Letters

LETTERS Growing old To the Editor: The story by Annette Henkin Landau (December 1978) reminds professional geriatric workers of many similar situations in the institutions which we manage for the...

...We get more visitors around Rosh Hashanah...
...I prefer to see thoughtful, sensitive adolescents rather than wild hippies...
...At least she had the decency to admit in the beginning of the article that she wasn't close to her mother...
...Tense with anticipation, we opened the envelope...
...I'm the only Jewish nurse in a 529 bed Jewish nursing home...
...Still this past December I was singing Christmas carols while I made latkes...
...But I always feel a bit inauthentic, a step removed from my real self...
...We love it...
...In almost all cases, the teachers have degrees in special education or learning disabilities education in addition to Hebrew teacher certification...
...Maurice B. Greenbaum Cherry Hill, New Jersey To the Editor: Never in my twenty-six years has an article angered and upset me as the article by A. H. Landau...
...It was called Moment, the new magazine for America's Jews...
...Robert Tishman Chicago, Illinois To the Editor: How very sad I am for Anne Roiphe...
...Sylvia Cohen Ft...
...The author sounds like the daughter that sits in the parent's room as supper is served and won't even pour the sugar into the coffee for her own mother, rather waiting for the aide to do it...
...I notice a special trend...
...Today, for example, women's magazines are in vogue...
...I am their family...
...After all, what harm can there be in "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and eggnog or red and green...
...Transcendental Meditation is a harmless hobby—particularly in comparison to punk rock and mescaline...
...Well, I'm one of the few...
...Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Center Brooklyn, New York Learning Disabilities To the Editor: While Harris Faigel's article "Jewish Education for the Learning Disabled" in the December 1978 issue offers an excellent overview, it could and should have been more optimistic in describing programs that are available in Jewish education for learning disabled children...
...Jack wanted us to order a paper from Jerusalem, post haste...
...Bizarre—all of these magazines in our lives—and more all the time...
...On a less comprehensive basis approximately ten Talmud Torahs have their own afterschool classes for learning disabled children and some have been functioning for more than five years...
...Elissa Sommer, R.N...
...Housekeeping is now a cinch...
...gel's conclusion that "learning disabled children need not be lost to us," however much depends on a positive attitude by the parents...
...Yes, a commitment to ideology may be desirable but, in reality, it is hardly necessary to function satisfactorily on kibbutz...
...FaiOur family loves to read...
...And my staff usually doesn't have time to watch television in the dining room...
...But I am also angry with her, because she is wrong...
...It's so good...
...And that's to say nothing of our Jewish lives...
...We're too busy caring for the forgotten ones...
...Most of the staff like their jobs and care about our residents...
...To suppose there has been no inhumanity in other traditions, to suppose there are no divisions and no wars, to suppose, at her most anti-Semitic, that Jews play canasta and non-Jews discuss Michelangelo, reveals the author to be at once naive and haughty...
...misinformed at best and at the worst, self-hating and deluded...
...Why should all Jews be shamed because some people find their own parents an embarrassment...
...I have trouble convincing the aides (mostly blacks) that all Jewish children don't abandon their aged parents to the care of strangers...
...And somehow my identity is intact...
...Very few Jewish girls enter nursing, and even fewer become geriatric nurses...
...LETTERS Growing old To the Editor: The story by Annette Henkin Landau (December 1978) reminds professional geriatric workers of many similar situations in the institutions which we manage for the Jewish community...
...And he is furious when his mother doesn't recognize him, but knows the schvartze he ignores as worthless, because she tends to the mother every day...
...If one out of every ten children is learning disabled, then approximately one out of every ten parents of school aged children face the situation of dealing with a learning disabled child...
...And because of visitors like this daughter I am fighting a losing battle...
...God forbid she might touch her own mother...
...We who work in the institution well know its shortcomings, but we submit to Mrs...
...So she turns her guilt feelings against the staff at the home...
...In fact, we have thrown out everything else...
...Somewhere her mind is in a muddle...
...I serve as more than just a nurse...
...People like us spend a fortune on subscriptions, receiving as many as seventeen magazines in a single day's mail...
...so I can like red and green without absorbing it into my soul...
...beautiful furnishings, sure, but also magazines wherever you look.' / tell her not to repeat my had habits in her life, but she says these are new times, and that she must expand her own horizons, now that she's no longer a New Yorker...
...It's not pleasant cleaning up an adult covered with feces, or spooning baby food into adult mouths...
