SENIOR LINE | VOLUME 27(2)-2020 1 INFORMED ADVICE, TESTED BY TIME. WITH SPECIALISTS IN EACH FIELD OF SERVICE, ZLC HAS YOU AND YOUR BUSINESS COVERED. FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT GARRY ZLOTNIK, OR VISIT US ONLINE TO GET STARTED. GARRY ZLOTNIK FCPA FCA CFP CLU ChFC E: [email protected] T: 604.688.7208 www.zlc.net WHERE TO GO FOR HELP www.jsalliance.org/resources/where-to-go/ JSA is committed to providing resources for seniors seeking assistance or information. Visit our website www.jsalliance.org for a comprehensive list of services available to seniors: • Emergency Services • Counselling and Support Services • Medical Information and Referral Services • Transportation • Legal, Financial and Elder Abuse Services • Nutrition, Food and Meals • Housing, Rental and Mortgage Deferral • Information and Support Services 24 HOURS 7 DAYS A WEEK EMERGENCY PHONE NUMBERS: 911 Provides emergency dispatch services to Police, Ambulance and Fire 811 Health Link BC registered nurses can help you with non-emergency health topics and concerns 1-800-567-8911 Poison Control provides assistance if you suspect that someone has been poisoned 604-872-3311 The Crisis Centre and Suicide Prevention Centre can assist you if you are in emotional distress 1-800-273-8255 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides con dential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis For a more comprehensive listing of all services available for seniors in B.C, please inquire about the BC Seniors’ Guide, a booklet published by the Government of British Columbia. Telephone Government of BC: 1-800-663-7867 www.SeniorsBC.ca Table of Contents Volume 27(2) - July 2020 Jewish Seniors Alliance COVER ART: Beneath the Trees (detail) of Greater Vancouver by Marcie Levitt-Cooper (see page 10-11) 949 W. 49th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V5Z 2T1 | 604.732.1555 2, 7 COPRESIDENTS' MESSAGE o [email protected] | www.jsalliance.org 34 EDITOR'S MESSAGE CHARITABLE REGISTRATION 4 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR #88362 1401 RR0001 5 SERGE HABER'S MESSAGE COMMUNITY NEWS: THE TEAM 67 For Better and for Worse: e COVID-19 Pandemic at the Louis Brier Home and Hospital EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 89 Jewish Chaplaincy Society: Connecting with Judaism without Dolores Luber a Synagogue REVIEW: JSA Snider Foundation Empowerment Series EDITORIAL COMMITTEE 9 #2: Film: Music of the Heart Dolores Luber, Ken Levitt, Rita Roling, PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST Shanie Levin, Tamara Frankel, Bob Markin, 1011 Marcie Levitt-Cooper Tony DuMoulin, Binny Goldman, Serge Haber KNOW YOUR TECHNOLOGY 12 View from Over the Hill CONTRIBUTORS 13 CURL UP WITH A GOOD BOOK Gyda Chud, Larry Shapiro, Serge Haber, 1416 SENIORS IN THE MOVIES Dolores Luber, Dr. David Keselman, Rabbi PULLOUT Dina-Hasida Mercy, Tamara Frankel, Rita 17-20 In Case of Emergency Form Roling Muriel Kau mann, Hinda Avery, 21 CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST Charles Leibovitch, Grace Hann, Kenneth 2223 HUMOUR! Levitt, Lynn Ungar, Anthony DuMoulin, Shanie Levin, Michael Lee, Ilana Shapira 2425 BECOME A JSA SUPPORTER! JSA PEER SUPPORT SERVICES LAYOUT, DESIGN & PRODUCTION 26 Volunteer Pro le Jennifer Propp, Dolores Luber and Karon Shear 27 e New Normal at JSA's Peer Support Services anks to all contributors...and editorial team 2829 DURING AND AFTER THE COVID19 PANDEMIC anks to Copytek Printers, Sarj and Bal FEATURE 3031, 33 Do Your Loved Ones a Favour: Tell em How You Want to Die DISTRIBUTION HEALTH AND WELLNESS Serge Haber, Rita Roling, Rita Propp, Jackie 3233 inking of Aging as a Disease Weiler, Gyda Chud, Ken Levitt, Binny and 34 SUPPORTING SENIORS: South Vancouver Seniors Network Herb Goldman, Toby Rubin, Lyle Pullan, 35-36 HEBREW LANGUAGE: Israeli Response to COVID-19 Larry Shapiro 36 INSPIRATION ADVERTISERS With Grateful Thanks to Our Sponsors ZLC Financial – inside front cover e Weinberg Residence – inside back cover Joanne LaRocque Realtor – inside back cover Dan Waterman, Oakwest Insurance – inside back cover Many other Foundations, Private and Corporate Donations SENIOR LINE | VOLUME 2722020 1 FACING CHANGE: WHAT WE CAN DO TO HELP Written by Larry Shapiro and Gyda Chud readers, to help us at Jewish Seniors while waiting for further treatment. John Alliance to identify those invisible and was very appreciative and I was happy to COPRESIDENTS' MESSAGE forgotten (out of sight, out of mind) be able to boost his morale. members of our community. We ear Senior Line Reader; once again turn to you, the lucky and Radical changes needed fortunate ones to re-double your eorts in our long-term care How our world and our lives by taking that all-important step of facilities have changed since our last D picking up the phone and reconnecting edition was published in March. e Gyda and I, encouraged by our Advocacy with old