When I turned eighty, I wrote that it was a moment of truth. Today I turn eighty-three. What is different this time? At eighty-three, the truth is harder—and less comforting.

This is the first birthday I I am spending without friends or family. I am in a new home, where no one knows that today is my birthday. Around me, everything feels marked by age: First of all, the retirement village I am living in. Second, all of my closest friends are old. the house I am selling, even my car is old. Aging is no longer something I reflect on—it is the condition of my life.

And yet, what set me thinking this week was not only my own age. A friend of mine recently celebrated her bat mitzvah at eighty-three, making up for what she never had as a girl. It made me reflect on my own passage of time—not as a single event, but as an accumulation of blessings and losses.

This week’s parsha, Re’eh, begins with a stark formulation: blessings and curses are placed before us, on separate mountain: “See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.” But life, as I have experienced it, is not so neatly divided. Blessing and curse are intertwined. The loss we experience as we age can feel like a curse, yet it also brings perspective. Even death—so often feared—can be a release when suffering becomes unbearable. The Torah’s neat categories collapse under the weight of lived experience.

Much has changed since I turned eighty, especially my move to protected, independent living. At the time, I wrote that my priorities were shifting: I had less patience for nonsense, less tolerance for hypocrisy, especially in the political sphere. That has not changed. If anything, it has intensified. When I see the brazenness of leaders who act without shame, I wonder: what is left that can still shock me? Reading recent public statements in which religious language is used........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)