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    May the Angels Carry You: Jewish Prayers and Meditations for the Deathbed
    May the Angels Carry You: Jewish Prayers and Meditations for the Deathbed
    May the Angels Carry You: Jewish Prayers and Meditations for the Deathbed
    Ebook148 pages58 minutes

    May the Angels Carry You: Jewish Prayers and Meditations for the Deathbed

    By Simcha Paull Raphael

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    About this ebook

    "In this book of deathbed prayers and meditations, Dr. Simcha Paull Raphael provides us with powerful insights into Jewish tradition. His look at the role and power of prayer as life ebbs provides the reader with a foundation for comfort, compassion and caring that links us with a sense of the sacred. His desire to have us ritually engaged with life's last passage serves as a practical tool for the mysterious journey at the end of life. May The Angels Carry You guides one's soul with a sense of dignity and celebration of the gift that is our life." —Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, Director, Jewish Sacred Aging "This book is a required resource for any family member, friend, clinician who wishes to offer a breadth of prayers and blessings, and stories for Jewish families and patients. May the Angels Carry You is a gift of compassion. May these teachings of love, tenderness and connection nourish you and flourish in the world." —Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, Co-Editor of Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End of Life Care "Once again, Dr. Simcha Paull Raphael, has mapped the worlds of mystery providing a guide for attending to others and for our own preparation for what is inevitable. May the Angels Carry You is another contribution as we bring the essential conversation out of the shadows so that we end the denial of death that keeps us from living fully." —Rabbi Anne Brener, LCSW, author of Mourning and Mitzvah: A Guided Journal for Walking the Mourner's Path

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlbion-Andalus Books
    Release dateApr 6, 2017
    ISBN9781370506873
    May the Angels Carry You: Jewish Prayers and Meditations for the Deathbed
    Author

    Simcha Paull Raphael

    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 the Jewish Studies program of 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, he has written extensively on death and afterlife, and is author of the groundbreaking Jewish Views of the Afterlife.

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      Book preview

      May the Angels Carry You - Simcha Paull Raphael

      May the Angels

      Carry You

      Jewish Prayers and Meditations

      for the Deathbed

      Simcha Paull Raphael

      Published by Albion-Andalus Books at Smashwords

      Boulder, Colorado 2017

      "The old shall be renewed,

      and the new shall be made holy."

      Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook

      Copyright © 2017 Simcha Paull Raphael

      Published in conjunction with the Da’at Institute for Death Awareness, Advocacy and Training.

      This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, except for brief passages in connection with a critical review, without permission in writing from the publisher:

      Albion-Andalus, Inc.

      P. O. Box 19852

      Boulder, CO 80308

      www.albionandalus.com

      Design and layout by Albion-Andalus Books

      Cover design by Daryl McCool, D.A.M. Cool Graphics

      Cover image by Geela Rayzel Raphael

      ISBN: 978-1370506873

      In memory of colleagues and friends

      who left this world in the prime years of life

      Rabbi Ron Aigen, z"l

      Rabbi Devora Bartnoff, z"l

      Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfield, z"l

      Lisa Kapin, z"l

      Cantor Chaim Rothstein, z"l

      Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank, z"l

      May the spirit of their teachings and

      the songs they sang be remembered

      as a source of love, wisdom and blessings!

      Contents

      Preface

      Foreword by Rabbi Nadya Gross

      Introduction

      What Does It Mean to Pray for Someone Who Is Dying?

      Shema Yisrael

      The Eternal Our God is One

      V’ahavta

      And You Shall Love Adonai Your God

      The Priestly Blessing

      Mi Shebeirach

      A Prayer for Healing

      B’Shem HaShem

      Angel Song

      Gesher Tzar Me’od

      A Very Narrow Bridge

      Psalm 121

      A Song of Ascents

      Vidui

      A Prayer of Transition

      Recited by One Who is Dying

      Vidui

      A Prayer of Transition

      Recited On Behalf of One Who is Dying

      A Techinah for the Deathbed

      Exercise:

      Writing One’s Personal Vidui

      May the Angels Carry You

      A Vidui Song

      Vidui: Meditations of Transition

      1. Purification/Opening to the World Beyond

      2. Invoking the Angels

      3. Leaving Go of the Physical Body

      Prayer for When Life Support Is Being Removed

      Ana B’Koach

      Source of Mercy

      Life Review, Legacy and Words of Comfort

      Pondering the Mysteries of Life and Death

      Afterlife Journey of the Soul in Kabbalah

      Deathbed Stories of the Hasidic Masters

      Psalms of Healing

      Crossing the Bar

      For Further Reading

      Notes and References

      May the Angels Carry You Album

      About the Da’at Institute

      Author Biography

      Preface

      A story is told of an elderly Jewish woman whose death was imminent. In a desire to be helpful, her daughter planned to read her mother selections from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a sixteenth century deathbed manual created by Tibetan Buddhist monks. However, Stephen Levine, a spiritual teacher known for his innovative deathbed work, cautioned her against doing so. The arcane symbolism of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, he explained, would only frighten and confuse the elderly woman. Instead, he encouraged the daughter to read her dying mother Yiddish love songs.¹

      I have always found this story to be emblematic of the cultural deficit of Jewish resources for end-of-life care. While Yiddish love songs have an emotional and sentimental quality for an elderly Jewish Bubby, are there not philosophical teachings and liturgical traditions of Judaism to offer comfort and spiritual nourishment when people are dying? Traditions of ancient deathbed manuals are found all across the globe—the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Christian Ars Moriendi, as well as lesser-known Mesoamerican Toltec, Aztec and Mayan books of the dead—all of which offer liturgies for dying and teachings on the postmortem journey of the soul.² And Judaism? Are Yiddish love songs the only prescribed resource for meeting the needs of the dying and their families? Something seems amiss here.

      The reality is that something is amiss. With modernity, secularization and assimilation over the past two centuries, we lost touch with many of the historical resources Judaism traditionally provided for dealing with dying and the deathbed. Most contemporary Jews (and non-Jews) are more familiar with the Tibetan Book of the Dead than with texts such as Ma’avor Yabok (17th-century Italy) and Sefer HaHayim (18th-century Holland),³ to name but two classical Jewish texts with liturgies and prayers for attending to the needs of the sick, dying and dead.

      In circulation for centuries, these texts—as well as at least a dozen others⁴—were widely distributed in the Jewish communities of Eastern, Central and Southern Europe.⁵ However, today they are largely unknown in North American Jewish life. Even more: many contemporary Jews are not even aware that the deathbed confession—the vidui, a Jewish prayer specifically for end-of-life transition—was once normative and ubiquitous to Jewish community life. With the migrational movement from Eastern and Central Europe to North America, and the shift away from knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew, the deathbed vidui seemed to disappear, relegated in the

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