Rabbi Simcha Raphael, PhD, is Founding Director of the DA’AT Institute for Death Awareness, Advocacy and Training. He completed his Ph.D. in Integral Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and was ordained by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi as a Rabbinic Chaplain. He works as a transpersonal psychotherapist and bereavement counselor in the Philadelphia area, and has served as Adjunct Professor in the Religion Departments of LaSalle University and Temple University and the Aleph Rabbinic Ordination program and in the Art of Dying Institute. He is the author of eight books on death and Judaism, including the ground-breaking classic Jewish Views of the Afterlife, and Spirits, Ghosts and Dybbuks in Yiddish Lore: An Afterlife Journey (2025). daatinstitute.net