Caring for Aging Parents with Honor and Reverence

By Shelley Weinreb
Marketing Coordinator
CHAI: Comprehensive Housing Assistance, Inc.

From baby carriage to wheelchair, life has a way of coming full circle. We start out being totally dependent on our parents and often end up being totally dependent on our children. Many ‘baby boomers’ dealing with aging parents must balance functioning as their parents’ decision maker with according their parents the honor and respect they deserve.

Judaism places a high priority on honoring parents. “Honor thy father and mother” is one of the most well known of the Ten Commandments. The Jewish tradition teaches that the mitzvah includes both honoring and revering.

To honor our parents means to care for their needs, such as:

• bring them food
• prepare meals
• do grocery shopping
• manage the payment of bills
• handle banking
• take them to the doctor

To revere our parents means to distinguish clearly between who is the parent and who is the child, knowing that the two are not equal. Examples include:

• not raising your voice or speaking disrespectfully
• not contradicting a parent (even if they’re obviously wrong)
• not sitting in their designated place unless first getting permission
• not waking a resting parent

A story is told in the Talmud of the son of a jeweler who refused to disturb his sleeping father when representatives from the Temple in Jerusalem came to his door, wishing to buy precious gems for the High Priest’s breastplate. The key to the family’s diamond vault was under the father’s pillow and the son would not wake his father, even at the cost of losing a fortune in diamond sales. The next year, a rare and valuable red heifer was born to a cow in the jeweler’s herd, and representatives once again came from the Temple to pay a large sum for its purchase. This time, the father was not sleeping, and the previous year’s loss was more than fully recouped. The Talmud praises the son’s selfless act as a laudable example of honoring one’s father and mother.

The Torah promises long life as a reward to those who honor their parents. Perhaps one reason is that caring for parents — especially when they are elderly – can take up a lot of time. By adding extra years to a person’s life, G-d “compensates,” so to speak for the time spent.

Of course, just doing the mitzvah is its own reward. After a lifetime of our parents giving to us, it feels good to give back to them.

For more information on CHAI’s many services available for seniors, call 410-500-5315.

If you’d like to volunteer for CHAI’s Northwest Neighbors Connecting volunteer support network for seniors, call 410-500-5307.

Twenty Successful Years for Maryland/Israeli Business

 

 

By Barry Bogage
Executive Director
Maryland/Israel Development Center

The July 18 New York Times article, “Israeli Diplomat Is Man in Middle,” recounts the busy life of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and notes his role in the “ribbon-cutting ceremony in Maryland to open the North American headquarters of an Israeli military contractor.” This is the headquarters of Elta North America, the American branch of Elta Systems Ltd., the fourth largest radar manufacturer in the world.

Attracting Elta to Maryland was one of the biggest successes of the Maryland/Israel Development Center (MIDC). It will create 100 new jobs in the state, and as the company’s U.S. market share increases, it will help expand Elta’s R&D and manufacturing operations in Israel thus creating jobs in that country as well. In these times of high unemployment, there is no greater mitzvah.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the MIDC is a nonprofit “public private partnership” between The ASSOCIATED: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development and Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor. Its mission is to help create jobs in both communities by promoting bi-lateral trade and investment. Essentially the MIDC is a shadchan, a matchmaker, between Maryland and Israeli companies, helping them find new business opportunities so they can grow and prosper. As MIDC Chairman Abba Poliakoff likes to say, “We facilitate the soft landing of Israeli companies in the U.S. market.”

Known as “The StartUp Nation,” Israel’s high tech entrepreneurs develop some of the world’s leading technologies including much of the inner workings of cell phones and computer chips. They also develop many of the products found in your medicine cabinet and local hospital such as generic drugs, heart stents and the “PillCam,” a miniature camera stuffed inside a capsule. A patient swallows the camera and it then beams out images of their insides for the doctor to diagnose. Amazing!

To help Israeli startups take root and grow, the MIDC also created a venture capital fund to invest in Israel’s exciting entrepreneurs. We spun off a for-profit subsidiary that partnered with Israel’s leading investor in startup companies, The Trendlines Group, to invest in biomedical, agri-tech, and clean-tech companies, all areas in which Israel excels. To date, the fund has raised over $4 million from 42 individuals throughout the state and has invested in 11 exciting Israeli companies. Three quick examples.

GreenSpense has developed an environmentally friendly alternative to aerosol spray cans. Currently, over 12 billion aerosol units are manufactured each year presenting extensive safety and environmental hazards. The market is crying for a new approach.

