Tag Archives: age limits

So Rabbi, welcome back. We had a week off for Shavuot. I have to say, and I think I’m a broken record in this regard, that I read the Parsha this week and I discovered something that I said in the intro that I hadn’t realized before, that this is the only place in the Torah that we talk about an age limit on the top. Clearly, there are issues of age. At eight days, that’s when you get circumcised. At 13 or 12 for a girl, we discussed it a week or two ago, that’s when you become a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. There are other limits as to when you can attain the maturity to do something, but there is only one place in the Torah that it has a limit to what you can do afterwards. It’s an age limit. If you do a search about retirement in the Bible or retirement in the Torah, this verse, this pasuk both in Christian and Jewish sources comes up, and if you do a search for retirement in the Ancient Near East, there isn’t such a thing. This is a unique concept. You know, there was some textual things, treatments of retirement that said the ancient Near East, they didn’t have to worry about it, because at about age 25, they dropped dead and died. I don’t know if that’s the case, but this is singular and unique.

Do I have a basis for what I’m saying? Had you ever thought of this before?

2:31 – Adam Mintz:

No, I didn’t think of it, but I think that you’re 100% right, and that’s why it’s going to be so interesting to look at this today.

2:38 – GS:

As I said in the intro, this is very timely. I mean there is a Pew study that came out in October of 23 and it says with the advanced age of some US political leaders in the spotlight, 79% of Americans favor maximum age limits for elected officials. We don’t have any age limits. Limits for presidents, for congressmen, and we, as I said, we don’t have term limits either in Israel. So, this is a fascinating study because it also reflects on ageism, which is the flip side of this, which is we live in an age where the old retirement Age is no longer in effect. We’re living much longer than we ever did before. So, we’re really coming at this from all sides, but we’ve got to give the Torah credit for bringing up the issue. This is unique.

3:32 – AM:

And the Torah is very much focused on it. This week’s parasha and they talked about it in Parshat Midbar too. OK, let’s get going.

3:39 – GS:

So, in Numbers 8.23 it says, God spoke to Moses saying, This is the rule for the Levites from twenty-five years of age and up. They shall participate in the workforce in the service of the Tent of Meeting. Verse 25, But at the age of fifty they shall retire from the workforce and shall serve no more. They may assist their brother Levites at the Tent of Meeting by standing guard, but they shall perform no labor. Thus you shall deal with the Levites in regards to their duties.” Now, the Hebrew, I guess because of this translation, it says they shall retire, that’s what kind of triggered me and I go, my goodness, this is retirement policy. The Hebrew is miben chamishim shana yashuv mitzvah ha’avodah. In the Koran it translates that from the age of 50 years they shall go out of the ranks of the service and shall serve no more. So yashuv mitzvah ha’avodah isn’t quite retirement. How would you translate it?

4:47 – AM:

It’s not retirement, but they don’t go out to war anymore or out to service anymore. It’s a little different than retirement, but I think we can use the idea.

5:00 – GS:

The point is, and we’ll see what the commentaries have to say, that for some it is retirement, for some maybe it’s a change of direction or a change in career paths, but you can’t take away from it whether you call it retire or make a detour. It’s a milestone here, and the trigger for the milestone is age. In Numbers 4, it doesn’t talk about the age 50 in terms of retirement, but unlike our parsaha, that is 25, there it says 30.. for a person less than thirty has not yet attained his full strength, — hence they (the Rabbis) said (Avot 5:21) “a man of thirty has reached the age when he enters into full strength…., a few weeks ago we talked about the machina programs in Israel. This kind of falls into that category. But then Rashi continues, as for one who is older than 50, his strength gradually diminishes from then.

6:20 – GS:

Already we’re starting to characterize the elderly. This is something that the Torah is taking into account. What happens when you get older?

6:32 – AM:

Now, it’s interesting that it happens at 50. You know, they had a whole different concept about how long you were supposed to live for in those days. When you were 50, you were old already.

