Serving Aging Families and Communities: Spiritual Holiness amid Cognitive Emptiness

Our communities are aging.  Our own families are aging.  And, with aging, comes increasing dementia and Alzheimer’s.   In this workshop, with texts to support us, we will discuss how to speak to Alzheimer’s, how to guide care-givers, how to approach the calculus of care at home or care in a home, boundaries and suggestions for rabbinic involvement, and, ultimately, seeing the sacred and holiness amid cognitive emptiness.  We are instructed in the Talmud (BT B’rachot 8b) “Respect the aged, because the fragments of the original tablets were preserved in the Ark with the new ones.”