Melanie Waxman: Filling a Need for Seniors at the Myerberg Center

Melanie Waxman has always had a passion for education and Judaism.

Waxman, the tech-knowledge hub coordinator at The Edward A. Myerberg Center, currently lives with her family in Reisterstown, but she grew up on Long Island, attending Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow. “We had the best experience, the best Jewish educators, the best family educators, the best youth directors,” she said.

Waxman graduated from Towson University in 1993 and then worked at Har Sinai Congregation, now known as Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation, as the education director and director of membership until she was recruited to receive her master’s in Jewish education at Baltimore Hebrew University. She was the full-time youth director of a Jewish high school in Florida and has worked at 11 different Jewish sleepaway camps.

“I think anyone who attends either Jewish camp or long-term experiences in Israel or long-term Jewish youth experiences becomes much more active and understanding in the Jewish community,” Waxman said. “Not because they feel bad, but because they love the Jewish community, because it’s brought them joy and support and happiness, and they understand that the Torah is a living, breathing document.”

After moving back to Baltimore from Florida, Waxman said she’s “not a PTA girl,” so when her kids started school, she decided to become a substitute teacher for Baltimore County.

For Waxman, going from Jewish youth education to working at the Myerberg Center wasn’t an intentional choice but something that “just kind of happened.”

“At some point in your life, you wind up taking care of your older generation. For me, it wasn’t my parents; it was my grandfather; and when I was spending a lot of time with him — not out of obligation, by the way, but because he was the best man I have ever known, and I miss him terribly — I wanted him to have the best of everything, so I bought him an iPad, and I was teaching him how to use it, and I was trying to get him to be able to FaceTime his family that wasn’t there with us.”

So, when Waxman saw a post from the Myerberg Center about a part-time job opening to teach technology to seniors, “I kind of just went, ‘Hmm, maybe that’s something I would be good at.’”

Now a full-time employee at the Myerberg Center, Waxman said education on technology for seniors is a major need.

“If our senior adults don’t know how to use their smart devices, they’re going to be incredibly lonely. Yes, some of them still live with spouses or still live in communities that have great things, but so much relies on technology at this point in their lives, and if they don’t know how to use it, then they’re socially isolated.”

“You see the need out there; you’ve got to do something about it. And that’s the need I was able to see I could fill,” she added.

Waxman said she worked with someone at Johns Hopkins University to put together a program to reach out to seniors to fight social isolation. “I just feel like we have to do whatever we can to get our seniors where they need to be to feel comfortable and confident.”

Waxman added that she has an obligation to model the teachings from the Torah. “We’re obligated to teach people … you can give a person a fish, or you can teach them how to fish, and that all stems from Torah, and that’s at the core of everything I do.”

[email protected]