6:44 – GS:

So that was another thing that I was thinking about. I mean, we are in a book, Rabbi, that talks about Moses dying at 120. We were in Genesis where people were dying in 600 and 900, so I don’t know where to put this. In other words, I always thought there was age inflation. But you have to be consistent, so I don’t know what the answer to the kind of the implicit question that you’re posing is, because if you think about it, to start your career at 20, well, 25 or 30, that’s kind of similar to what we do in our day and age. You would assume that long ago where the life expectancy was 40 maybe, maybe you started working at 18, so I don’t know what we’re to make of these exact numbers. I’m curious what you think.

7:33 – AM:

And, you know, even if you ignore the ages in the book of Genesis, but Moses lives to 120. So even in the desert, we have people living to an old age.

7:45 – GS:

So, I don’t know how to take the 25, 30, and 50 that we’re dealing with today. If you want to create the scale from 0 to 120, I think it kind of talks to us. It wasn’t that long ago that retirement age was 50s. When you and I grew up, up it was the 60s, now they’re talking 65 – 70 is the new 60, right? So it resonates, but it is kind of interesting about those numbers for sure. Rashi on Numbers 8: 25 says that at 50 years of age you shall cease waiting upon the service and shall do no more service, he says the service of bearing loads on the shoulder. But the Levi still returns, i.e., may be called upon, for closing the temple gates for the service of singing and for loading sacred articles upon the wagons, for this is the meaning of verse 26 which I ended with, but he shall serve at Ahiv together “with his brethren”, just as the Targum renders it, not he shall serve his brethren, but with his brethren. So all of a sudden we’re introducing complex issues. Number one, is this a retirement or is it a career change is an adaptation for the changing capabilities of these people, and then this issue of ageism where he goes out of his way to say they’re not serving anybody. They’re serving with, as equals. I just find it fascinating that because of this verse, the rabbis are forced to address many of the issues that we’re dealing with even today.

9:32 – AM:

Yeah, I mean, what’s interesting is that it’s not only the Torah, but Rashi, who lives in the year 1040 to 1105, he’s more sensitive to this. It’s almost as if he’s familiar with this idea, like what does getting old mean and how do we deal with it? And the respect issue, that part of it, fascinating.

9:52 – GS:

So obviously, if there’s one opinion, there’s got to be another opinion. Rashi, as I just said a second ago, says they can’t no longer do certain services, those that are physically challenging, carrying things, but they can do other things like opening up the gates, like singing. Ramban takes a different position and he says that a Levite above the age of 50 was not allowed to take part in the singing. What he is saying is that all of these things were bundled together, because there were certain Levites, I think they were from our buddy’s family of Korach, that used to do a lot of singing. They didn’t do any carrying. So Ramban argues, I believe, that if you’re a Korach family member and you’re reading this verse and 50 has no implication for you, it doesn’t make any sense. Whatever you do, whether you’re a singer, whether you’re a carrier, you stop doing it at age 50. So, in a sense, the Ramban is kind of falling on the side of we have to be consistent, and he really does feel that we’re going to a transitional period. When you hit 50, time to move on, whereas maybe you could characterize Rashi as it’s time to maybe adjust, you can stay in the office, you just got to do something else. Ramban is seeming to imply that this is a major, major milestone. He says, therefore, they were not appointed to sing, which was the main function of the Levites.

11:51 – GS:

This thing that they can do with the others that’s different So it is interesting that even till today we have these discussions about what happens when you hit this retirement age They had the same argument or discussion then too.

12:08 – AM:

as well kind of fascinating well and not surprising Because you know old age is something that is an eternal problem

GS: Problem or opportunity?

AM:

Opportunity, well I was going to say, and maybe you have to say, Mipnei Sevat Takum means the Torah talks about retirement, but it also talks about the fact that you have to respect the elderly. So, it goes both ways. So, it’s not bad to become old, you actually gain respect, but you don’t work anymore.

