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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2008
Based on an ethnographic study of an old age home in Israel, this essay presents an analysis of how religious activity is used as part of a survival strategy by elderly residents in an institution for the well-aged. The study describes the symbolic manipulation of religious symbols and the social meaning of religion in an old age home in terms of four behavioural levels: (a) the synagogue members and their study groups; (b) the rabbi's lack of identification with his congregants; (c) the relationship to the non-religious management of the home; and (d) the differentiation of categories of residents in terms of ‘proper functioning’. Religion in this context is thus seen as an important social resource used in interactions with the social structure of the institution.
1 Although there is ample evidence, obtained mainly through survey analysis, as to the connection between old age and religiosity, there is a dearth of research addressing the question of the meaning of such activities in later life. One approach focuses on selective survival of those for whom religion is part of their way of life. Hence Edwards, S. M. and Klemmack, D. A.Correlates of life-satisfaction: a re-examination, Journal of Gerontology, 28, (1973), 497–502CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and also Spreitzer, E. & Snyder, E.Correlates of life-satisfaction among the aged, Journal of Gerontology, 29 (1974) 454–458CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed claim that religiousness is correlated with general well-being and other measures of life satisfaction.
2 Findings on the relationship between attitudes towards death among the aged and religiousness are inconsistent, and indicate that religion devotees are prone to a lesser degree of death anxiety than those with irregular religious involvement. For a survey of the literature see Kalish, R. Death and Dying in a Social Context, in Binstock, R. and Shanas, E. (eds), Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1976.Google Scholar
3 Moberg, D. & Taves, M. Church participation and adjustment in old age. In Rose, R. and Peterson, W. (eds), Older People and Their Social World, F. A. Davis, Philadelphia, 1966, pp. 113–124.Google Scholar
4 Moves, P. Aging, Religion and the Church. In Tibbitz, C. (ed.), Handbook of Social Gerontology, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1960, pp. 708–709.Google Scholar
5 Similar existential dilemmas are pivotal in theories of the life cycle such as Erikson's.
6 Geertz, C.The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, 1973.Google Scholar
7 The anthropology of ageing has come of age in recent years and ethnographic studies of age-homogenous settings are on the increase: Gubrium, J.Living and Dying at Murray Manor, St Martin's Press, New York, 1975.Google ScholarHazan, H.The Limbo People: A Study of the Constitution of the Time Universe Among the Aged, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1980.Google ScholarHochschild, A.The Unexpected Community, Prentice Hall, N. J., 1973.Google ScholarMyerhoff, B. & Simic, A. (eds) Life's Career – Aging, Sage, Beverly Hills, 1978.Google ScholarFontana, A.The Last Frontier, Sage, Beverly Hills, 1976.Google ScholarRoss, J.Old People-New Lives, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1977Google Scholar, are but a few examples of this direction.
8 With the exception of Hendel-Sebestyen, , G. Role Diversity: Toward a development of community in total institutional settings, Anthropological Quarterly 52 (1979), 19–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who emphasises the role of religio-traditional attachments in an old age home, there is no other explicit reference in the ethnographic research on the elderly in modern society, to religious aspects.
9 Hazan, H. Adjustment and control in an old age home, In Marx, E. (ed.), A Composite Portrait of Israel, Academic Press, London, 1980.Google Scholar
10 Far from being a comparable reality, the lesson drawn from the study of more extreme total institutions such as concentration camps should be taken as a valuable one. Pawelczynska in her sociological analysis of Auschwitz maintains that the prisoners underwent a process of reinterpreting, diminishing and abandoning their traditional values and moral standards: Pawelczynska, A.Values and Violence in Auschwitz, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1979.Google Scholar
11 Deshen, S.On religious change: the situational analysis of symbolic action. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 12, 1970, 260–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
