GIVE ELDERS A CHANCE TO SHARE THEIR STORIES AND WISDOM
Max Karelitz just celebrated his 101st birthday. He is quite a character, still extremely sharp, glib, and articulate. Until a couple of years ago he lived on his own and now resides in an assisted-living facility, requiring amazingly little assistance. He is beyond computer literate, and his emails are always masterpieces.
He is a wellspring of memories, growing up as part of the only Jewish family in Fountain Inn. He regales you with stories of the end of WWI, when the teacher sent all the kids home to get spoons and pans to bang as they marched down Main Street in a triumphal procession.
Then he tells you of his years as the only Jewish student at Clemson, when it was a bona fide military academy, drilling with rifles six days a week in the blazing sun. He recounts with relish the details of his army career as a colonel in WWII, the highlight of which was presiding over the surrender of a Japanese battalion at the War’s end.
He boasts about his children, all of whom are older than I, and talks about the good years in the little town of Fountain Inn, where the Karelitz’s were respected merchants and civic leaders, and where they experienced no anti-Semitism whatsoever. The Jewish life of his childhood was pretty much confined to the tutelage of his mother and attending synagogue in Greenville on holy days and other special occasions.
That’s just the slightest nibble at the rich century that Max has spent brightening the world. I know so many of the stories by dint of conversations that we’ve had over the last 13 years. Then it dawned on me that the children of the community knew little of Max and his fabulous stories. What to do?
I ventured to ask Max if he’d be receptive to being interviewed by my Sunday school teenagers. He was delighted. The kids and I outlined the questions and arranged for a volunteer videographer to film and edit the interview. Need I tell you that the experience was outstanding? The kids soaked up the information and stories, and asked more impromptu questions than were outlined on the script. They were at first astonished, then absorbed, by Max’s elaborate answers. Max, for his part, laughed with them and couldn’t wait for more.
I asked the class what changed and what stayed the same over a century’s time. They agreed that things on the surface had changed, but human nature and values pretty much remained constant. Interesting. They now await the opportunity to screen the interview for the adults and other kids in the congregation. Perhaps others outside Beth Israel would like to view it. Perhaps it can be archived in the History Museum or one of the universities. Clemson? (By the way, Max is on his third Clemson class ring!)
How much more could they and we learn from our elders? How much, indeed?
There are a number of oral-history projects with community seniors in process in the Upstate. I don’t know how many are conducted by young people in their formative years. My guess is that there are relatively few. I’m no curriculum “maven,” but let me recommend that faith communities, regardless of denomination or size, put their kids to the delightful, rewarding task of interviewing their elders. Then let them show the interviews to their congregations and beyond.
The symbiosis, you’ll excuse the cliché, is win-win: Elders being dignified by contributing their insights and wisdom, which we too often deem irrelevant, if only by omission. Kids being enriched and prodded to maturity by the sharing of ideals and values. Adults being engaged in affirming that generations either side of their own have their irreplaceable worth. Generations of a community being united by visions of tomorrow built on the enlightenment of yesterday.
Then, if it isn’t too optimistic, let’s share those interviews with each other, as integral to building what Dr. King referred to as the “Beloved Community.” I want to know the reality of what it was like growing up African American in the Upstate, or for that matter Indian, Catholic, Baptist, or Baha’i. I don’t need to hear only the stories of “great” people, but people who are made great by our simply paying attention to their unique histories and visions.
If there are similar projects going on out there, please let me know about them. If you aren’t making a record of your elders, what are you waiting for? Literally, what are you waiting for? Too much to lose, so much to gain.