Instructor of Jewish Practices

Richard A. Light grew up as a child of the only Jewish family in Gunnison, a small mountain town in Western Colorado.  After graduating from the University of Colorado, he studied Judaism in a yeshiva in Jerusalem and in the rabbinic program at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (now called the American Jewish University).  Mr. Light has published four books on Jewish rituals and practices relating to death and dying, one of which won a 2016 Nautilus Book Award. In 1996 he co-founded his local Chevrah Kadisha (a traditional Jewish organization whose members prepare Jewish bodies for burial and support the bereaved in their community) and led it for 18 years. From 2006-2023 he volunteered for a national nonprofit, helping to arrange education, training, and technical assistance for bereavement committees and Chevrah Kadisha groups throughout North America. During that time, he also taught online full-semester courses on Jewish death practices to students from the USA (including Puerto Rico), Canada, Israel, Spain, and other countries. Since the summer of 2023, he has been part of the team creating and managing  the Ben Zakkai Institute, an innovative educational organization providing opportunities for deep learning around Jewish end-of-life rituals, traditions, history, and practices.  In addition, he is on staff at JADE (the Jewish Association for Death Education), where he is writing curricula for webinars and classes. He was the designer of the Hineni tool and continues to make it better.

He lives in Santa Fe, NM, where he continues to teach and raise awareness about Jewish death-related rituals and customs at the local, state, and national levels.  

Richard A. Light has been teaching spiritual development in various ways for four decades and has been studying and practicing meditation for five decades.  He teaches about conscious living and dying, as well as Reb Zalman's, "Spiritual Eldering" approach to aging.