 Chesed For the Elderly Printed with permission from "The Chesed Boomerang" by Jack Doueck www.judaicapress.com General George S. Patton once said: “A lot of people die at forty, but they aren’t buried until 30 years later”. In 1963, Myriam Mendilow was a highly respected teacher, in her early fifties, living in Jerusalem. Myriam was outraged when she would pass all the beggars, many of them elderly, on the streets of Jerusalem. Then, she would teach in school and hear her students ask her questions about the elderly such as: “Why does my grandmother just sit around?” Myriam understood that both the children and the adults had a warped perception of what it is to be old. This misconception was tragic. It not only created hostility between the young and the old, it also gave the old people a sense of worthlessness. It robbed them of their self-esteem. Instead of feeling like people who have lived many years, people who have accomplished, who are loved and respected and wise, old people in Jerusalem felt foolish and miserable, many turning to the streets to beg for their daily substance. Myriam was determined to change all this for both the young and the old. One day, she walked into the Ministry of Labor and demanded they give her a teacher to teach bookbinding to elderly people. She then set up a workshop in a small room, in a slum area called Musrara on the old border with Jordan. (This is where most of the old people lived, where rents were so low it was considered a slum). Then, she went to the streets and prodded the beggars and berated them. She convinced them, one at a time, to join her bookbinding workshop. She went to old age homes and took people out of single rooms. These were people who spent the whole day staring out the window waiting for death. And then she put these people to work. She then turned to the schools and convinced them to allow her Bookbinding Workshop to rebind all the books for the school children at a competitive price. She won the contract. At this point in her new career, she was called “Hameshuga-at”, the crazy woman. She didn’t stop moving. She called her workshop Lifeline. Myriam’s Lifeline Project became very successful. Schools from all over Jerusalem gave her their books to rebind, not out of compassion, but because Lifeline provided the best quality service at the lowest price. The elders were paid a fair salary, and they were given back their lives. She then took her students on tours of the workshop and showed them that old people can be very productive. She taught kids that they must treat the elderly with respect. She taught the elderly that they can feel a sense of self-respect, of self-esteem and self-worth. Myriam was not satisfied. She expanded Lifeline to include a ceramics workshop where the elderly created unique jewelry, pottery, tile painting, leatherwork and ceramic combinations, mezuzot, menorot and other Judaica. Then she created a carton-making workshop that built boxes for commercial businesses. Upstairs, she built a Metal Shop and a Needlework Shop. The elders design and create beautiful embroidery, crocheting, knitting, toys, sweaters, table clothes and more. In the Weaving Workshop the elders made Talitot and other fine items. Many elderly people had other skills. So Myriam set up a choir, a meals-on-wheels program that services 200 people a week, a Shoemaker’s Shop, a Carpentry Shop, a Needlecraft Shop for the disabled and a retail store she called The Elder Craftsman where Lifeline products are sold. The Elder Craftsman has products which won awards again and again in fairs and exhibitions within Israel and outside the country– and that are now being sold in the U.S.A. At one time, over fifty percent of Lifeline’s income came from the store’s profits. By 1988, Lifeline employed almost five hundred elderly people. Lifeline employees do not live on the premises. They come to work every day, as in any other business. It is not an old age home. There is no odor of medicine. Lifeline employees include elderly people born in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, France, England, Germany, Austria, Argentina, South Africa, and the U.S.A. Many are Holocaust survivors. There are Jews, Arab, and Christians all working side-by-side in a spirit of harmony and mutual cooperation. Myriam Mendilow has taken depressed elderly people who felt despair, hopeless and helpless, and turned them into enthusiastic, happy, energetic, employees, who design and create items of beauty. Most of these people reduce their medication dramatically. They live longer, healthier, and more respectable lives. Myriam Mendilow, a school teacher with a dream, but without any money, took “half-dead” people whom the world gave up on and gave them a chance to “come back to life.” And they did. She has taken thousands of students (both young and old) on tours of the Lifeline facilities and inspired them to rethink their perception of the elderly. She has convinced others throughout the world to create their own versions of Lifeline. Her goal was to make dreamers and visionaries of all her students. More importantly, she wanted people to act on those dreams and visions. She taught the world a lesson about chesed, about caring for others and about human dignity. She taught the world that chesed should be for all people.
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