Exciting New Year, Parties, Concerts and More

Dear friends,

We’ve off to a great start in 2019 at the Jewish Home Family. We are looking forward to many big things in the year ahead. We’re planning to break ground on our Second Century project, the construction of the new inpatient rehabilitation building and the Charles P. Berkowitz Center for Rehabilitation Excellence. At the same time we are moving ahead to incorporate the Green House project philosophy and approach at both Rockleigh and Memory Lane at Jewish Home Assisted Living. The Green House concept, based upon the pioneering work by Dr. Bill Thomas, is designed to enhance the lives of our residents, building on three core principles—meaningful life, real home and empowered staff. There is a lot for us to learn and we are just at the very beginning. We look forward to sharing much more about this in the weeks and months ahead!

At Jewish Home Assisted Living, we began our week with a festive New Year’s eve party. Carlos Aguasvias provided the entertainment and a lavish dessert table provided the treats! Both Assisted Living and Memory Lane had identical parties, just separated by an hour. We had party hats and horns, the rooms were decorated and everyone had fun ringing in 2019. Our personal shopper program was also back in service this week and the residents were delighted. “It’s so nice not to have to go out in the cold,” one of them said. These volunteer personal shoppers do all kinds of errands for JHAL residents and are very much appreciated. We added a new program this week by resident request. Called “Classical Music Hour,” it incorporates music, learning and discussion and was a big hit. On Thursday we had a full house for Tai Chi and it was great to see so many residents participating and the day concluded with our “Hot Cocoa Social,” which the residents have asked to continue. Friday’s special event was a lecture by Rabbi Korenblit entitled “A Plague on Egypt.”

We also had a special event on Thursday afternoon at Jewish Home Assisted Living. We held a holiday party for our Rock Steady boxers and had a great turnout of both boxers and family members. It is hard to believe that our Rock Steady program has been in existence for 18 months already! Our boxers have really become more than participants, they have become a community. They support one another and have really formed some strong relationships. At the party it was great to see folks moving tables together so they could have larger groups of friends connecting!

In the Gallen Day Center we had a festive New Year’s eve party with entertainment and dancing. Sparkling cider and sparkling grape juice were flowing! On Wednesday, we began with a program on setting and achieving goals that Sunni Herman provided and in the afternoon we enjoyed a Reiki healing program to help us refocus our energy for the year ahead. We also had special foods including black eyed peas and spinach greens to bring good luck, good fortune and an abundance of food in the new year. On Thursday we had a fun lunch outing, always a favorite of the participants. And on Friday we baked and enjoyed challah, using dough we prepared on Thursday afternoon.

We had a busy week at the Jewish Home at Rockleigh as well. On Sunday we had an afternoon of music with the Northern Valley Music Group. These talents students play a variety of instruments and they played both classical and contemporary music. Everyone loved their performance! On New Year’s eve we enjoyed music with Mark Wright and we celebrated and toasted to 2019.

Our New Year’s day highlight was a concert that featured George Tuzio. He played keyboard and piano and entertained with songs from the 1940’s and on. On Thursday we had a special program provided by Jewish Family and Children’s Services. It was the first of an eight part series entitled “The Art of Aging.” We ended the week with a special concert by Caecilia Lee, a professional violinist. Her mother is a teacher at the Thurnauer School of Music at the Kaplen JCC and Caecilia played for our residents a number of times when she was a child. She remembers the residents being so “warm and encouraging” and she was delighted to come and share her gift of music with them today.

All the best,

Carol Silver Elliott
President/CEO
The Jewish Home Family