LapSpace Medical, is a true Maryland/Israel joint venture. While the technology was developed by a Johns Hopkins University scientist in Baltimore, the company is being set up in Trendlines’ Misgav Venture Accelerator in northern Israel (which was named the “best incubator in Israel” in 2010). The technology was developed to address a critical problem during laparoscopic surgery. Often organs block a surgeon’s view of the area to be operated on. The device creates a soft, umbrella-shaped basket to retract organs out of the way.

The company farthest along the development path is Stimatix which has developed an alternative technology for colostomy bags. There has been no major breakthrough in stoma care for ostomy patients in 50 years. Developed by two Israeli surgeons, this invention heralds great relief and comfort for the 1.3 million people who must use these devices daily. The company recently received FDA approval; it was also named “Israel’s outstanding startup company” by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor.

Learn more>>

Camp Tzedek: Little Hands Doing Big Things

By Stacey Getz
Camp Tzedek committee

Every year my college friends and I get together for a “girl’s retreat” to catch-up on life and enjoy our long-lasting relationships. Topics of conversation have varied greatly over the years, but at this point they naturally gravitate toward our children.

Last year as we sat around thinking about summer plans, someone in our group expressed interest in teaching our young children about giving back to the community. It turned out that one of my friends had started a program in her home town with other families – a one-week community service camp for elementary-age children.

Of course! In thinking about my own children, who attend one of Baltimore’s Jewish day schools, I’m happy to say that they know something about community service and performing mitzvahs. But the idea of a one-week summer experience with multiple mitzvah projects really made sense to take it to the next level.

After receiving enthusiastic responses from other families in my area, I contacted Jewish Volunteer Connection and made the suggestion. Before we knew it, “Camp Tzedek: Little Hands Doing Big Things” was the newest pilot program for the summer of 2012.

We then asked ourselves what should these youngsters do for their mitzvah projects during the one-week camp period? Spend a morning at Kayam Farm learning about the environment? Yes. Visit Weinberg Village and get to know some of the senior residents? Great. Listen to a speaker from Healthcare for the Homeless and create care packages? Absolutely. As long as this experience stuck to the goal of exploring the Jewish people’s role in Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) through interactive and fun activities, the possibilities were (and are) endless.

And, naturally, knowing that it is still camp, we plan to offer traditional camp activities, including swimming and games every day.

Thanks to a conversation started by moms and the hard work of Jewish Volunteer Connection, Jewish Baltimore has a new way to engage our children.

Register for Camp Tzedek now>>

For more information, contact Dayna Leder at dleder@associated.org or 410-843-7491.

Taking Volunteering ‘On the Move’

By Dayna Leder
Program Associate
Jewish Volunteer Connection

With busy school and work schedules, sports schedules and social lives it is harder and harder for families to spend quality time together.  Parents are rushing from meeting to meeting while children are juggling homework, sports activities and birthday parties.  Volunteering as a family is a great way to take a break from your busy lifestyle and spend time together while doing something meaningful for the community.  Jewish Volunteer Connection (JVC) offers two amazing programs in which families can accomplish this goal.

“Mitzvah Makers” programs are schedule four to six times throughout the year and offer families the opportunity to come together with other families to do a variety of different volunteering activities.  These programs include sukkah decorating at a senior facility and making casseroles for the homeless.

“Mitzvah Makers on the Move” is an on-line resource of volunteer opportunities that families can do together when time permits.  This resource offers instructions for different volunteer projects as well as Jewish learning information so parents can help their children understand why they are volunteering.  Because I staff all of the Mitzvah Makers projects, my young children ages four and seven always accompany me to these events.  At random times, my children will talk about their experience at the senior facility or ask when they are going back to do another “mitzvah project,” it always takes me by surprise.  I think as parents, we want to make sure that what little time we have to spend with our children is spent in a meaningful way and sometimes we think that our children don’t “get it” when really they do.  JVC offers a way to bring families together to do something good for the community and to learn something at the same time.

Please join us for our next Mitzvah Makers program on Sunday, April 29, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. at Weinberg Park Assisted Living for a spring planting day.  We’ll be helping the facility to clean up their outdoor space to get it ready for the warmer weather.

For more information about volunteering together as a family, please contact me at dleder@associated.org or 410-843-7491.

For more information about Mitzvah Makers on the Move, log on to our website at www.jvcbaltimore.org/onthemove.