Delivering a sweet year to Jewish seniors

The JERI team includes, left to right, Rabbi Natan Schafer, Rabbi Ethan Adler and Susie Adler. /JERI

Rosh Hashanah is unique because it is both serious and festive. It is a time of spiritual renewal through prayer and deep personal reflection. It is also a time for families and friends to get together, make amends, ask each other’s forgiveness and strive to make the next year better. Imagine the feeling of being secluded from your faith because you are in a nursing home. Imagine the feeling of helplessness because you are not able to attend a Rosh Hashanah service.

Jewish Eldercare of Rhode Island (JERI), a program of Jewish Seniors Agency is an outreach program that visits with Jewish seniors in nursing homes, hospitals and at home, and provides a multitude of programs, both secular and religious, in assisted living facilities and nursing homes. The mission of the JERI program is to bring the traditions of our faith to Jewish seniors so our loved ones know they are not forgotten or abandoned.

Each year we deliver honey cake and applesauce to people in nursing homes so they can taste the sweetness of the Jewish New Year. These gifts are generously donated by the Women’s Association of the Jewish Seniors Agency of Rhode Island.

The sweetness of the New Year and traditions are being shared in 48 facilitates across the state of Rhode Island. Services are conducted by the JERI team led by Rabbi Ethan Adler, Susie Adler and Rabbi Natan Schafer. It is our duty and obligation to give our Jewish seniors the opportunity to partake in a service so they too can help usher in the New Year and be inscribed in the book of life for the coming year.

The miracles we get to see and experience each year are something that we are grateful for. We observe not as bystanders but as participants as we pray together and wish each other shanah tovah. Witnessing the miracle of someone with dementia locking eyes with you as you are saying the Shema, with a glimpse of recognition; looking at someone with such emotion that they are weeping since they get to listen to the shofar being blown for one more year; this makes one realize the meaning of Rosh Hashanah. It is an honor to observe family members who attend our services look at their loved ones with such pride, admiration and reflection.

We are taught that one of the central themes for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is reflecting on the past year and moving forward to the next year.

It is our privilege at the JERI program that we get to say the following and the end of each service: “L’Shanah Tovah Tikatevu – May You Be Inscribed for a Good Year.”

For further information about Jewish Eldercare of Rhode Island please contact Susan Adler at 401-621-5374 or email at sadler-jeri@jsari.org.

If you have a loved one with whom you would like us to connect, please contact us. JERI is a partner agency of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island.

SUSAN ADLER is director of Jewish Eldercare of Rhode Island.