...An organization like Parents for 7brah for /111 CT/ildren (National Director, Yosef Cohen, 229 Park Avenue S., New York), composed largely of parents who have been through similar situations can be of great value in fostering the positive attitude in other parents, as well as in helping establish new programs...
...It drives me mad, and it must have something to do with mass psychology...
...Stephen Gross Worcester, Massachusetts MIU To the Editor: How can Lawrence Tabak be so judgmental in his article on MIU (January/February 1979...
...illustrated reports of big games would find their way to our place every Saturday...
...In the Chicago area, we are in the first year of an all day school class (twelve 7-9 year old), run by the P'TACH chapter in conjunction with the Associated Talmud Torahs...
...We in P'TACH maintain liaison with the local chapter of the ACLD (Association for Children with Learning Disabilities) for general information on learning disabilities through such services as national and local newsletters, speakers and film rental...
...Review copies of new magazines are all over my house and garden, and I have had to give some to my son Jack...
...Others live here in Brooklyn and never come...
...They certainly seem to care more than most of the children...
...Lauderdale, Florida...
...And Jill, my daughter, has moved into her own house...
...Some families are devoted and come often, even if they live far away...
...Our family cares about Judaism, so we tried to select a national Jewish monthly that would satisfy us all...
...January/ February 1979) That sounds still informed by naive romanticism because, clearly, the kibbutz can provide an irresistible incentive— guaranteed food, shelter, medical care, education, etc., for a responsible worker...
...Her tale of woe of a once vibrant mother, her report of the unfeeling and too-busy brother in Chicago, her own struggle with guilt at having to make an unhappy choice of institutional care from too few alternatives^—all of these have a familiar ring to people in the field...
...My home and my heart are Jewish...
...In the residents' lucid moments, I have the pleasure of hearing firsthand stories about cheder in Kiev, or the feeling of fear of the pogroms—these are my roots too and I love to hear these stories...
...Eugene Normand PTACH, Chicago Chapter Chicago, Illinois Alienation To the Editor: As a Jew who loves Christmastime but not Jesus I find myself torn by Anne Roiphe's piece...
...I certainly agree with Dr...
...And the protected grandchildren, who can't take the sounds and sights of senility, wait in the lobby, denying their grandmother the joy of their company...
...I don't really care if Roiphe celebrates Jew-ishness or not—I would certainly not be comfortable with her at my table—which welcomes Jew and non-Jew—but I do care that she self-righteously poisons my writing space, my air space, and the space I reserve for thoughtful, emotionally honest discussion...
...Last year, it was sports...
...How in touch with themselves were the SDS'ers and Weathermen...
...Charge Nurse...
...In these days of the nuclear family with its suburban residence or one-bedroom "empty nester" city apartment, there is no room for Mother or Father nor is there the expertise, the physical strength and the professional concern that is available in a quality institution...
...Joann Fischer New York, New York Yigal Allon To the Editor: Does Yigal Allon really believe that there is no personal economic incentive on kibbutz...
...Children are enrolled in these programs only after being diagnosed, on the basis of psychological testing and other evidence, as having a learning disability...
...Our problem is that there are too many magazines, and not enough time to read them all...
...We tried Hadassah, but got no response...
...Landau, and many like her, that this is the facility of choice until a better model can be developed...
...Granted the community may ultimately decide whether an individual gets a television or a trip to Europe but the real incentives, beyond making a good life for oneself, are the security and stability that such a system provides...
...Maybe that's what Samuel Hux is talking about...
...But let us recall that homes for the aged (and they are of many types and degrees of quality) represent for many people the only real choice for longterm care of a sick, often mentally impaired older person...
...Week after week, she ploughs through her own magazines, and guess what she wanted for her birthday...
...We can all recount very similar stories from our own experience...
...Two more years of Harper's...
...In the context of a full day school setting, the parents' organization P'TACH has been instrumental in establishing many such programs, more than a dozen in the New York City area and others in such cities as Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia...
...But the one we knew about didn't offer enough to a serious American Zionist...
...We were about to give up when Jill announced that she had solved our problem by buying us a present...
...She doesn't want to depend on me for news...
...She wrote about the horror of placing her mother in a home...
...and that includes economic considerations...
...The child following the tradition goes to his father's grave and remembers that somewhere he has one parent still alive and comes to the home for twenty minutes once a year...

Vol. 4 • March 1979 • No. 4


 
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