Number Our Days: A Triumph of Continuity and Culture Among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto

by Barbara Myerhoff, Victor Turner (Foreword)

When noted anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff received a grant to explore the process of aging, she decided to study some elderly Jews from Venice, California, rather than to report on a more exotic people. The story of the rituals and lives of these remarkable old people is, as Bel Kaufman said, "one of those rare books that leave the reader somehow changed."
Here Dr. Myerhoff records the stories of a culture that seems to give people the strength to face enormous daily problems -- poverty, neglect, loneliness, poor health, inadequate housing and physical danger. The tale is a poignant one, funny and often wise, with implications for all of us about the importance of ritual, the agonies of aging, and the indomitable human spirit.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology, Ethnography, Judaism, Sociology, Read For School, Jewish

318 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 1979

About the author

Myerhoff was an anthropologist, a filmmaker, and the founder of the Center for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California.

Myerhoff is best known for her work with the Jewish community in Venice, California. This was first documented in the 1976 ethnographic film Number Our Days, directed by Lynne Littman. She published the book Number Our Days in 1979. Number Our Days was performed as a play at the Mark Taper Forum in 1982.

Her next project, In Her Own Time was taken over by Lynne Littman and Vikram Jayanti when Myerhoff was diagnosed with cancer. She died in 1985.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Christian Cabunag · Rating 4 out of 5]

Number Our Days is a comprehensive ethnography done by Anthropologist Dr. Barbara Myerhoff. In the ethnography, Dr. Myerhoff explores the daily lives of elderly Jewish residents living in the community of Venice Beach, California. The community is often called the "Center," which is a place where the Jewish elderly interact. Dr. Myerhoff observes and studies several residents in the Center, one of which includes Schmuel Goodman, one of the more considerable intellectuals who is educated and "interesting" according to Myerhoff. Through people like Shmuel and his neighbors, Myerhoff discovers the culture of the Jewish elders. Most of the community members are part of families that escaped the Holocaust during WW2. Myerhoff learns of their faith, daily activities, and beliefs. One important aspect of the community that is extensively explored is that most of the members are atheist. The elders emphasize that they do not believe in the teachings of Judaism due to the consequences of religion during the Holocaust. However, they still hold dearly to their traditions. Myerhoff observes and explains that although the Jewish elderly are not religious, they still practice and uphold the Jewish practices in order to keep their culture alive. They cherish education and scripture study in order to keep their culture rich for the generations to come. Myerhoff does an excellent job in exploring and explaining to the audience the daily lives of the elderly Jewish, addressing stereotypes and misunderstandings of elderly people. Contrary to popular beliefs, Myerhoff shows the readers that the elderly in the Center are independent, and are confident they are in themselves. Throughout the ethnography Myerhoff shows the richness and color of the members of the Center. Through Number Our Days, Myerhoff shows audiences that there are certain populations and groups of people that society often makes assumptions about, and isolates. Myerhoff does an excellent job in observing and illustrating the authenticity and uniqueness of a community that is often quite and forgotten.

[Chrisanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book grated on my consciousness for days. The constant sparring, griping, sadness, hopelessness wearied my soul. But Myerhoff can write. By the end those things didn't bother me any more.

Perhaps it's because her last chapter was my favorite topic (domestic religion). Perhaps it's because you know the reasoning behind all of the above by the end. Perhaps it's because you recognize that it's a universal fate. Maybe it's because I recognized too many people that I know in these pages. For whatever reason, I was eager to continue reading her thoughtfully crafted work and also very eager to be done.



Recommended by my mother.

[Mallory · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read this one for a qualitative research class, and I'll admit I judged a book by it's cover. I expected to have to push through it, but once I started, I couldn't put it down. It is written by an anthropologist that spends two years of her life getting to know a unique group of older Jewish adults who immigrated from Eastern Europe before or during World War II. They have created their own strong community based on shared experience despite pressure to conform to American culture. It is in no way a story book with a typical plot line, but I learned so much about love, loss, death, generativity, empathy, agism, optimism, survivors guilt, and more. Truly touching stories of real people who wanted to be remembered.

