“Al tashlicheinu l’ais ziknah – Do not cast us aside in our old age” (Selichos). Our Baltimore community is blessed with a number of assisted living as well as nursing home facilities to service the needs of our local elderly and infirm. In addition to attending to their medical requisites, these facilities also engage their residents in a myriad of activities to address spiritual and creative needs. Among these pursuits are the weekend recitations of Kiddush and Havdalah. Since 2007, a group of volunteers have, on a rotational basis, fulfilled these sacred functions at Aventura at the Park (formerly Weinberg Park).  Founded by Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld of Jewish Spiritual Literacy, the program is formally called Love Your Neighbor and boasts a volunteer staff of 9 participants, including yours truly.

“Do not scorn any person….for you have no person without his hour.” (Avos 4:3) The Rambam interprets Ben Azzai’s dictum as follows: It is wrong to mistreat anyone who may be of lowly status because the time will certainly come when such person will rise to a position enabling him to seek revenge. This mishna does not imply that it would ever be otherwise acceptable to malign or mistreat another. It simply provides an additional reason to avoid such behavior, namely, that the perpetrator may well find himself one day at the mercy of his victim.

In today’s Covid environment, those of our loved ones living in a nursing home or hospitalized are bereft of visits from family and friends. Did you ever wonder how someone in such circumstances interacts with nurses, therapists, and staff when we’re not around? My wife, Rivka Elling, a”h, was resident in King David Nursing and Rehabilitation Center this year, from March 11 until her passing, on September 29. Most of the conversations we had with her centered on matters mundane and routine, with one notable exception: she was very scrupulous in ensuring that the electric Shabbos lights were functional each erev Shabbos.

During shiva, three staff members of King David came to our home to be menachem avel. During this visit, they opened a window on Rivka’s interactions with the staff. For instance, after recovering from a Corona infection sometime in June, she remarked: “G-d loves me. He protected me from the Coronavirus.” I was on the edge of my seat as they went on. It quickly became obvious that she lived on a higher spiritual plane than most. But rather than hearing further from me, read from the pen of Yaffa Citer, below, who works at King David as an occupational therapist:

August, 1960. My family moved from the Jewish enclave in the Riggs Park section of Washington D.C., NE, to the Maryland suburb of Silver Spring. Our new home was located on Malibu Drive, in a neighborhood roughly equidistant from Langley Park and a new development named Kemp Mill. I was soon to enter the Hebrew Academy of Washington, Yeshivas Bais Yehuda, as a first grader, so my father took me to the school one day for the required interview. In those days, the Academy was located on 16th Street NW, adjacent to the Shepherd Park section of Washington. But enough geography.