12:39 – GS:

So, I think if we have to characterize the rest of our discussion, we’re going to be literally focused on different rabbinic texts that try to characterize and maybe make some value assessments of what happens when you do get old. You focused on the great honor and value that our tradition, as most ancient traditions give to the elderly, and we’re going to get to that. But before, I thought we’d dwell a little bit more on what the rabbis thought were some of the challenges and maybe even limitations of what happens when you get old. So, there’s a fascinating piece of Talmud in Sanhedrin 36b where it’s talking about what is the difference of the qualifications of being on a civil court, justice, a judge on a civil court, or a criminal court where the death penalty is possible. And so the Gemora answers, but there is another difference. As it is taught in the Beretta, the court does not seat on the Sanhedrin a very old person, one who is castrated or one who has no children.” And it goes on. A fascinating lumping of disparate categories together, Rashi tries to tie it up in a bow, and he says, an old person, for he has forgotten the pain of raising children and he is no longer merciful and similar for someone who has had no children so the way Rashi links an elderly person to an impotent person or to one who just simply hasn’t had any children is he’s too far removed from the challenges, the pain, the angst of having a child, and therefore he might be limited in his midat ha-rachamim.

14:50 – AM

Fascinating!

14:51 – AM:

It’s so interesting. I’ll just tell you the idea that not having children means that you’re not going to be as compassionate. There is an opinion that the Chazan for the high holidays needs to have children because he’s praying for everybody. He’s asking for God’s mercy and you only appreciate mercy if you have children.

15:22 – GS:

So it’s funny that you say this. Two weeks ago, my grandson Ari was bar mitzvahed, and it was at Lincoln Square, and Rabbi Robinson had a guest speaker at the end who, believe it or not, had an app. It was a dating app, but it wasn’t based on getting people that were eligible.

15:45 – GS:

It was based on the premise that when we go up to Shemayim, one of the questions we’re asked was, did you engage in Peru Uruvu? Did you have children? And this woman explained that you can get the mitzvah of Peru Urvu vicariously by making shidduchim… matches.  So I just thought of that as you were saying that because clearly we have to be very sensitive. Whenever we read these ancient texts, there are sensitivities that we have today that they didn’t necessarily have then, and whenever we talk about someone who is childless, That is a very sensitive issue, and I think that when we talk about something like this, it is fascinating, but there’s no question. What’s interesting, I think, is that an elderly person who has had children, maybe because of age, can become removed. From that simpatico and that sense of a feeling, and you can make the other argument that someone who is young and maybe has no children can feel it also [vicariously]. Let’s not go there, but I think it’s fascinating to say that in general what this piece of Talmud is saying is that when you’re elderly, you can become removed from the experiences of your childhood, and we have to take that into account. And that’s going to be—the flip side of that is all the experience that you have, which is certainly one of the greatest of being old, that you have more experience than anybody else, but there’s a kind of dialectic.

17:29 – AM:

There’s no question that that’s true. And, you know, the Torah says, that you respect the people who are old. And probably what you respect is not their knowledge, but their experience. Certainly. Right? I think exactly what you said.

17:50 – GS:

And here we say, but there were some experiences maybe they become too removed from The key to me that makes these texts so fascinating is that they’re dealing with them. And I find that they’ve begun the conversation that we’re having up till today.

18:10 – AM:

It’s so great that we say this. I just gave a class today in Maharat, and I told them that the challenge is that our job is to continue the conversation, that the conversation has been going on for 3,000 years since the Torah was given, and our job is to continue the conversation. So, we talk the same way. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

GS: That’s why we do a podcast together!

18:34 – AM:

There you go.

18:52 – GS:

So in Barachot 8b, it says, Rabbi Yashua ben Levi further advised, and be careful to continue to respect an elder who has forgotten his Torah knowledge due to circumstances beyond his control.

Usually we think of onus as when somebody is forced to do a misdeed. Here it talks about old age as an onus, something that is forced upon us, which I found fascinating.

But the other part of it is just the fact that it recognizes that you can have an elder who has forgotten his knowledge. You know, you look sometimes at the Haredi community, you look at some of the rabbis who are guiding them, you look at some of the videos that were shot maybe of Ovadia Yosef when he was very, very old. And you almost feel as though that community has lost a sense of you can still respect a great scholar even after he has lost his wisdom. It doesn’t mean you necessarily listen to his halachic rulings, but that is implicit in this piece of Talmud, which is saying, be careful to still respect him, meaning to say, respect him even though you don’t listen to his Torah anymore. And of course, the mashal, the analogy that it gives is just so wonderful. And why do you respect a Talmud Hacham; scholar even after he has lost his knowledge because just like the tablets of the covenant, we keep the full tablets but we also keep the broken tablets.