[Elizabeth Boyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

After 2 years i have finally finished this book 😭 I was determined to finish it completely!!!! It is slow at times, but the stories inside are quite beautiful. The ‘old people’ end with such a special place in your heart. Very glad I picked this up again. “Their dreams and wishes are part of what gives them courage to make their own world instead of simply submitting to an external one that degrades them”

[Dave Cullen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous story. This was assigned reading in a master's Cultural Anthropology class, and I opened it with disgust, thinking I'd be bored silly with the topic.

She had me right away. She is a beautiful writer, and any group of people is interesting if you have the right instincts for seeing them, and conveying.

[Qing Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coincidently, reading this book at this time point. Professor Rachard Lachmann, the chair of my second comp committee, the professor I am doing independent study with this semester, a new lighthouse of my academic pursuit, was informed died yesterday at around 5:30pm, just after I read some part about pain in a park and came home. On page 197, it says:"Pain is the avenue to getting a soul, getting quality from yourself. This is how you get a life that's really on the essence. " I hope this is the truth.

Th news hit me so hard that I still cannot react very well even now. I met him last Friday, he looked a bit tired but happy, telling me it is very nice to meet with me each Friday, and reminded me the coming Friday he would attend a conference so he could not come to school, then we would meet next Friday. I worried about my reading speed was slow, but he comforted me and commented that I wrote a very good memo. After the experience in last winter, I finally feel my energy and power recovered recently, and I started to read something really helpful to my dissertation, then he passed away. I even did not get a chance to tell him my intention to invite him as a member of my dissertation. I realized it immediately after meeting, but I thought no worries, there would be many opportunities in the near future, however......

He is such a kind and gentle person who even invited me to have a coffee and guided me visit the Greenwich Village for about two hours at the end of June when I visited the City. That was the first time that I knew he was living in the city. In the past two years, because of the pandemic, I did not make too much connection with the new country, but Professor Lachmann truly offered me so much warmth at a special stage in my life, a stage when it becomes hard for me to trust people. I will alway remeber his smile on last Friday and keep the voice record of our discussion (so lucky to do this, although there should be more in the near future). Don't know say what, just send my love!

[Hannah Brundage · Rating 3 out of 5]

For like a normal, every day book read this would be a 2, but from an anthropological viewpoint this book was a solid three. Super interesting topic that I think has a right to be understood and shared. This specific group of people lived such different and oftentimes hard lives. Their stories are important to understand as a society. I think Barbara inserts her own thoughts, opinions, and explanations a little too much throughout the book but I still think it’s well done. She also is soooooo descriptive that sometimes you loose track of what she was talking about, or it’s hard to follow along with what she is trying to say.

[Kevin Larsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ethnography of an old-age Jewish community in California around 1975. It reminded me and explained strange behavior in my own social club for disabled people in a small town. Idiosyncrasies now were known to me in a way I never thought of.
I used this book for the MIT OpenCourseWare course "Introduction to Anthropology". It's been very helpful.

[versarbre · Rating 4 out of 5]

very lovely writing, with so much depth in humanity. As an "ethnography," it is actually a piece of writing for the community, for those people who do not need to turn "reading" as a means of livelihood, and simply "reading" for their life nourishments.

[Susan Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though published '79-'80, it perhaps even more pertinent now, given that the generation Myerhoff describes is no longer with us..

[Mike Maughan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its message has stuck with me for many years. That, alone, is enough to tell me it is worthwhile book.

Provo, UT. Jill Rudy

[Misty · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting perspective, so sad she passed away before aging like those she studied.

[William Robison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving, engaging, and deeply interesting; I will most certainly be revisiting this book later in life to glean more wisdom from its pages.

