JES 504 Death, Burial and Mourning in the Hebrew Bible
Faculty: Reb Simcha Raphael (Profile)
ABOUT THE COURSE
Within the Hebrew Bible are to be found a variety of teachings and perspectives on death and dying, burial and mourning, and views of afterlife and immortality. This course shall investigate a tapestry of Biblical texts on death and dying with a dual perspective — looking historically at how death was understood in the Ancient Near East of the 1st and 2nd millennia BCE, and looking with a contemporary lens at what we can learn from ancient Hebrew and Israelite civilization for responding to the reality of death today. The intention of this course will be to help students harvest from Biblical tradition philosophical wisdom and practical guidelines for dealing with all facets of the human encounter with death in our times.