I read with interest and enthusiasm Rabbi Ariel Tal's thoughtful and insightful contribution to the thorny challenges that Tefilla Education presents to educator's across the globe. I have had the opportunity to reflect and present on tefilla education for some time since my work with Koren Publishers producing the Magerman series of educational siddurim, and I would like to offer some brief thoughts here based on my work there and on observations visiting day schools across the world.
Rabbi Tal identifies two main challenges to tefilla education - Language and boredom. Not challenges confined to the day school only, these challenges are also faced by adults and communities the world over.
He suggests two main creative solutions to these challenges: 1) Make tefilla interactive by saying/singing tefillot out loud and 2) Less is more: A Gradual system of Tefilla engagement. I would like to respond to these suggestions.
My general experience is that many if not most elementary schools already sing most of the tefilla out loud. Young children in grades K-4 or even 5, are happy to sing, and these tefillot are often beautiful and engaging. However, from 6th grade onward, this approach becomes untenable, as adolescence approaches, when singing is no longer "cool" and is simply not fun anymore. While Carlebach style services may engage adolescents, these cannot be provided on a daily basis, and if they were, they would lose their unique excitement and engagement.
Eric Golombek writes in his article "Engaging Souls: Bringing Elementary Tefillah to Life" “Autopilot tefillah†can appear good in elementary services because of the natural love of young children to sing. Tefillah expert, Saul Wachs, calls this “the Trap†of elementary tefillah (Wachs, 2009). This is because autopilot elementary tefillah leaves nothing in place when children get older and singing does not have any appeal. It is critical that elementary children form a relationship to tefillah so that by the time they get to middle school, they understand it and value it."
I would suggest that many of the challenges that middle and high schools face with tefilla, could be addressed in the elementary grades with more emphasis placed on meaning-making and emotional and spiritual connection building to the tefillot and to God. On the whole, most elementary schools do not believe they have a significant problem with their tefilla program, but if you visit the same students in their middle and high school grades a very different picture emerges. I believe with a comprehensive and holistic approach to tefilla education, that includes opportunities for building an emotional and spiritual relationship with tefilla and with God, elementary school educators can give their middle and high school colleagues a big helping hand (not to mention the critical role they will be playing in the religious development of their students).
This is not to say that these initiatives should be at the expense of the critical tefilla skills building and the mastery of tefilla literacy. But I believe that however limited time one has for tefilla in the school, there is time for both of these aims to be achieved - tefilla literacy and tefilla connection/relationship building.
In his critical essay on Tefilla in day schools entitled "Helping Students Find Their Own Voice in Tefillah: A Conceptual Framework for Teachers", Rabbi Dr. Jay Goldmintz presents tefilla as a golden opportunity to engage in "God Talk" and consider the spiritual growth of ones students. He writes "One of the frustrations of day school education is that there are not always a lot of opportunities to talk about God in a natural and organic way. And aside from informal education, there are not a lot of opportunities to experience a relationship with God. Yet every morning in countless schools, a major opportunity presents itself." I believe too many schools are focused only on tefilla literacy and skill mastery, and miss this daily opportunity for providing chances for students to grow in this way.
Dr. Scott Goldberg in the Educator's Companion to the Koren children's and Youth siddurim laments the scarcity of God-Talk in our day schools. He writes "Engaging children in conversations about God, sharing with children the connectors and disconnectors that you experience related to God, bringing God into the mundane as well as the lofty will help children appreciate that which is transcendent and prepare them for encounters with God." While there are other places in the day school curriculum to talk about God, what better place than tefilla, when we encourage our students to see themselves as standing before God in worship.
While Rabbi Tal in his article does not explore this direction explicitly, he does speak about "teaching values through tefilla", which is an important and creative approach to tefilla education, based on finding opportunities for meaning-making and helping students connect to the tefilot. Many of the elements that he describes, such as this, and creating a "gradual system of tefilla education" where less is more, at the initial stages of the tefilla program in a day school, were central to the educational vision that we built the siddur series on at Koren, in order to give the tefilla educator a resource in the siddur to use in the achieving of these lofty tefilla education goals.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2016 04:12PM by mlb.
