Even more than the yearning voice of the cantor during the High Holy Days, I remember the palpable weeping of the worshipers, especially that of my grandmother together with her contemporaries in the women's gallery of my childhood synagogue in Brooklyn (Congregation Etz Chaim Anshei Lubien, on Dekalb Avenue), reaching a crescendo when the congregants would cry out, "Do not cast us into old age." To this day, I cannot forget the haunting, heart-broken melody of that prayer.

Who doesn't want to live to a ripe old age?



But who doesn't want to live to a ripe old age? It is certainly better to die when one is old rather than when one is young. So why all the tears associated with this prayer?
My beloved maternal grandmother, z"l, would explain that the stress here is on the verb "cast us" or "throw us" into old age. A person could wish to be eased into old age, little by little, in control of all his faculties, particularly the mind, and if the body has to fail, let it fade ever so slowly. The tragedy is when a healthy, vital person, even if advanced in years, suffers a sudden stroke or a massive heart attack, and overnight the body is overwhelmed with the sudden fact of being imprisoned in a helpless body or bereft of the ability to remember even our loved ones.


A second way to take this prayer is to understand it to mean, "Do not cast us out in our old age." All too often, especially in modern Western society, the old are seen as superannuated, unnecessary adjuncts who have outlived their usefulness and lived a little too long. Alongside the excellent medical strides to prolong the average life-span must come societal and familial ways to make old age a useful and significant period in one's life, when healthy advantage can be taken of the elderly to make their years meaningful and beneficial for themselves and those around them.


But in order to truly understand the significance of this prayer, it is important to note that the Yom Kippur text slightly modified the original verse in Psalms 7 1:10. There, King David is speaking for himself: "Do not cast me into old age," while we turn the "me" into "we" - "do not cast us into old age."


It may seem minor, the last yud in the word tashlichaini changed to a vuv, but this change from the one to the many must be significant if the author of the Mahzor prayer book changed the text of a Biblical verse in order to express his point.


On the most obvious level, the use of "us" alerts us to the idea of a collective: that the Jewish people and its historical traditions shouldn't be cast off as outworn and outdated, thrown into the junk-heap of history. In effect, every person's ancestors in our historic grave-sites and all of those memorial plaques on the synagogue walls are saying: 'Don't cast us out, don't relegate us to a once a year sexton's click of the tiny lamp lighting up each name.' Our sacred books and our holy days are imploring us to study their texts and incorporate their dates into our contemporary calendar, to keep them relevant and meaningful for the younger generation.


In a similar vein, we, the Jewish leadership and the active Jewish laity, dare not become old in our thinking, out of touch with the times. At the same time as we must remain true to our tradition, we dare not be reluctant to address the generation's questions and dilemmas. The message of teshuvah (repentance) is that we have to listen every year to that year's unique message. We pray to G-d to be alive to change and not to become cast into a mold - old-thinking and too set in our ways. We pray that G-d not make us into an old nation, with all the frailties of the weak and infirm, too old to fight, too tired to develop creatively.
Of course, we must remain true to the halakhic structure; but within that structure we must find solutions for the agunah, and additional meanings for the Sabbatical year as

The prayer of "not being cast into old age" was being answered in Israel.

one of true dedication to study and spiritual refreshment (rather than merely debate what vegetables we can buy from whom, and in which homes we cannot eat). And these are only the first two examples which come to mind.


Some 60 years ago, it looked as if the Nazis had cast the Jewish people into "sudden old age," if not actual death throes for the millions. Yet, while the Jews were being slaughtered in Europe, the prayer of "not being cast into old age" was being answered in Israel, where one of the oldest peoples on earth was being transformed into one of the youngest among the family of nations. This experience, from the depths of exile to the crown of redemption, should make us value what it means to live in an age of miraculous beginnings, and help us in guiding other nations in their own quest for a world of peace.