[Meiver · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Number Our Days: A Triumph of Continuity and Culture Among Jewish Old People in an Urban Ghetto, Barbara Myerhoff gives us a beautiful ethnography that reads at times like a personal narrative, at others as a memoir, and yet at others as a novel based on true stories. We are led through Myerhoff’s experiences of getting to know her subjects, and her development of personal relationships with them. We get to know them, and this is her greatest achievement: her ethnography’s subjects emerge from the page as complex human beings, with very intricate personalities and histories. She also reveals a lot to us about her intellectual and emotional process as an ethnographer, about the Center’s members’ reception and adoption of her (and how she perceived herself affecting the space,) but also about her personal interventions, feelings, and reactions to situations –which revealed her personal involvement in the lives of her subjects and her developing investment in the workings and politics of the Center.

This is not a study that was content aiming at objectivity, but instead it’s a study where Myerhoff embraced the development of this work as part of her personal life history. I feel this was an appropriate, kind, and intimate way to present her findings – that labored to preserve (and communicate) a sense of respect towards the very difficult histories and experiences that the old people were sharing with her, and that also showed the affection she developed for them, as well as communicated a view into an intricate world I knew nothing about, prior to reading her work.

Myerhoff’s inclusion of her own grandmother’s story in the last chapter (Pp. 237-240) –as she is describing with admiration the ways of survival, paths to growth in the face of patriarchy and adversity and the physical, emotional and mental strength of the elderly women of the Aliyah Senior Citizens’ Center – reveals her connection of her personal family history to the stories and people she found at the Center. Also her choice to include as her first chapter the stories she gathered in private from Shmuel (where we learn about his private home life, his politics, and learn of his death early in the work – but then his presence and opinions reappear as part of subsequent stories,) shows how she emotionally privileged this relationship through her process of doing this work. Her own stance as an intellectual and her class privilege and personal politics allied her ideologically to Shmuel’s own positions and this served to foreground the basis for their close friendship. So we see the rest of the stories privileging her/his perspective, because we are aware as we read the whole time, of their political feelings towards many of the situations at the Center.

[Garrett Zecker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Number Our Days is an amazing and often touching ethnographic and anthropological study of a Jewish community center in California. Myerhoff offers a 360° view of every aspect of their lives, which is a window into not only the Jewish community, but the aged Jewish community, the community of the elderly, the relationships within a system of government no matter how small, the relationships between men and women, the dynamics of married life, and even the often difficult and dedicated life that an anthropologist leads and what the importance of telling every story correctly in their work. Myerhoff spent close to six years with this group of senior citizens before tragically passing away at a young age, and her work speaks volumes about human interaction and compassion regardless of the setting of this text. I urge anyone to read this for lessons on the elderly or on their own existence, and how to fit in culturally in a world that seems to be disappearing around you.



A wonderful book.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barbara Myerhoff creates a wonderful picture of the treatment of elderly people in our society. She is an anthropologist who decides to study a people that she will one day be a part of, a community of old Jewish people living in Venice, California. What she finds at the center is a group of people who are still fully alive and intent on living their life to the fullest, but who are ignored and degraded by their families and by society as a whole. I went into this book, which I had to read for a class, with trepidation. I've found that one of the few things that brings out my emotional side is old people. For this reason I, like most Americans, tend to shun the extremely old for fear of seeing into what our own future will look like. After reading this book, I realized just how wrong I was. Yes, seeing how our bodies and minds will degrade with age is shocking and uncomfortable, but how our society treats old people is even worse. Seeing what these people have gone through and how they have been treated makes me even more determined to try to make their situation better.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the concept of this book, and I learned a lot, but the style bugged me. Myerhoff's writing is usually engaging, but a lot of times you can tell when she had to re-create the dialogue because it doesn't sound realistic and that's annoying. Also, she's an anthropologist and I felt like sometimes she quoted other anthropologists without enough support for those of us who don't know anything about anthropology. She had thorough end notes, but I really would have preferred footnotes so that I could read them as I went and not have to keep flipping back and forth. Minor point, I realize, but it was irritating.

[Conal Frost · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this, I really wish I had religion.

A stunning portrait of a (at the time) disappearing community of elderly Jewish people. Very interesting to see how much has changed politically and culturally since it was written.

