Barry Kislowicz is the Global Division Director at the Center for Educational Technology in Israel. Prior to making aliyah last summer, Rabbi Dr. Kislowicz spent twelve years as principal and head of school at the Fuchs Mizrachi School in Cleveland, OH. He is the...
Empowering Prayer Communities through Religious School Worship
Saul Kaiserman (skaiserman@emanuelnyc.org) is Director of Lifelong Learning at Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York. As Reform Jews, we cherish our autonomy while simultaneously valuing our link to the Jewish historical arc. This can generate tension,...
Making Space for God in Tefillah
Ariel Wolgel is currently a proud stay at home mom to twin two-year olds. She taught 5th and 6th grade Jewish studies at Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit for seven years, and is a graduate of the Pardes Educators Program. Ariel Wolgel challenged her students...
On Becoming a Tefillah Educator
Jay Goldmintz suggests that the tefillah component of the school day should receive as much attention and preparation as any other class. I myself often feel that tefillah is the most exhausting part of my day… I desperately seek the goal…of creating a space where...
Creating a Meaningful Tefillah Experience through the Lens of Adolescent Development
Moshe Drelich presents a summary of his doctoral research, which explored the long term impact of a seventh-grade tefillah program. The full dissertation is available at http://bit.ly/2l7ASGV. Connecting Whenever I encounter a young child in synagogue on Shabbos, in...
Jewish Meditation in the Context of Prayer: A case study in an Orthodox Jewish high school
Hillel Broder introduced meditative tefillah into an Orthodox high school and documented student reaction. He shares with us both his practice and research. Introduction Although students at Orthodox schools typically spend about 10% of their academic day engaged in...
Attention! The Challenges of Prayer in an ADHD Society
Simcha Chesner explores the needs of ADHD students in tefillah. The application of these ideas to a broader range of students, who seem attention-challenged during tefillah, is worthwhile investigating. Studies indicate that between 5 to 15 percent of children suffer...
DEEPER: A new model for writing goals for tefillah
The authors propose a new model for generating educational goals appropriate for tefillah. Schools need to articulate goals for tefillah, whether it occurs in the classroom or in the synagogue. While this may seem selfevident, our shared experience indicates...
Tefillah, Meaning Making Skills, and Spiritual Literacy
Joshua Ladon explores paths to meaning-making as a function of literacy, with a focus on tefillah. There is an odd phenomenon when it comes to the importance of tefillah in Jewish Education. Despite the dedicated position it has in many Jewish educational programs...
Tefillah in a Community Day School
Sharon Freundel describes the theory and practice of tefillah in a community day school. Rav Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, in his commentary on the siddur (Olat Re’ayah, Vol. I, p. 11) waxes poetic on prayer: We can only pray properly when we recognize that in fact the...