In difficult times, we turn to Tehillim. We do this because we have always done this, whether in times of personal or national distress. In schools across the world, we have added a chapter or two of Tehillim at the end of tefillah, and our students engage in collective recitation. We will likely continue this practice for as long as Israel and its people are at war and will do so in the future when new challenges come our way. Saying Tehillim connects us to one another and to ancient tradition. It is something we can actively do. 

As educators, we have an incredible opportunity to use this moment to deepen our students’ understanding of Tehillim. Rather than just mumbling words by rote, we can help our students understand what the words they recite actually mean. Rather than mindless repetition, we can help our students connect to the spiritual and emotional responses the words are meant to evoke. We can take this very difficult moment in our lives, our history, and really make it meaningful for our students. We can connect their mouths to their heads and to their hearts. 

So how do we do this? How do we build skills and also support students’ emotional and spiritual needs? How do we combine academic rigor with spirituality, engagement, and meaning-making that fosters internalization, life-long learning, and commitment? I would like to present a model that I used when I taught Tehillim and when I led an alternative, weekly tefillah in high school as a way of reaching both the students’ heads and their hearts. 

Tehillim is well-suited to the head-and-heart approach. Each of the 150 chapters is a work of poetry, employing all of the various literary techniques that poets use: similes and metaphors, alliterations and onomatopoeia, parallelisms, and chiastic structures. The power of allusions is especially heightened; because Hebrew is a relatively vocabulary-poor language, almost every word has connotations that connect to other places in Tanakh, linking concepts and contexts. But all of the psalmist’s literary tools are a means to an end: a tehillah‘s power lies in its ability to resonate with and to stir emotions. An integral part of learning and saying Tehillim is the sensory experience—hearing the sounds, seeing the images and feeling the passions that underlie the words. Tehillim as a whole captures the full gamut of the human emotional experience—from paralyzing fear to ecstatic joy, from anger and anguish to immense awe, from unnerving uncertainty to the foundational belief that I am in a personal relationship with God. It is the emotional elements that have made Tehillim such an integral part of prayer, and not only for Jews. And it is the emotional experience that can turn recitation into a transformative experience.

Let’s use perek 121, “Esa einai el heharim” as our model.

The first step of learning a chapter of Tehillim is geared to the head—students need to first read and comprehend whatever chapter they are about to study, as they would approach a piece of poetry. It is preferable to do this in the original Hebrew to preserve the connotative impact, but it can be done in translation as well. The first read is to get an impression: What is this perek about? Who is it attributed to? Is there a context? What is the tone? 

The second read-through of the perek includes more higher-order thinking. The elements of poetry, like those mentioned above, should be identified, considered, and analyzed. In guiding the second read, we ask the students: What do you notice—are there repeating words? Is the perek written in first person, third person, or both? Are there images or ideas that catch your attention? What do you wonder, what questions do you want to explore? Students should look at each verse, even each word, closely and analytically: What words are used and why might that be? Is there an underlying structure? Commentaries can be introduced to deepen understanding, but the personal engagement is critical. By this point, students should have a solid grasp of what the perek is saying. 

Here are some examples of questions that we can ask students from perek 121, all of which are literary, “head-oriented” questions: Who are the “ma’alot”—where are they ascending from and to? Where are we looking? What do we need help with? Why is there a shift from first person to second, and who is the author talking to? What is the repeating word (shomer) and why is it significant? What imagery does the author use? 

We then turn our attention to the heart—the emotions that are evoked and the images that are conjured. What are images from nature meant to evince? In perek 121, these images include mountains, sun and moon, day and night, and watchmen. When I did “tefillah under the trees,” I would direct the students to look up at the sky, to look closely at leaves or blades of grass, to feel the temperature and the elements on their skins, and to use the sensory experience to connect to something greater than themselves. 

Tehillim refers to God in multiple forms. In perek 121, what does it feel like when we think about God as a fortress, a guardian who never sleeps, a king? We should ask our students: What is the writer feeling and, even more importantly, have you experienced this also? Have you ever felt really lost, afraid, even terrified or hopeless? What comforts and reassures you? What gives you courage and strength? Have you ever felt blown away by awe or overcome with sheer joy? Have you felt the presence of God with you, supporting you, guiding you? These questions create the bridge between the words and the emotions, between the head and the heart. 

Using artistic media to create a head-heart connection is another highly effective methodology. For example, Tehillim were set to music, and even though the original tunes have been lost, there are so many verses of Tehillim that have been set to music, and these songs are a powerful tool to connect the words and their essence. Students may recognize a song and not even realize that they know the words and that the words come from Tehillim. Teachers or students can choose a song for students to listen to and react to, to learn and to sing along with. Songs can be used to spur discussion and even as a form of assessment: Does the music augment the words or detract from them? Is there a different tune that works better? Can you compose a melody? Should the tune be in a major key or a minor one? What instruments would be best to really capture what the words are trying to convey? Students can also be asked to either find or create works of visual art using photography, color, or form to identify or convey what they understand a perek of Tehillim to be saying. One summative assessment I gave on a perek of Tehillim asked students to either create a playlist and explain their choices or to create a powerpoint presentation with images and/or graphics to convey various pesukim, and explain the rationale behind their choices. 

Reciting Tehillim the way we are now, as a community, connects us to one another and our tradition. When we use Tehillim as a model to connect “head” and “heart,” we connect deeply, even profoundly, to ourselves. We are head and heart, mind and soul; nourishing both can turn something rote and repetitive into something moving and transformative.