Alzheimer’s Goggles and Other Lessons from the Dementia Wing

So as the generic LinkedIn job search post starts - "After 8 years managing adult day centers in Israel..."

My last of those 8 years was managing the dementia wing of a large day center in Be'er Sheva. The Beit Shemesh center which I had previously run also included a dementia wing, but this was my first really intense, immersive experience in the world of cognitive decline. 

I would not wish this devastating disease on my worst enemy / ok, I would wish it only on the worst enemies of Israel and the Jewish people.

I met older adults (and one not-so-old) with rich histories, careers - some who ruled the roost professionally and in their home lives.

I worked very closely with their family caregivers. The day center model is stronger in Israel by participation rates than in the US - in large part because the National Insurance Institute encourages older adults who receive funding for home caregivers to stay active and get out of the house - affording them a 6 hour day in the day center for the price of 2 or 2.75 caregiver hours. 

This beautiful model is truly life-changing - not only to the care recipients, but also in allowing those caregivers (family and paid) some respite from the brutal routine they endure.

How life-saving are we talking?
During a major war with Iran throughout March 2026, we opened the center after the first week of war, but were forbidden by the overseeing Welfare Ministry to operate transit vans. So no less than 3/4 of our normal number of participants got a ride with their family caregivers, literally risking their lives en route to our center in order to enjoy the good life that we provided them. This means they knew that the alternative of sitting idly at home was so detrimental that they would rather die of one of the countless ballistic missiles that Iran was lobbing in our direction than stay at home. 

Some striking memories from my encounter with dementia:

• Music is an unbelievably powerful tool. My favorite use case - the secretary told me to call back one older adult's daughter to discuss something. Amid the dizzying daily task list, I forgot to call back - then remembered and reminded myself by singing a song with the daughter's name. When I returned her call, I told her about that memory trick. She replied, "you'll never believe this - my father named me after that song!" At the end of the day, when waiting for the transit van, that same father would become, and stay, very agitated. So I started a regular tradition of playing that song that he loved enough to name his daughter after! It immediately turned his anxious face into an ear-to-ear grin, as he danced away his troubles with me.
• You think beer goggles are bad? Try Alzheimer's goggles. Inappropriate sexual advances are very common among folks with dementia. My staff and I worked to prevent this, but with a one caregiver to 10 visitors ratio, we couldn't always get there in time. One man was especially hard to contain, and he often went for the most frail women in the center.
• The power of our services was seen most clearly in the little things - we tried to "set up" one day center visitor, who is the most lovely conversationist, with an eager "volunteer" - a visitor from the non-dementia wing. But the one without dementia was discouraged when his coffee buddy kept forgetting his name and the whole situation of sitting down together with this man who appeared to him every few minutes to be some stranger.
  Well, that dementia participant would eat breakfast and lunch every day with a fellow memory care participant who told me every other day that he was called in to work at the hospital in the middle of the night.
  These two, who are clearly each on their own wavelength, would chat for so long over meals that they'd have to get shooed out at "closing time" for our staff.
• YouTube really has almost everything! One participant was a former star of the local soccer team. The week I left the job, I decided to try out a video search despite his having played decades ago. There he was, making moves around the field! 
• The power of routine for people with dementia is immense. After closing the center for almost two weeks during the war with Iran in June 2025, I couldn't believe my ears when so many of our visitors kept asking me where the bathroom is. That brief break really threw off their orientation.
  But then I saw it again with the even shorter 3, or sometimes 2 days that we took off for the Jewish holidays.

Off to the Emda - Alzheimer's Association of Israel's annual conference on this crucial subject.

All clear for the time being

 Thanks so much to everyone for reaching out and sending their prayers! We're fine, thank G-d.

We had a series of sirens in our town.

We heard a number of faint booms that sounded really far away - potentially impacts or interceptions, fainter than what we heard during Iran's previous aerial assault on my Dad's yahrtzeit - anniversary of his passing. 

On October 7 I heard medium-volume thuds before the early morning siren in my town - I thought our folding table had fallen over downstairs. Those I think were Iron Dome interceptions over a neighboring city. 

And my loudest boom in Israel was way back before we had Iron Dome in Be'er Sheva in March  2011. That lovely 5:30 am wake up, the first air raid siren I ever heard, landed in my neighborhood. 

As I titled this post, I recalled a Holocaust survivor with whom I worked in Jerusalem, who said she had waited for the All Clear message that she was used to from World War II. She waited for hours, cause she hadn't learned that here, we wait in the safe room for 10 minutes after the siren ends. 