20:31 – GS:

But the fact that it relates to the elderly is also just a gem. Yeah.

20:37 – AM:

I mean, there is, you know, in kind of Yiddishism, when they sometimes they refer to someone who’s old, they refer to him as Shivrei Luchos.

20:48 – GS:

Ha! I never knew that.

20:49 – AM:

That’s fantastic. So here you go. So that’s right. That’s exactly the same idea. Which is, you know, which is, which is saying that he’s old, but at the same time, it’s, you know, it’s saying that, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s like the Luchos, you know, he’s special.

21:05 – GS:

You know, I don’t want to go Kabbalistic on you, but the world was created by Shivrei Luchot (Shevirat Hakelim, breaking of the vessel) . So there’s these just beautiful broken pieces, and it’s our job to take care of them, and that’s just a wonderful analogy. I think. You know, Mishneh Torah, I have it in this source sheet, it talks about honoring the aged for aged’s sake. Even if he is not a sage, even an old Gentile, it says Kuti, which is a particular type of Gentile, should be addressed with words of respect. I mean, it’s so obvious, Rabbi, when you come from a tradition That honors the Mesorah, that honors the past and the value of that unbroken link, of course you have to honor the elderly, but that also puts into such highlights the revolutionary nature of the fact that we started this discussion with the only possible, not only in the Torah, but maybe in ancient Near Eastern literature that talks about retirement age. They’re able to have both ideas at the same time.

22:26 – AM:

Yes, and you know and obviously both ideas are true and that’s really the beauty of the Torah that they’re able to kind of merge These two seemingly contradictory ideas. I mean, isn’t that really nice?

22:42 – GS:

Yeah. I love it You know, the Pirkei Avot, Chapter 5: 21, is the famous thing where it talks about all of the ages, everything in its age, 5 to study Torah, you know, get 18 married. At 50, the 50 that we are talking about, you’re able to give counsel.

23:04 – GS:

So again, it’s fascinating that on the one hand you can’t be a judge in a case where it’s life and death because maybe you’re too remote from the visceral experience of bringing up a child, but on the other hand, you are of the age where you have age, you have wisdom, and you can You can give advice. At 70, fullness of years, at 80, of strength, at 90, a bent body, at 100, good as dead and gone completely out of the world.

23:38 – GS:

It’s amazing, isn’t it? But they did getting back to life expectancy. They wouldn’t have written this if there weren’t incidents of people living that long of a life. So, some other things that came to mind as I was preparing, when we read the Haggadah, we talk about Rabbi Eliezer Ben Azaria, who says, I am like someone who is 70 years old, and I was never privileged to understand a certain ruling that we remember the teziyat Mitzrayim at night. Theories explain that this scholar was appointed to be the head of the Sanhedrin, Eliezer ben Azaria, and it’s interesting, they say that his hair, the Bartenura that I quote, his hair had turned white on the day when he was appointed to be the Nasi.

24:48 – GS:

I’m not sure if they dyed it or if it became white. What do you make of the grammar of that? I think it became white.

25:06 – AM:

I think it became white. I don’t think they know about dyeing it, right?

25:09 – GS:

The point is, whether he dyed it or whether the powers that be made him prematurely gray, the point was that he was taking advantage of the need to get that respect that comes with age. Again, you have in the same midrash, the same parable or story, the sense that on the one hand, we respect age, and on the other hand, there are exceptions and there are people that might be 18 years old who can lead us. Again, it’s got both sides to it, which I just love.

25:50 – AM:

Yeah, well, 18 going on 70. That’s what’s so interesting, right? And they knew it.

