The New Scientist. In a section titled, “The Back Pages,” a reader from Australia asked the page’s editor if it’s possible that a lifeform from somewhere in the universe could have a life span that is much longer than ours here on Earth, possibly even of several hundred or thousands of years.

Interpreting “lifeform” to mean ALL forms of life, the answer from the section’s editor was tricky, but thought-provoking. The editor noted that extremely long-life forms already exist on our planet, citing a forest of 1,500-year-old trees in Utah and a bristlecone pine in Nevada that was almost 500 years old when it was cut down. One bristlecone pine in California, aptly called “Methusaleh,” is close to 5,000 years old (gasp!). The editor brings things a tad closer to homo sapiens, by mentioning a Seychelles tortoise that is currently 192 years old, and a Greenland shark that clocks in at about 400 years is still swimming.

It’s true that humans haven’t figured out how to live as long as some amazing trees, animals, and amoebas, but I think we’re very good at aging admirably. Just the other day, I spent time with a woman who recently flew to her great-grandson’s first-grade siddur presentation ceremony. This great-grandmother has had her share of medical issues and losses, but she’s living a fine life with no plans to stop traveling to family simchas or to decrease her various volunteer commitments. She said she’d just bought new sneakers because she’d outworn her old pair.

I’ve been receiving the AARP magazine for many years. (Note: the “R” stands for “Retired”) I was 50 when I was able to join the AARP cadre, but I was still working full-time, with no plans to retire. I don’t know people who chose retirement at the age of 50, do you? In fact, that’s the age at which a lot of us started a new career, intending to work at that new job for a long time.

A retired man I met tutors kids from his wheelchair. A woman I admire says that the wrinkles on her face, hearing aids in her ears, walking cane in her hand, and support shoes on her feet have no connection to the vigor of her mind and spirit. She’s been enrolled in Olli senior living classes at Emory for years.

May we all live long, lucidly, and purposefully!

Source: Atlanta Jewish Times