I have been reading the ongoing tefilah discussion with interest as I, like many of the dedicated educators on this list, have devoted a significant part of my career to the improvement of tefilah for our students and communities. The major issues, from my 25years experience with daily middle school and high school minyanim and with teen minyanim on Shabbat and yom tov, are threefold and in no specific order: a lack of kavod hatefilah, an imposed meaning of tefilah, and the lack of recognition by the students that tefilah should mature with the individual.
The community shuls need to model proper kavod hatefilah. Whether it is a fast tefilah or a slow tefilah, whether it is a group of students with various focusing challenges or a group who want to sing, the tzad hashaveh is always kavod hatefilah. Participants need to be trained that they may not talk and they may not disrupt others’ tefilot. It would not be tolerated in a concert hall and it should not be tolerated in shul. But even as decorous the davening can be in school, when the students return to their community shuls and the talking and disruptions are de rigueur, the students learn to be dismissive of tefilah by osmosis. The schools and shuls need to partner and make the decorum at tefilah universal.
Like any successful curriculum, tefilah must spiral to enable review, growth, and self- reflection, as the students mature. We need to give the students the opportunity for what we called many years ago, the “Skinnerâ€ian light bulb - the “aha†moment where the individual realizes the personal benefit to tefilah and also buys in to the greater community of those in prayer. As I learned many years ago from Saul Wachs, there is beur tefilah, which is imposed on the student, and Iyun tefilah which is the self- discovery and reflection where the student becomes attached to the prayer. I refer to the matbea she’tavu chachamim as the language to engage students in the concept of God and how we apprehend and appreciate the awesomeness of the Divine.
This challenge is often both remedied and exacerbated by the use of the same siddur from when they were in younger grades to their current stage. As I explain to parents: We can teach elementary school math from a calculus textbook, but why would we? The siddur that was exciting in first grade is foreboding and meaningless in the intervening years. Its meaninglessness, in terms of the students’ abilities to connect with the words, increases the detachment from the tefilah. But it can be utilized as a tool by which the student self- evaluates their growth in both the mechanics of tefilah and the personal attachment to God and the community.
In sixth grade and repeatedly in seventh and eighth grades, I use the metaphor of mountain climbing to describe the daily (and by extension, the lifetime) tefilah experience. In a graphic we develop over the course of a semester, we locate the different plateaus on the mountain range and how we need to climb there, rest, and gather our thoughts and energy before we move on. The zenith of our climb is the Amidah experience, and then we don’t descend; rather we remain at that plateau and start climbing to the next peak again the next day. Even tachanun takes on a different meaning for many students using this metaphor: having climbed the peak, one is now able to pour out their heart to God like King David and other prophets and leaders did.
As an example for spiral, review and self-reflection I posit Yigdal and Adon Olam. While the students have been reciting these piyutim by rote since kindergarten or earlier, we dust them off in 6th grade and then again in 8th. We start the year by simply asking the students, “Who or what is God?†We generate a list of ideas and phrases by brainstorming and then think-pair-share their answers until we draft a list. We then split into groups and look for these ideas in Adon Olam and Yigdal. The unit closes with the question, “Why were these two piyutim included in the shacharit?†Each student identifies the need to appreciate and be reminded of the awesomeness of God before they can approach and communicate with the Divine. Another variation is “where does the awesomeness of God show up in your life?â€
Tefilah, then, over the years of spiraling, becomes personal; a meaningful interaction with God, if only in expressing the awesomeness of God through the matbea she’tavu chachamim. ¬Which in and of itself is not a poor outcome.
There is another aspect of kavod hatefilah which many don’t realize; self-discipline. We exert a lot of energy on singing and “feel good†activities for the group, but at the core, tefilah is a mitzvah and as a commandment, it demands to be followed. A protestant work ethic needs to be introduced to tefilah. The same way we (should?) inculcate feelings of success in math or Tanach, or any subject, we need to encourage the risk taking inherent in the successful maturation of adolescents with tefilah as well. How many of our students remain stuck at a 4th grade emotional relationship to davening? When do they, as individuals, take on the personal obligation to daven with a minyan? Getting up early, not on a school day to daven with a minyan, requires fortitude and regularity. It doesn’t come without training and buy-in from the home-school-shul partnership. As another metaphor, one doesn’t become an Olympic athlete without dedication and grit. Tefilah demands our personal best, and students need to discover the satisfaction and feelings of personal best with their training and development.
Tzvi Klugerman
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2016 05:36AM by mlb.
