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Time For a Second Wind

Life at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale

Picture above through bottom of article, from far left: a view of the George Washington Bridge from the back yard of the Hebrew Home for the Aged; residents paint in the studio: the ceramic studio, and an outdoor putting green.

By Timothy Lavin

The first thing one notices about the Hebrew Home for the Aged, in Riverdale, is its artwork—in the hallways, on the lawns, in the offices and living rooms. The collection totals more than 4,500 pieces—including works by Warhol, Van Dyke, and Picasso—all donated or on loan. It has a full-time curator. The subjects and methods of the works vary, but serious contemporary art predominates, and this illustrates a commanding philosophy among the staff. “We don’t want people to come here and just sit back on their old memories,” said Charlotte Dell, the director of social services. “We want them to be engaged, to make new memories.”

Beyond the artwork, options for engagement abound. “If you want to be busy, you can be busy,” said Sadie Harkin, who has lived at the home for three years and sits on the residents’ council. “I never went to so many concerts in my life. And we go out shopping, we go to Macy’s, we go to theater shows, to films. I try to go twice a week to the art classes—I’m even wearing a ring I made—but some weeks I just don’t have time.”

For residents with more leisurely schedules, the Hebrew Home also houses beauty parlors, exercise facilities, an Internet café, a putting green, and dining rooms that overlook the Hudson River. Its location in the Bronx enables easy access to Manhattan.

“This is not heaven’s waiting room,” said Daniel Reingold, the home’s executive director. “There’s one thing you are not going to see in this facility: you won’t see residents in their rooms. They’re in the library, in the computer room, at classes, keeping busy. It’s not about playing bingo and shuffleboard, although we have that too. It’s about doing the things you probably never had time to do in your life.”

The home is actually a sprawling complex, “a world unto itself,” as staffers say, that includes 11 buildings and serves 3,000 seniors in one capacity or another. This includes long-term care at the center’s nursing home, at-home care, a rehabilitation clinic, a hospice center, and two senior apartment buildings (with a total of 195 units), for largely independent residents who nevertheles require some level of attention. “We provide the whole continuum of care,” said Malka Margolies, the home’s spokesperson. “Whatever your needs are, we can provide.”

Such provision, of course, comes at a price. Apartments in one of the residential buildings are steep, about $4,000 a month on average; that includes meals and a range of amenities, from laundry service to utilities. At the nursing home within the Home, the cost of a room is around $200 a day, depending on the level of care. Ninety percent of the residents benefit from Medicaid.

The non-profit HHA gets additional money from the state and private donations, which are considerable. Its annual fundraising dinner, for instance, is always a big-time event, even in a city of big-time events. Last year’s dinner featured Henry Kissinger as a speaker and Maurice Greenberg and Sandy Weill as chairmen. The program thanked 35 different people or organizations for contributing $25,000 or more, in addition to dozens and dozens of those who donated more modestly. Last year’s operating budget was more than $125 million.

Such funding allows for an exemplary level of service; the Home employs nearly 1,500 staff members and supplies 24-hour medical care. Partly as a result, it is generally near capacity and admission requires an application. “The staff here is terrific,” said Fay Dworkin. “What would I do alone? Here, I recently had a bad cold and they looked in on me every day and they delivered my food for me. What more can you expect?”

There is a degree of innovation uncommon in the business. The Hebrew Home pioneered Grandparents Day celebrations, for instance, and has formulated a comprehensive, and apparently unprecedented, policy toward sex in nursing homes.

It has also undertaken some far more ambitious projects. Last year it created a shelter for abused seniors, the first of its kind, and established a training and public awareness program to address this often-overlooked social problem. Reingold expects to devote most of his time in the upcoming months to it. “I was shocked that there was no senior shelter in the United States,” he said. “I was shocked that there was none in New York! There’s a huge population of seniors in our city suffering from abuse or neglect and a lot of people have no idea.”

Last year, Reingold spent six months organizing a trip to Israel for 10 residents, along with nine staff members to care for them. When they arrived, they found themselves treated like royalty, profiled in several newspapers, and tackling challenges—like camel riding—that had previously seemed unlikely. “It was a beautiful experience,” said Sadie Harkin, one of the 10. “They were so welcoming in Israel. Wherever we went, we had the mayor or someone come to greet us. I’m reliving it all the time.”

The trip was meant to show solidarity with Israeli Jews, Reingold said, but it also altered his resident’s lives. “I think they are living longer, I think they got a recharge,” he said. “They made it. They swam in the Dead Sea.”

Eighty percent of the Hebrew Home’s residents are Jewish, and there’s a full-time rabbi on the premises, while priests and ministers provide weekly services for Christians). The food is kosher, if of debatable distinction (as Harkin puts it, “Some people say the food here is excellent and I look at them like, ‘What are you, crazy?’ But I can’t complain”). On the grounds are a Judaica Museum and a large and attractive synagogue where weekly concerts are held that draw several hundred residents. The Home also made headlines recently for its efforts to provide respectful Hanukkah services to residents with dementia—about 70 percent of those in the nursing home, many of whom could not follow the full ceremony, but could still take comfort from a remembered hymn or ritual.

Yet, Reingold said, his boldest project will take the better part of the next two decades to realize: figuring out how to care for the Baby Boomers when they retire. The first step is under way. The Hebrew Home will open a new, state-of-the-art residence in May at a cost of around $50 million. “This will be the first nursing home building made for the Baby Boomers,” he said. “We want to use it to challenge the rest of this country. Let’s have a discussion about what long-term care should look like for the next generation. Many of our residents are looking back. What we’re doing is looking forward.”

Timothy Lavin is a freelance writer
who lives in New York City.

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