rafa kern

The name rafa, pronounced with a soft h like in human, is short for Rafael, with the name of God elided in the standard Brazilian shortening. rafa is a Brazilian Jew who studies how spiritual/religious practices shape minds, by which he mean the stuff we use to navigate the world, and how they help us become wiser, or better at navigating the world. More specifically, he is heading to Jerusalem to begin his dissertation research on how the stories Jewish-identified emerging adults encounter during a year of intensive text study in Israel shape the stories, images, and metaphors they live by. He is a Ph.D. student in the Education and Jewish Studies concentration at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.