Books like Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older — picked by fans

Among my prescriptions to caregivers – especially those who struggle to find meaning and in creating a typical day that is safe, social, and engaged – is Anne Basting’s book. Basting, a theater arts professor, makes a persuasive case that upends the usual and customary approaches to caring for persons living with dementia. Her central premise is this: Together, caregivers and patients can create. She offers concrete ideas and steps to address some of the most vexing challenges such as when a patient asks the whereabouts of a long-ago deceased relative.

First, this book provides a wonderful history of the important discoveries of the different aspects of the disease. You also learn the stories behind many aspects of the disease that are now taken for granted—even with our 25+ years of treating people with this disease and conducting research to understand it better, we learned a lot. Dr. Karlawish also explains why research into dementia languished for more than 50 years. Finally, he raises many thought-provoking ethical issues that people with dementia, doctors, and society will need to wrestle with if we are going to solve “The Problem of Alzheimer’s.” 

Lynn Casteel Harper, currently minister for older adults at The Riverside Church in New York City, has written a compassionate book about contemporary fears of aging, dementia, and death. She shows how these fears produce greater social isolation and suffering for people living with dementia and caring for loved ones, whether in private homes or in care communities. She uses personal experiences to illustrate the way our fears of “vanishing” can be overcome when we learn to connect meaningfully with people with dementia.

Janet Ramsey’s experiences as a chaplain, therapist, and family caregiver have taught her that people living with dementia deeply desire interactions with others that uphold their dignity and offer them love and forgiveness. She interviewed many dementia caregivers and throughout the book, she lets them express what dignity and grace mean in their everyday interactions with loved ones. Each chapter concludes with a reflection on a different Psalm, reflections that speak directly to the challenges and opportunities for growth that come with caregiving. Readers need not be Christian or in any way religious to appreciate the warmth and humanity conveyed throughout this book.

Although this book may not seem to fit the list, it’s one of the best books on loss I have ever read, and I’ve read quite a few. Dementia is about loss, after loss, after loss. Yes, there are moments and times of joy. And yes, it challenges and expands our love, faith, compassion, and sense of self. But dementia is, indisputably, about loss.

I read this book shortly after my husband’s suicide, and it comforted me at a time when comfort was hard to come by. My Southern Baptist mother also read it and, when she finished, held it up and said in her practical, down-to-earth way, “This is a book I will read over and over again like I read the Bible.”

Rabbi Wolpe’s book is beautifully written and wonderfully wise, and I recommend it to everyone. 

The golden age of Jewish-American literature began in the early 1950s and lasted until the early 1980s.

Pulitzers abounded: Saul Bellow won Humboldt’s Gift, and Bernard Malamud won for The Fixer. Norman Mailer won twice, in nonfiction and in fiction, for The Armies of the Night and The Executioner’s Song. (Grace Paley would win one in 1994 for stories originally published in this period.)

Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, a novel about jerking off, sold more than 400,000 copies in hardcover in its first year. But you can’t talk about the golden age without mentioning Cynthia Ozick. The Pagan Rabbi, published in 1971, contains such essential stories as “Envy; or, Yiddish in America,” one of the most searing (and hilarious) indictments of assimilation—and writerly envy—ever printed.

Ice Cream with Grandpa is about the love between a child and his Grandpa.

The child tells the story beginning with the first time his Grandpa gave him ice cream. Their love of ice cream bonds them, but they also enjoy gardening, and walks in the park. When Grandpa moves to an apartment, it took some adjustment. What helped was the ice cream parlor nearby. Grandpa eventually goes into a memory care home.

The child fears Grandpa won’t remember him. His mom explains that Grandpa is still Grandpa. They can still enjoy spending time together. On Grandpa’s last day in hospice, they eat ice cream. Grandpa passes, but the child continues to remember their love each time he eats ice cream.

This story moved me so much that I cried. I love that this book includes a Guide for Parents and Caregivers: Tips for Talking with Children about Dementia, Hospice,… show more.

Susan Landeis dealt with rejection and jealousy from her own mom as she was a little girl and through her teenage years. What does one do when an estranged parent is diagnosed with dementia and needs care? It is a rare individual who reacts with the kindness and forgiveness of Landeis. Because of that generosity and love, or perhaps because her mother forgot the meanness and rejection she inflicted on her daughter in years past, Susan and her mom grew a beautiful relationship during those caregiving years, giving them both comfort in the end.

When Stephen announces he’s getting remarried, his adult daughters aren’t happy with the news. His fiancé is too young, she’s a gold digger, and let’s not forget the fact he's still legally married to their mother, his first wife, now in a care facility for dementia. But Stephen doesn’t see it as a problem; he’s already initiated the divorce. Sally Hepworth is a genius at developing compelling, well-rounded characters, ones with real secrets and problems you root for them to solve. And marriages don’t get much more messed up than this one.

There cannot be a more brilliant or more shattering evocation of what it feels like to gradually realise you are forgetting yourself and vanishing from your own life: the mind observes the mind’s deterioration. Bernleff’s pioneering novel, published in 1984, follows the journey of its narrator Maarten from the first days of confusion into a darkness of self-loss. A beautiful, poignant masterpiece about memory and forgetting.