Seekers of Meaning 5/17/2024: Reb Simcha Raphael, author of “Musings With The Angel Of Death: Poems of Love, Life and Longing”

Jewish Sacred Aging Podcasts

On this week’s episode of the Seekers of Meaning TV Show and Podcast, Reb Simcha Raphael, Ph.D., discusses his new book of poetry, Musings with the Angel of Death: Poems of Love, Life and Longing.

Intense and deeply personal, this compilation of poetry, grapples with the reality of death, loss, and finding meaning in the face of life’s finitude in contemporary times. For more than three decades, Simcha Paull Raphael has written scholarly books on death and the afterlife, including his groundbreaking study Jewish Views of the Afterlife. In this collection of thirty-six poems, Raphael invites us into the inner sanctum of his own intimate wrestling with death and loss. As Rabbi Jill Hammer writes in the Foreword: “Raphael has done the brave work of exposing his own emotional life, the inner workings of his drive to address mortality and immortality. In a sense, he has let us know the behind-the-scenes of his academic and spiritual work.”

These poems reflect and wrestle with a spectrum of topics: the gamut of Jewish death rituals (funeral & shiva, Kaddish & Yizkor); personal tributes to the author’s deceased parents; his journey of making meaning in the face of grief and loss; challenges of love and marriage; the vicissitudes of family life; and thoughtful poetic reflections on the state of the world today. As a book mirroring the universal journey of awakening to the reality of life’s finality and eternity, Musings with the Angel of Death speaks to the heart and soul.

Seekers of Meaning TV Show and Podcast Now Available on Roku Streaming Service

You can add the Jewish Sacred Aging TV channel to your Roku streaming subscription by visiting this page: https://channelstore.roku.com/details/600964/jewish-sacred-aging.

You can also watch this week’s show in the player below. The shows now include closed-captioning for the deaf or people with a hearing loss. Click the “CC” button on the video player to activate closed-captions.

Listen to the Audio Podcast

You can listen to the audio podcast version in the player below, or subscribe to the podcast in one of the popular platforms by clicking one of the buttons below the player.

• Apple Podcasts
• YouTube
• Spotify
• Podchaser
• Amazon Music

About the Guest

Rabbi Simcha Raphael

Reb Simcha Paull Raphael, Ph.D.

SIMCHA RAPHAEL, Ph.D., is the Founding Director of the DA’AT INSTITUTE. He has worked as a death awareness educator, bereavement counselor and hospice chaplain for over twenty-five years. Ordained as a Rabbinic Pastor by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, he received a doctorate in Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and has written extensively on the topics of death, bereavement and the afterlife

The post Seekers of Meaning 5/17/2024: Reb Simcha Raphael, author of “Musings With The Angel Of Death: Poems of Love, Life and Longing” appeared first on Jewish Sacred Aging.