I deeply wish I had had the chance to meet some of the incredible men and women written about in this book.

A must-read for anyone interested in American Jewish history.

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was assigned to read this book for a class, but I found it to be full of charming characters! I particularly liked Shmuel Goldman, a wise, abrasive, caring, gentle man. How could you not like a man who describes the love he has for his wife, "Since [we met], that was fifty-four years ago, we've been holding hands together. That's why I could never make a lot of money. I wanted to hold her hand always."

This is an ethnography, so if you get frustrated with anthropological arguments and theory and just want a story, this may not be a book for you.

[Connie D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating anthropological study of a group of aged Jewish people. I especially loved the humorous and poignant stories they told about their lives in the shtetl and about their traditions. There were so many lessons to learn about how to age vibrantly; this would be a great book to read with a book group, resharing the lines, stories, lessons, that most moved or struck you. (I didn't add a fifth star just because at times it's a little too anthropological, at times there's too much analyzing and summarizing.)

[Daughters Of Abraham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is cultural anthropology about a group of elderly Jewish residents in a senior living center. Although the residents are mostly secular, they are fiercely Jewish. This book shows how some Jewish people are can be culturally, morally, and ritually Jewish, even when they are not well connected to formal worship.
Enjoyable book to read. Made a good discussion about family, loyalty, ritual.

[culley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hauntingly resonant and surprisingly funny at times. The importance of community and ritual, how we age and survive, how we live, what makes for grace… I greatly appreciate the sections on how important it was for the center members to be seen, but really found it discouraging how the fought and bickered and how this was essential to their process. The section on witchcraft in the center was fascinating.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Myerhoff offers an intimate peek into Jewish culture, into the inner workings of a group of elderly Jewish immigrants from the Old World who are coping not only with their old age, but also with life in modern American. Humor, joy, irony, sorrow, anger, and bittersweet moments weave their way through the people she describes and quotes. I read this book over 20 years ago, and I'm going to read it again.

[Nella ☾ of Bookland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, this one was unexpectedly touching. I love the elderly; society tends to throw them away, as if they've run the course of their usefulness. But as Myerhoff captured in her ethnology, our elders have so much richness and wisdom to share. Their stories deserve to be heard.

Myerhoff beautifully gave a voice to this specific community of elderly Jews, capturing the heart and whit of the people she interacted with.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do we find meaning? What does culture mean to us and how does it shape us? How do we stay alive, truly alive, as we age. This book helps us find our way through the stories of an elderly Jewish community in LA. Such lovely stories told with respect and intelligence. I highly recommend this book.

[Cwoods · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great account of Jewish traditions and aging from a qualitative research perspective. Barbara Myerhoff provides rich text and quotes from those individuals she researched at the Aliyah Senior Citizens' Center in Venice, California. If you are eager to interview an elder in your family or circle of friends, read this book first to gain insight of aging, culture and enduring strength.

[Jane Granzier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another college book that has stuck with me. Story of a non-practicing Jewish woman who considers herself "culturally" Jewish but not religiously so. As she studies the aging Jewish population of Venice Beach, CA as part of her PhD work, she is drawn back and chronicles what she learns from these older people as well as her decisions for becoming more spiritually engaged. Funny and touching.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbara Myerhoff engages in a study of elderly Jewish men and women who congregate at a Jewish Center each day. Their life stories, challenges, disagreements, adventures, and love of life are all viewed in an intimate way that explore what it means to grow old as a good Jew. The real life characters are ones you will remember long after you finish reading this insightful study.

[Jennifer M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book when I was about 21 spending the summer at my mom's- who lives off the grid in a little camper in the hills of New York. It happened to be lying around so I picked it up. I LOVED this book. It was heart warming and heart breaking. It was a privledge to read about the values, challenges and triumps of the individuals as I settled into my own journey of reevaluating my values.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very moving book about elderly Yiddish speaking Jews and how they try to maintain their dignity and Jewish practice. Myerhoff writes the book so that you feel as though you are a member of the community at the Aliyah Center.