Recommended book: The Grief Journey and the Afterlife: Jewish Pastoral Care for Bereavement

This book synthesizes an understanding of traditional Jewish rituals of death and mourning, with contemporary psychological perspectives on grief and bereavement. In addition, Simcha Paull Raphael integrates the traditional understanding of Jewish mourning rituals with little-known teachings from Jewish mysticism on the afterlife journey of the soul. The Grief Journey and the Afterlife provides practical guidelines for walking the mourner’s path, for both professional care-givers and those wrestling with grief and loss, and their families.

“Simcha Paull Raphael is a skilled and compassionate guide to the terrain of grief. His elegant weaving of Jewish customs, psychological wisdom and visions of the afterlife provides an invaluable resource for anyone caring for Jewish mourners on their path from loss towards wholeness.”

-Rabbi Dayle Friedman, author of Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older: Finding Your Grit and Grace Beyond Midlife

Simcha Paull Raphael, Ph.D. is the Founding Director of the DA’AT INSTITUTE for Death Awareness, Advocacy and Training (www.daatinstitute.net). He is Adjunct Associate Professor in Jewish Studies at Temple University, and in private practice as a transpersonal psychotherapist and spiritual director in Philadelphia. Ordained by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi as a Rabbinic Pastor and is a member of the Rabbis Without Borders Network. He has written extensively on death and afterlife and is author of groundbreaking Jewish Views of the Afterlife.

Published by Albion-Andalus Books, 2015. Click on the title to purchase a copy of  The Grief Journey and the Afterlife: Jewish Pastoral Care for Bereavement.

Watch Rabbi Raphael’s conversation with Rabbi Address on Jewish Sacred Aging’s “Conversations” program.

Part One

Part Two