My people have endured too much! But we are resilient and we will prevail, with G-d's help!

Here's to all of our forces, and the US forces, fighting tirelessly to keep us all safe! And here's to our allies fully supporting us instead of fecklessly trying to deter us. 

And here's to a phenomenal new Jewish year, 5785, starting tomorrow night. Peace and love y'all 

Kick their tuchus

Nasrallah is dead. Kids in another neighborhood in my town heard the news, and immediately started spreading it by yelling that on the streets. My wife came home from synagogue on Shabbat, said she was bearing great news, and then shocked me and the kids. I nearly fell on the floor. It's as if the Jews had been the ones to kill Hitler. 

Deterrence.

Bibi and his cohort thought Hamas was deterred on October 6, 2023. In a country surrounded by enemies sworn to its destruction as part of their Jihad - holy war, all proxy puppets in the hands of the Iranian regime, only destroying them can amount to deterrence. The word just doesn't exist otherwise. This greatly complicates our nation's life in a region full of more bad actors than a soap opera. 

After watching Bibi's Channel 14 interview about 6 months ago, I got the sense between the lines of his responses that Hezbollah had deterred us. Thank G-d I was so very wrong!

The Biden doctrine to my eyes: Deter your allies. Urge them, "Don't win too much." The same thing seems to be going on in Ukraine. America - deterred by its enemies. It sure would be nice, despite the great inconvenience in an election year, for the administration to actually help us win. We seem to be fully capable of winning regardless. But with real support, fewer of my friends and neighbors would be getting wounded and killed. 

As someone from the home of the world famous Don't Mess with Texas ad campaign, I couldn't be prouder of my Israeli brothers and sisters, out there risking their lives and telling our enemies, DON'T MESS WITH US. You will not destroy us. We are, in fact, here to stay. We love life. We are better than you and your blind hatred. Your path is the wrong way. 

I'll sign off with a quote from my 3 kids today. An air force plane flew low, right over us. I said, "Go get em, boys." Then my delicious children, brainwashed beautifully by my lovely wife, all yelled to the skies, "Kick their tuchus!" 

Three things

1. In my last post, I wrote that my heroes in the Israel Defense Forces are bringing light into the world. With everything that many of you are seeing in the news, that may sound callous.

So I urge you to think of the kids in Sderot, a development town with the great misfortune of being across the border from Gaza, who were able to return to school recently. For me, the aging piece has the greatest power to tug at my heartstrings. Think of the older adults who were able to return to their adult day center - eating two hot meals a day with their friends, seeing the center's physical therapist and social worker, and celebrating the holidays with their peeps. Those kids, older adults, and everyone in between, were evacuated at the start of the war to locations across the country to ensure their safety. So many others still haven't been able to return home. But because of our soldiers putting their lives on the line, we have reduced evil incarnate terrorists' capabilities to attack us.

Great light into the world.

2. The far right in the US, and now the "progressive" left. Each has their own Big Lie. 2020 was not rigged. And no, Israel and its supporters are not the cause of everything that's wrong in the world. To state the painfully obvious, anti-Semitism is the opposite of progress. 

Israel is the great light, fighting off pure evil. We will defeat them.

3. And yesterday, for the eighth time since this horrific war was forced upon us, we put up this beautiful monthly prayer to G-d. On the Sabbath before every new Hebrew month, we say ברכת החודש/the Blessing of the New Month. And we pray that this will be that month of victory and redemption.

כן יהי רצון - may it be G-d's will

We’re a nation with our hearts in our mouths

Really long time, so much to say. 

6 months into this war, almost 7. On one hand, I'm the most blessed man on Earth with the most incredible wife that ever existed and the most amazing, delicious kids I could have ever wished for. 

On the other hand, my nation is in immense pain and anguish. This post's title comes from a David Horovitz Times of Israel column way back in December.

The nations of the world pour symbolic bags of salt on our wounds. Never have we felt, to this extent, such a Jew among the nations (I use the word Jew with great pride; but here, sadly, as the age-old slur, as we experience it these days). 

While we thank the Biden administration and Congress from the bottom of our hearts for the immense material and practical support (and let's not forget the Obama administration's role in spearheading the development of the Iron Dome defense system), it is accompanied with such consistently distasteful sentiment from our allies. 

