EXPLORING THE GRIEF JOURNEY:
CULTURAL, FAMILIAL, AND PERSONAL DIMENSIONS
Facilitated by: Rabbi Simcha Raphael Ph.D.
Date: Sunday, April 7, 2024 | 10:00 am – 5:30 pm ET
Price: $250.00
Today there is a burgeoning transformation of cultural attitudes to death and a plethora of theories, methods, and practices that guide our work with the dying and bereaved. However, regardless of one’s approach or perspective, there is a growing recognition among spiritual caregivers and helping professionals that one is more adequately prepared for companioning the dying and bereaved by investigating our own personal reactions and responses to death and dying.
Especially in this time of pandemic crisis and its aftermath of grief residue, there are high levels of stress affecting caregivers: being able to wrestle with one’s own personal losses and with the grief one encounters doing this work leaves an individual less susceptible to “compassion fatigue” and more open to caring for others.
With this in mind, this experientially-oriented workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to explore their personal grief journey, as well as how both family of origin and the surrounding culture impact our attitudes towards grief and loss. In the final analysis, we shall look at death as a teacher that gives one the opportunity for psychological and spiritual development.
Facilitator
RABBI SIMCHA RAPHAEL, Ph.D., is the Founding Director of the DA’AT Institute for Death Awareness, Advocacy, and Training. He has served as Adjunct Professor of Religion at LaSalle University, Temple University and the Aleph (Rabbinic) Ordination Program, and currently works as a psychotherapist and bereavement counselor in the Philadelphia area.
Ordained by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi as a pastoral rabbi, he is the author of numerous publications on death and the afterlife, including the groundbreaking Jewish Views of the Afterlife. His website is www.daatinstitute.net.