Meet Stuart Himmelfarb, a student in the Academy of Lifelong Learning at the NYU School of Professional Studies. For Stuart, lifelong learning isn’t just about personal enrichment—it’s a way to build community, challenge stereotypes, and redefine what it means to age with purpose.
Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself
A: “I’m Stuart Himmelfarb, a lifelong learner and co-founder of B3/The Jewish Boomer Platform, which focuses on rethinking aging and engaging older adults in meaningful, civic, and intellectual life. My background includes a career in advertising before shifting to my small nonprofit, B3, with David Elcott (Taub Professor of Practice in Public Service and Leadership at NYU Wagner).
Through B3, I’ve led intergenerational volunteer efforts and advocate for a shift from outdated age stereotypes to a mindset of ‘functional aging,’ where people are defined by their interests and capabilities, not their birthdate.”
Q: What brought you to NYU and why did you start taking courses?
A: “I was a senior fellow at NYU Wagner, roughly from 2014 to 2019. Around the same time, I started taking Susan Matthias’ classes. I was seeing the emails about courses, and one that caught my eye had to do with the Odyssey—and I don’t know which was first, the Odyssey or the Iliad—but I did both. I’d never read them, other than excerpts in high school, and I went to an undergraduate college that had no distribution requirements. I took all these great courses, but I didn’t take a lot of the basics. So, I decided at this stage of my life I wanted to fill in some gaps. And it’s a lot easier to tackle something like that when you do it as part of a group.
I have found the NYU offerings to be interesting. I always check to see what’s being offered, especially to see if Susan is teaching, and now it’s kind of part of what I do. The nonprofit work I do is not full-time, so I’m really flexible in my timing, and I’m able to take courses.”
Q: What was the experience like?
A: “I took five or six semesters of courses with Susan Matthias. She is an incredibly gifted and talented instructor. She led the class in a way that combined explaining things while also drawing the explanations out of the group, so there was lots of really great discussion.
What was also great was that she built connections among the students. We all felt that we knew each other. It wasn’t an impersonal Zoom call—we really got to know each other. Some of it was during the pandemic and some after, and a number of us have actually become friendly.
It was such an interesting and diverse group of people, some really well-versed in the classics, and others like me who weren’t, but who brought different backgrounds. I brought more knowledge of Biblical texts from my degrees. We had all these different perspectives, and Susan’s gift was drawing that out and helping us connect ideas. We dove deep into the meaning of the texts, historical context, and comparative issues across the Mediterranean, from Greece to Israel. Every class flew by because the discussions were so lively.
This particular course, and the way Susan taught it, went well beyond the actual content of the Iliad or the Odyssey. It became a really great experience on both a social and intellectual level. So anything she was teaching after that, I was signing on to.”
Q: How has being a student at NYU enhanced your life?
A: “This has been a really positive experience for me, personally, socially, and intellectually. Of course, it’s a terrific subject, but without the right teacher to help you get into it, especially at the beginning, it would’ve been a struggle. I remember during the first couple of sessions, it was tough to read and understand the text. But Susan made it accessible, and that made the whole course work.
I have a lot of praise for her, for the class, and for NYU for bringing it to me. I know she’s teaching the Iliad again in the fall, and I’m actually going to take it again. Now that I’ve got the hang of it, I want to go back and do a much deeper dive, because it really is such an amazing work of literature.”
Q: What is B3, and why did you create it?
A: “B3, The Jewish Boomer Platform, was founded to help Jewish communities better engage Baby Boomers. We saw a gap: while institutions focus heavily on young adults, they often overlook older adults who still want meaning, purpose, and connection. B3 encourages organizations to see this group as a vital asset, not a demographic to be managed or ignored. We also run a website to help people learn what’s happening in the burgeoning active aging field—www.activeagingnetwork.org.”