So, aside from our unwavering non-Jewish supporters like Yoseph Haddad, Douglas Murray, Congressman Ritchie Torres and MEP Assita Kanko (I 💗 THEM ALL), we just feel so very alone in the world. 

So, my friends and neighbors have literally answered the call and risked their lives in Gaza, on the front lines of the war against fundamental Islam, aka (that's right) evil incarnate (the world seems to have forgotten that "small detail" about Hamas and all of our enemies). These friends of mine and friend's sons write a letter to their family in case they won't survive the war. And some undergrad at Columbia thinks they can lecture us and our soldiers about war.

One of the nicest families in town, the ones who hosted our farewell event from the previous neighborhood, lost their son Itai in Gaza, killed by evil incarnate who booby-trapped a building the unit he commanded was operating in. Another neighbor and friend, an absolute bulldog on the basketball court at the pickup game here, was wounded in Gaza - targeted by an anti-tank missile because he is an officer. Did everybody forget that evil incarnate Hamas fights in street clothes, yet uses our rule-playing against us to kill our finest? And wound my friend? Anyway, this friend miraculously survived, but he is now in rehab, hoping to be able to walk again. Please pray for his full recovery, in our tradition when we pray for a medical recovery, we say the Hebrew name of the person and their mother's name - it's Yisrael ben Aliza.

But these same friends, and all our brothers and sisters, the best people I know, have been doing so much to take down those who killed us, who avowed to keep doing it again and again until we cease to exist. So many who murdered, butchered, and did unthinkable things to our babies, women, and older adults, and who would do it all again, have been killed or captured. We have brought so much light and blotted out so much darkness.

Yet still, so many are still in unthinkable conditions, hostages in Gaza, including another neighbor's grandson. 

Every one of the seemingly infinite TWHJ moments over the last half + year (I am truly sorry to link to myself, that's obnoxious, but, well... please forgive me) brings me back 26 years. 

For any high school or college friends, who most vividly remember me looking like this, I am almost definitely their only friend who lives in Israel. I was That Jewish Guy for them back then, and I took it up many notches since. So way back before I actually observed Jewish law...

I went on a "walkout" with my fraternity to Columbus for the '98 Michigan - Ohio State game. Running around my off-campus house to pack up for the road trip, I broke my toe on a door hinge. So late that night, on the way out of a Columbus bar, I was easy prey (and the most visible Michigan man among my fraternity brothers, wearing this oh so Maize shirt) for a bitter bitter Buckeye fan, who shoved me into High Street, not checking for traffic.

In this picture, a mere 8 days later, I am unscathed, by the grace of G-d.

Where am I going with this, you ask?
The foolish mistake on my part - a) wearing that shirt, and more importantly, b) screaming with my bros "1, 8, and 1" - ol' John Cooper's record against us at the time (the next day, he picked up his second, and last W). Obviously I had no business doing a) or b).

But all these TWHJ moments, and there are way too many to count, feel like that - getting shoved into the biggest street in town. Tom Brady got absolutely hammered by the Ohio State defense that next day, and very impressively kept bouncing up despite our never having a chance in that game. 

That's what the Jewish people have always done. Bounce right back up, BUT, we win the big games even when we have no business doing so (as Brady would of course go on to do in the NFL). But it is really hard, exhausting, and man, we could use a hand to pick us up off the mat some times.

Don't let anything I've written lead you to believe that I think our government is perfect. It is abundantly clearly anything but. 

But our army is a pack of lions, of my heroes. One of those neighbor-friends said towards the end of a months-long stint in Gaza - "We're the world's Special Forces Unit in this battle against fundamental Islamic terrorism. But instead of thanking us..."

For now, I must catch some zzz's before the Seder tomorrow night, recalling Pharoah oppressing our people, and G-d saving us, miracle after miracle. 

Everyone here experienced the miracle of our air defense against the evil incarnate Iranian regime's onslaught last Sunday morning. We're talking Grade A, biblical level miracles, folks. That fell on my father's yahrtzeit (Hebrew anniversary of his passing) - Israel and our international and regional partners working in harmony just like the best of his performances with so many bands and ensembles and choirs over his decades-long career.

I'll wrap up with my pitch for you to listen to Shemekia Copeland - one of my favorite blues singers. Paraphrasing this heartfelt number, "Don't Whisper that you support Israel, say it out loud." The good guys will prevail, with G-d's help, and your support. G-d bless y'all.

Rangers! Finally World Series Champs!!