Retirement Living ■ The Jewish Week & NJJN ■ April 2020
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RETIREMENT
Changing the Way We See Older Americans
The CEO of The New Jewish Home is on a crusade to fight ageism, and he wants the elderly to look the future squarely in the eye. Dvorah Telushkin
Special to The Jewish Week
D
r. Jeffrey Farber is CEO of The New Jewish Home and a geriatrician at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Before taking his post at The Jewish Home in laste 2017, Farber, a graduate of Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, was senior vice president and chief medical officer for population health at Mount Sinai Health System. He also served as CEO of Mount Sinai Care, LLC, the system’s Medicare Shared Savings Program Accountable Care Organization. One of the nation’s largest and most diversified not-for-profit geriatric health and rehabilitation systems, The New Jewish Home serves over 8,000 older adults each year in its homes and campuses in the Bronx, Manhattan and Westchester, through short-term rehabilitation, long-term skilled nursing, low-income housing, and a wide range of home health programs. The Jewish Week caught up with Dr. Farber recently at The New Jewish Home. This interview is edited for length and clarity. Out in the community: Dr. Farber at a recent Pride parade.
What were your earliest memories of being nurtured? And how did this nurturing inform your ability and your power today as a healer and a medical doctor? I had a very close relationship with my grandparents: Grandpa Hy, from Belarus, and Grandma Sylvia, who was born in Paris. They came religiously every Sunday to visit; every weekend, fail none. This level of devotion allowed me to develop deep trust and fueled my interest in my career to serve older adults.
Q&A
Can this seed of compassion, planted at an early age, allow us to become nurturers in later life, as men and women of compassion? Compassion is the essential ingredient to giving high-quality medical care. Even if you know the latest and the greatest technology, without compassion the expertise and technical skills become irrelevant and ineffectual. The word in Hebrew for mother’s womb, rechem — is from rachmanot — compassion. And what greater empathy can exist than that of a mother’s womb? What do you think is the quality of that grandparent’s love or the relationship with an
“Compassion is the core of all good medical practice,” Dr. Jeffrey Farber says. P HOTOS COU RTESY OF TH E N EW J EWI SH HOM E
elder, that allows us to cultivate empathy? It’s because they listen and they have time. They see us. The very fact that they are older allows them to be present with their grandchildren in a way that’s greater than young adults, who are distracted. I think the kids pick up on that. Compassion is at the core of all good medical practice. A woman here with advanced dementia was upset that someone had stolen her car; she wanted to go to the police and described where she parked the car. Without confronting her the staff expressed empathy, asking, “What kind of car was it? Tell us about your car.” From this deep knowing