25:57 – GS:

And they knew it. And they were not afraid of appointing an 18 year old to be the Nasi; to be the president.  I just love it. So, we talk about honoring the elderly, and you quoted this verse before in Leviticus 19: 32. It says, and show deference. And the fascinating thing about this Pesuk is that it comes on parashat Kedoshim, and I have copied in the source sheet a flyer from a synagogue in Israel, and I only learned about this when I did my research, that on Parshat Kiddushim, when they read in the third aliyah that a pasuk, a minister named Uri Orbach introduced a custom, a minhag, ten years ago, that you give it to the elderly, and that the parsha is called Shabbat V’hadarta, it’s the Shabbat that we honor the elderly. Again, it’s something that as a young society of immigrants, we didn’t have elderly when the State of Israel was formed, and it is a culture that we are trying to address and to address in terms of so many different things. There’s an amazing charity called Vihadarta ( Vehadarta, The National Council for Advancement of Elderly) that has done research that is so obvious when you think about it, that the worst thing for the health of elderly is to be inactive, is to not be engaged. And so, they have an (aptitude) app, they are able to get the potential for every elderly person. And of course, during the war, when we have people in Miluim (army reserves), that app is enabled to place elderly people in companies that have gaps. So it’s fascinating.

Rabbi… You have to leave. You can drop out when you want.

28:19 – AM:

I will see everybody in five minutes. On Torah in Motion. Shabbat shalom everybody.

28:22 – GS:

Shabbat shalom. So the way I want to end is I told the rabbi I was at a Chabad wedding this week from Yehuda Cantor and Dina Cantor from Westport, Connecticut. And we think of Chabad so much in terms of outreach and how they deal with Jews of every stroke and color, and we forget that they have their own customs for themselves, and I was reminded of that. There was a Hatan Tisch where, in the tradition that I grew up with in the yeshiva world, the way that you made sure that whether a chatan, a groom, is a scholar or not, doesn’t impact his ability to give a learned talk, a drashah, at the chatan table, is you let him get out about five words and you interrupt him and you start singing. So that whether he is a blooming scholar or has trouble studying the text, he’s the same. What I saw in Chabad is they read a prepared text, so they’re all on a similar level playing field. I thought that was fascinating. I discussed with the rabbi that under the chuppah, he went to a Chabad wedding this week as well, they read as if a telegram from the Rebbe. Wishing them a mazel tov. But the reason I bring that up is because in the source sheets you will find a link to an article but also to a video of the Rebbe, who when he turned 70 talked about retirement.

30:12 – GS:

And he was vehement in rejecting the concept of retirement. He says, every time I turn a milestone like 70 or 80, I get these letters saying, you’ve worked so hard, take it easy. He says, no, we do not take it easy till the very end. And what he did was, was he set up called Tiferet Zekeinim.

30:39 – GS:

We all hear about these Kollel students who are studying Torah and not going into the army and we all have differing opinions of that. Well, I’ll tell you what the Chabad Rebbe did for his elderly. He set up study groups for the elderly so that their minds could remain active after they “retired”. And you can do a Google search for Tiferet Zekeinim and you will find multiple communities that have what we call adult ed. Created this and he understood the power of keeping a mind agile and using our texts to stimulate that and to stimulate the vigor of old age. So, I want to close by just saying that we have in the verse that we started with that talks about a retirement age. I wouldn’t call it retirement. I would call it a verse in an ancient text that is fairly unique in the sense that it recognizes the milestones that we go through as we enter the third phase of our life, and triggers discussions that continue up until today, whether it’s in the political field, whether it’s in the aging field, in the health field, and we owe a great deal of credit to our texts that have started this discussion. It’s an amazing discussion, and some of us are getting on in age, this is something that we all think about. How do we keep active? How do we continue to contribute to society? And this is all a discussion that begins with that simple verse about what happens to a Levi when he turns 50.

32:33 – GS

So with that, I I wish you long life, an active life, a productive life, a life that keeps us involved, keeps us engaged at all ages, and I wish you all a Shabbat Shalom and we’ll see you next week. It’s so wonderful to see all of you out there: Marci, Lauren, Celeste, Abigail, Ruthie, Orna, Alana, and Sharon. Thanks for joining us as we study the Parsha every week. If you listen to Madlik as a podcast, make sure to give us a few stars and say something nice. And with that, I will conclude and say Shabbat Shalom. See you all next week.