acquaintances whose current impact of these changes in so many of Committee led by its determined and situation may have deteriorated. what were once, not so long ago, normal capable chairman, Tony DuMoulin, decided to begin a narrative with a view routine activities in our daily lives, from Here is a personal experience that clearly towards encouraging our political leaders shopping, socializing, exercising, going illustrates this point. I recently re- to make the radical changes needed in to doctors’ appointments, etc., have connected with a gentleman with whom our long-term care facilities. Our public aected every one of us. I had the pleasure of working on a major health-care system has been exposed construction project in Boundary Bay We have become painfully aware of by the COVID-19 Pandemic as having when I rst moved to Vancouver in 2013. the increase in stress and anxiety being been fractured by private-for-prot We became friends, and John shared expressed by those we serve, as they interests which are draining the public many stories about his life growing up share with us their fears—realistic fears system of health professionals. As private on the family farm in Holland with me. of contracting the dreaded COVID-19 businesses, they are not accountable to John described in detail how his father virus themselves and fears for their the public. e rst question we must ask hid a Jewish family in a huge haystack family and friends of becoming infected. ourselves is: Who should we seniors rely during the Nazi occupation of the eir apprehension and doubts about on to guarantee our rights when we need Netherlands. I have kept in touch with their ability to cope with the mounting them the most? We need to feel secure John sporadically but rarely saw him as anxiety over the long term are prevalent in the knowledge that we will receive the he lives with his wife in Mission. After and increasing at an alarming rate. e highest quality care in a safe and secure our appeal to you, dear readers, I scrolled reality is that there doesn’t appear to be an environment which is properly equipped through my contacts and started phoning end in sight to this dire situation. and appropriately staed. e answer is all of those with whom I haven’t spoken the Federal Government! e Federal Make an effort to in a long while. In my conversation Government should be there to see that reconnect with old with John, I discovered that he had just elder seniors live out their lives with the friends returned home from the hospital where dignity that they deserve in long-term he had undergone successful colon cancer care facilities! Gyda and I have appealed to you, our surgery. He was now recovering at home I don’t think anyone has any doubt that the present state of those facilities We charge the Federal Government to is in shambles and requires complete restore the dignity and proper health care restructuring. My thinking leads me to the conclusion that the task of totally to elder seniors in long-term care facilities. Continued on page 7... 2 SENIOR LINE | VOLUME 2722020 ” WILL THERE BE A SILVER LINING OF THIS PANDEMIC? ICH BIN AZOY OYSGESOOMT I’M SO DONE WITH ZOOM! Written by Dolores Luber he title of this essay “Ich bin azoy improved in the care received by seniors EDITOR'S MESSAGE oysgesoomt” uses a new Yiddish in long-term care facilities. You can read word Oysgesoomt which means in Hebrew, our new feature, how Israelis T‘Over-exposed to, fatigued by, exhausted cope with the trauma of COVID-19. All is not gloom and doom, we have a from, bored by, had it with…Zoom.’ new comic strip, Bayla’s Issues, for you. Special Feature: The In- Hopefully you will relate to Hinda e last four months have been an Case-Of-Emergency Form Avery’s (PhD ’93, feminist activist, emotional and spiritual challenge, a roller- e specter and tangibility of death educator, philosopher, ne artist) comic coaster, for me, my family, my friends has come a little closer, no one knows book character Bayla and her wrinkles. and my colleagues. I wavered between when the ambulance will come to your Are you feeling “technologically” denial, cynicism, fear, anger, anxiety, front door or you will be rushed to the challenged? Join the club with Muriel de ance, resignation, hope and acceptance Emergency Department of your local Kau mann’s humorous blog on the topic regarding the life and death battle with the hospital. We must ask ourselves the of computers. Coronavirus being waged around me and hard questions about what we wish for humanity. We have been communicating For the culture mavens, there is a book ourselves in terms of health care and our love, our compassion and our review of Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua’s surgical and mechanical interventions. yearning for connection with WhatsApp, book e T u n n e l and two other books We must have that conversation with the Facetime, Zoom and Skype.