How to Live to 114

By Shlomo Maital

Yisrael Kristal

   The world’s oldest man, Yisrael Kristal, passed away quietly in Haifa on Friday August 12 and was buried the same day.   He was officially recognized by the Guiness Book of Records.   It is said that only the righteous die on the eve of the Sabbath.

   Just think of what this man lived through. He was born in Zarnow, Poland, on Sept. 15, 1903, to a religious family, 3 months before the Wright Brothers made the first manned flight. When he was 10 his father fought in World War I and was taken prisoner. His father died in 1919.     Kristal learned how to make candy and opened a factory in Lodz. He married his wife Feige, and at the onset of WWII they had two sons, aged 8 and 10.   Both sons died in the starvation conditions prevailing in the Lodz Jewish ghetto.  

   During the initial years of Nazi occupation, Yisrael survived because of his candy-making skills. The Nazis had him make confections for their parties. But in May 1944 he and his wife Feige were sent to Auswicz. When the camp was evacuated, they did the Death March. Kristal survived, in the end weighing only 37 kgs. (80 pounds). Feige perished.   At the end of the war, Kristal returned to Lodz and re-opened his candy factory.   There, he married Bat Sheva, who also had lost all her family to the Nazis. In 1950 they emigrated to Israel, and had children.  

       At the age of 113, Yisrael had his bar mitzvah – delayed by 100 years owing to the Holocaust. His great-grandchildren, grandchildren and children celebrated with him.

     He was lucid to the end. He remained in his own home almost to the end – his son, a doctor, cared for him, and had him moved to a hospital on Wednesday Aug. 10; he died peacefully two days later.

       The secret of his longevity?   Optimism. He loved his country, and was a perpetual optimist. I think he found immense satisfaction in building a new family, with many great-grandchildren, in a new country, and outliving his persecutors.  

       Optimism and hope for the future are wonder drugs. We should use them more widely, even if we are not 114 years old.