Ageism, the Election and Underestimating the Wisdom of the Elders

“Those old Jews won’t be able to bring themselves to pull the lever for a Black man. They will be scared into believing he is a Muslim. Or a terrorist. Or an anti-Semite.”

            Perceptions such as these gave birth to The Great Schlep, the effort popularized by comic Sarah Silverman. The Great Schlep has reached out to convince Jewish young adults to travel to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama.The enthusiasm of the young people mobilized to become politically active is inspiring, but I am offended by the notion that large numbers of Jewish elders will allow race to color their choice in the presidential election. While there may be some older Jews who are hamstrung by racial bias, I am betting that the overwhelming majority will be voting based on their perception of the issues.

            I know something about older people’s open minds. My first pulpit was in a long-term care community of 1100 Jews in their 80’s and 90’s. The committee that hired me had set out to find a male rabbi, as they believed that the “old people” would not be able to accept a woman. Somehow, they decided to give me a chance. On my first day on the job, I was introduced to Sadie, then 97 years old. “You’re going to be the rabbi here?”she asked. “Uh, yes,” I shyly answered. “You just make sure they pay you as much as they’d pay a man!”

            Over the course of 12 years, I had the privilege of accompanying my congregants through the joy of Shabbat and holidays, the agony of painful chronic illness, the sadness of cascading losses, and the awesome challenge of facing the end of life. Many of my congregants had immigrated from Europe, almost all of them had grown up in traditional Jewish homes. Had you asked them, “What does a rabbi look like?” they would have said, “He’s a man with a beard.” But if you askedthem, “What does your rabbi look like,”they would have described me, down to my dresses and color-coordinated kippot.

            I learned from my congregants that when you have seen the world change over 7 or 8 or 9 decades, you learn that what you had assumed about the world wasn’t necessarily so, and you decide that maybe you were wrong. My experience is that elders are often more open-minded than younger people. This perception has been born out by a recent Gallup poll,which found that older Jews support Obama at higher rates than younger ones. It has also been bolstered by my conversations with older Jews around the Philadelphia community, many of whom are not only passionately supporting, but organizing on behalf of Senator Obama’s vision for our future.

            This election will be remembered for so many remarkable departures from convention:the first African American presidential nominee, the first female Republicanvice presidential nominee, the first endorsement of a presidential candidate bya rabbinic body. I believe 2008 also be remembered as the year of the elder. We will look back on this election as the time when older voters not only kept tradition by voting in the largest proportions of any constituency, but also voted based on their values, not their biases.

            Elias Cohen, former Pennsylvania commissioner of aging, in describing his feelings about this election, wrote:

Voting in what I think may well be my last election…feels like making out a will–what is the bounty I leave to my grandchildren?  For me, my vote will shape my legacy, the kind of country I want to leave to my grandchildren.

If I am correct, we will remember 2008 as the election in which large numbers of elders voted for “a Black man,” based on their belief that this candidate would ensure a better world for their children and grandchildren.