September 24, 2025
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Rosh Hashanah, Day Two
Lifespan and Healthspan: Reaching for the Moses Package For Everyone
September 24, 2025 – 2 Tishri 5786
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Last month I got an email that reassured me that all will be well with the world. That joy and blessing are very much alive.
The email attached a photo of two women who are long-time members of our congregation. The younger one is only 103. The older one is 104. They have been friends since they were 12. Do the math, and that is one long, rich friendship. They were having lunch with their daughters. The picture is of the four of them all smiling at their lunch. Both women read the paper every day. Both women exercise every day. Both women talk to their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and friends every day. Both women are totally up on what is happening in the world.
Their beautiful lives, 103 and 104 years old, and still living, feels biblical. And it is. Their lives evoke Moses who, at the end of his life at the age of 120, is described as loh khahatah eino v’loh nas lechoh, Moses’s vision was undimmed and his vigor unabated. He lives, richly, until his last breath.
I had always thought that only Moses, and rare people like our 103- and 104-year old friends, get this treatment. Until I read Peter Attia’s book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, which makes the case that all of us can be Moses in the sense that all of us have more control than we might think about living richly all the years of our lives.
We all know the word lifespan. Lifespan is the number of years we get to live. But Attia taught me a new word: healthspan. Healthspan is the quality of our health—physical, cognitive, emotional, spiritual, relational—throughout the years of our life.
Attia’s main point is that what we do now can impact how we live later. What we do in our earlier years can shape not just our lifespan but our healthspan, not just the quantity of our years, but the quality of our years. The habits we live by in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s can dramatically affect the vitality of our 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond. Our current practices shape our future years. And this is a decidedly Jewish issue.
In Deuteronomy Moses exhorts the Jewish people: u’vacharta ba’chayiim, choose life. This is a double mitzvah. Choose life. Lifespan. The quantity of our years. Choose life. Healthspan. The quality of our years.
Of course there is no guarantee. I know this. You know this. We all know this. The High Holiday liturgy reminds us of what we all already know from our own personal experience: bad things can and do happen randomly to good people. But the fact that we cannot totally control the quantity and quality of our days does not mean that we have no control. We do have some control. And the some control that we do have we should exercise.
We can learn a lot from the life of Moses. There were what I call the 3 Ps that allowed Moses to enjoy 120 years of lifespan and healthspan. Those 3Ps are our work now.
The first P is purpose. Moses’s life was filled with purpose all the days of his life. Are we filled with purpose all the days of our life?
A few years ago, Rabbi Ed Feinstein gave a fantastic sermon which argued that most of us are unprepared for the last third of our life. Most of us, he observed, are type A personalities. We work hard in high school to get into a good college; work hard in college to get into a good graduate program or first job; work hard in our career to be a good provider; work hard in our family to help our children have every opportunity. And then, Rabbi Feinstein observed, so many of us end up in our 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, when our working days are behind us, wondering what’s next, and all too often we have no idea. We like it for a week or two. We like it for a month or two. We like our freedom. And, at a certain point, we start to wonder: what is the meaning of this chapter of my life? Why am I here?
A doctor named Sharon Bergquist wrote a book with a fabulous title. The title is a sermon in and of itself. The title is The Stress Paradox: Why You Need Stress to Live Longer, Healthier, and Happier. She argues that there is such a thing as good stress. In fact she is known as the Good Stress Doctor. Good stress is about meeting the moment. Good stress is the athlete who trains, competes, and performs. Good stress is the student who studies, prepares, and aces the exam. Good stress is our teen who works hard preparing for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah and then shines. Good stress, rising to meet the moment, and recovery, is good for us, says Dr. Bergquist. It makes us healthier and happier. By contrast, a stress-free environment—no worries, no challenges to overcome—makes for an excellent vacation but a poor strategy for long-term thriving.
So the first question for our new year is: what purpose gets us going, and what good stress will bring out our best?
Moses’s second P was people. Moses was always with people.
Where do we find our people? An all-too-common lament among people who endure a hard, sad last decade is loneliness. What we need at all stages is people. Barbara Streisand was wrong. It’s not people who need people are the luckiest people in the world. It’s people who have people are the luckiest people in the world.
The place to find people is in our community. The place to find people is at Temple Emanuel, people who will be with us in the good times, the hard times, the ordinary times of life. I was recently speaking with a woman who has endured a hard year of losses. Several of the people she loved passed away this year. But she is drawn to come to Temple Emanuel regularly because of the people. She tells the story that one late August Shabbat she went to Kiddush, she was feeling down, where she saw a young couple who often comes to shul. What they have in common is that they daven on Shabbat mornings at Temple Emanuel, and they sit in the same section of the Rabbi Chiel Sanctuary. They are different ages, different stages, but they share this sacred community. They were at the coffee urn on this Shabbat morning. The couple said to her, we know it’s late, we know that this is not a lot of notice, but we are getting married tomorrow, and we would love it if you would come to our wedding. Without hesitating this woman said of course I’ll come. The wedding was a good distance away. She drove and drove. She got a bit lost. But she found her way, she got to the wedding, she danced at the wedding, and being there made her feel full. She calls Temple Emanuel the House of Love. People who have people are the luckiest people in the world, and we have people right here.
Moses’s third P is in many ways the most important and the most difficult: It is about making peace with our pain. Moses is in pain. By the way, if we live long enough, we are all in pain. From his two sons that he gets no nachus from, to his wife with whom he has a distant marriage, to his brother and sister who betray him, to God who has him die on the wrong side of the River Jordan. All that pain just is. Moses has to make peace with pain that just is. He makes peace with his pain by getting busy doing good work for somebody else, helping the Israelites stay faithful to their covenant with God.
How do we accept our pain with equanimity? The Moses move: focus on helping somebody else. Focus on some other larger and worthy cause. A man in our community had worked in financial services, in wealth management, all his adult life. At the age of 80 he retired. He was old school. He had gone to the office five days a week every week for 56 years. But now there was no office to go to and no clients to take care of. He could no longer do what he had always done. What now? So at 80 he started doing something he had never done before: He went every Tuesday and every Friday, twice a week, to Dana Farber, to deliver magazines and newspapers to patients in the hospital, including those who were getting chemo. He was a burst of sunshine, smiles, and good energy. He would have business cards from people all over the US, all over the globe, saying if you are ever in my city, I want to take you out for dinner. Before he passed away this summer, he was reflecting on his years of delivering newspapers, magazines, smiles and positive energy to Dana Farber patients, and all he could say is it is a wonderful life. One way to make peace with our pain is by helping somebody else.
If we want the Moses package, robust until the end, we’ve got to work for it. Now is the time to focus on Moses’s 3Ps. Purpose. Make sure we have purpose throughout our life, which means having some good stress, some moment to meet, throughout our life. People. Make sure we are doing something that deepens our daily relationships with people. Make peace with our pain by helping somebody else with theirs. These 3Ps are no guarantee, of course. But they are good in and of themselves. Even if they cannot guarantee our years, they can enhance our days.
Lifespan. The quantity of our years.
Healthspan. The quality of our years.
What we do now matters. We do have some control.
U’vacharta bachayim, choose life! Shanah tovah.