Wisdom Area: Mission and Fulfillment s1

LEGACY OF WISDOM www.legacyofwisdom.org [email protected]

Project Director: Jay Goldfarb

Team & Sponsors: Ram Dass, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Roshi Joan Halifax, Harry Moody, Dr. Sarita Bhalotra, Dr. Rodolfo Musco, Mickey Lemle, Deborah Wolf Wisdom Area: End of Life Preparations The current generation has been quite pro-active in facing what is often seen as a taboo subject. Death has been challenged to be recognized as a more normal process of life. Nevertheless, it remains a topic fraught with anxiety, denial and drama.

Question: How can I work with the effects of aging and dying in those nearest to me like family and close friends?

YouTube Video Title: Legacy of Wisdom –Rabbi Arthur Green –Dealing with those around me. YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNd-ATK3VNE Length: 2:54

Interviewee: Rabbi Arthur Green Arthur (Art) Green grew up in Newark, New Jersey in a nonobservant Conservative movement Jewish home and attended Camp Ramah. He describes his father as a "militant atheist," but his mother, from a traditional family, felt obligated to give her son a Jewish education.

In 1959, he studied at Brandeis University, where he went through a crisis of faith and sought new approaches to Judaism. Green's professors at Brandeis included Nahum Glatzer and Alexander Altmann. After earning his Ph.D., Green became Philip W. Lown professor (now emeritus) of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. In 1967, he was ordained as a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In 1968, Green was one of the founders of Havurat Shalom.

Green has published many works on Jewish mysticism and hasidism. Invited to deliver a series of lectures at Yale University, Green was described as "one of the preeminent authorities on Jewish spirituality, mysticism and Hasidism."

1 LEGACY OF WISDOM www.legacyofwisdom.org [email protected]

Project Director: Jay Goldfarb

Team & Sponsors: Ram Dass, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Roshi Joan Halifax, Harry Moody, Dr. Sarita Bhalotra, Dr. Rodolfo Musco, Mickey Lemle, Deborah Wolf

Question: How can I work with the effects of aging and dying in those nearest to me like family and close friends?

Transcript: Interviewer: I have a question about dealing with the family particularly when somebody is sick about dealing with the family structure and the habits of the family structure. What advice have you learned that you can give to us?

Rabbi Green: I think every person should have a right to stay at home and be cared for by people they love rather than just by professionals. Loving means caring and you can't pass it off to professionals, because it's inconvenient for you. I realize sometimes that inconvenience is so severe you have no choice. I understand there are situations like that. As I said I am not an autocratic or a monolithic about one-size- fits-all, of course it doesn't. In my situation that is the decision that we've made and I think it's the right decision for us. For many others I certainly encourage home care and home living and we are able to have somebody (we live in a big house) who can live in the house and help out. I couldn't do it without a professional person in the house. And we have adjusted to that and it has been a very good thing, we’re very grateful to be able to do it.

I would say that participation by the family, keeping your kids involved in that conversation, don’t freeze them out, is very important. The various generations we are part of it, children and grown grand-children should be made part of that conversation so that it is a family project and not something that the elderly spouse deals with alone or that the one child who is best at it deals with it alone. I would say that the creation of a support network and a support network that's regularly in touch and gets regular reports about how things are going. That's an important part of this.