Women and Aging Today -- Elegance and Resilience

Pat Shapiro

The Privilege of Aging

Award-winning author Pat Shapiro has written a new book entitled The Privilege of Aging, portraits of 12 women from 75 to 102 years old. After looking at the lives of these women who are living active, dynamic lives in their 80's and 90's, she asks what is common to their lives to allow living to advanced ages. She has identified 10 factors that contribute to aging successfully and happily, and that resilience is one of the most important of these factors. These interviews and life stories are varied and fascinating, and they keep the reader's attention in page after page of new insights. This is a generation of Jewish grandmothers like none before them.

Women and aging is a subject of national importance, as can be seen in CNN's articles on Style and Elegant Senior Women. CNN looks at the evolving elegance of older women, emphasizing what Shapiro argues that this generation of seniors is living well, better than seniors did in the past. The CNN stories on women and aging in style can be seen at:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/29/living/advanced-style-coloring-book/index.html?hpt=li_bn3 and
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/27/living/aging-fashion-style






Pat Shapiro, M.S.W., has written extensively on women and aging and gives talks on the subject across the United States. The Privilege of Aging was recently selected by the Jewish Book Council for its Author's Network, and Shapiro has been invited to JBC sponsored Jewish Book Festivals from the Southwest to the East Coast. For more information on the author's work, visit her website at: www.wisewomenalive.com

For more information about The Privilege of Aging, go to: www.gaonbooks.com.

You are invited to launching of The Privilege of Aging at

Collected Works Bookstore

Galisteo and Water Streets in downtown Santa Fe

Wednesday, August 7, at 6:00 pm

The author will be present. 
She will talk about women and aging and sign books.

Jews, the Muslim World and Ramadan

As Ramadan is starting across the Muslim world, 

we are in Morocco to celebrate the birth and brit of a son to our daughter, Vanessa Paloma, and her husband, Maurice Elbaz.

In this unusual land, which has the only Jewish Museum in an Arab land and where Jewish studies organizations are formed in otherwise Muslim universities, I encountered an interesting recent publication in the magazine, Zamane, on Jews in Morocco. The issue (May, 2013) is entitled, "Morocco, Jewish Land". In this land Jews are considered one of the founding peoples of the country along with Berbers and Arabs.

This issue of Zamane looks at the unique role of Jews in this Muslim country.

For more on Jews and Muslims look at these Gaon Books publications:


Ruth Sohn, Crossing Cairo, A Jewish Woman's Encounter with Egypt

Raphael Elmaleh and George Ricketts, Jews under Moroccan Skies

Vanessa Paloma, The Mountain, the Desert and the Pomegranate: Stories from Morocco and Beyond

Susana Weich-Shahak, Moroccan Sephardic Romancero

William Samelson, Sephardic Legacy

Mati Milstein, My New Middle East

Egypt, Turmoil, and the Jewish Experience -- Ruth Sohn

Understand Egypt Today from a Jewish Perspective.

Ruth Sohn's new book, Crossing Cairo, is the best contemporary description of life in Cairo and the concerns of the people there. As a Jewish woman living in Cairo with her husband (Reuven Firestone) and two sons, she describes life in a personal way rarely seen. You walk with her in the streets and share the foods, including her favorite spice shop.

Sohn gives an insight to the Middle East today that will help you to understand the region better.

Dr. Suleiman Mourad, Professor of Religion, Smith College says of this book:

"Ruth Sohn’s Crossing Cairo is simply FASCINATING. A treasure-trove of candid reflections on society, religion, politics, history and national memory in today’s Egypt. I especially admire her honesty in voicing her religious anxiety as an American Jew while living for half-a-year with her family in Cairo; the little vignettes about the Jewish community there (made up of a few locals, Israelis and others) are priceless. I strongly recommend the book for anyone interested in Egypt or planning to visit it."

Rabbi Ruth Sohn

Director of the Leona Aronoff Rabbinic Mentoring Program

Rabbi of the Lainer Beit Midrash

Hebrew Union College

Los Angeles, CA