Grief Rituals: A Jewish Perspective with Mark Raphaely

Good.

Yeah.

I, I don't quite remember in the bio when you immigrated, but often when we think of our grief origin, it's what's the first major death I experienced? But there can be the grief of leaving country you've known, moving really remotely far away from family, and I'm just wondering if anything in your story has those elements of grief-

Mm.

-prior to your dad's death.

It's such a, such a great question, Rebecca, and I really appreciate it because I have to admit, I'd never really thought about it until you started just framing it the way you did.

And there is something about the immigrant story that you're leaving a piece of yourself behind.

And in my case, it was even more complicated because, you know, I'm one of four boys, and my three brothers all ended up in different places as well.

I have one who ended up in London, close to my parents, but one was in Sydney, Australia, which is, you know, not around the corner.

Um-

[chuckles] From anyone

... and, and another who, at the time when I moved, he was living in London.

He ended up coming to New York.

But our family was sort of broken up into, into a million little pieces, and I don't look for any sympathy in that sense.

I recognize truth is, coming from South Africa, the life I had growing up was one very privileged life based on a lot of injustices that occurred to other people.

Mm-hmm.

And those probably only came more into focus for me when I was an adult or certainly, you know, a young adult in my 20s, recognizing some of these privileges that I had.

And so leaving South Africa was, of course, challenging, but my family all left around the same time and found our ways into different parts of the world.

Um, so the grief was actually the mourning of a life that I knew I'd never have again, but it was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that I probably shouldn't have had it in the first place.

And I grew up with a pretty sheltered upbringing in a small Jewish community in Johannesburg, attending a day school that was made up of 500 people who were practically just like me.

And so when I moved to the US and to begin studying in, uh, a, a postgraduate degree, got to meet people, and New York, of course, is a melting pot of, of, of people from all over the world.

So got to meet people from all over the world, and as I say, it was then that it dawned on me just how unique my upbringing was.

And so while I did certainly mourn that it was over, um, I think there was also a sense of gratitude that I was able to start over.

And of course, I was not with Sarah at the time.

This was in 2001 when I moved to New York.