Davening in the Summer?

Some of you may have seen this article in ejewishphilanthropy.com (I tweeted about it today) titled The Five Lives of a Jewish Day School Grad by Micha Lapidus. He presents one profile of the graduate:

2. Spiritual Life. After davening on a regular basis, living the rhythms of the Jewish calendar, and participating in limmudei kodesh (study of Jewish texts and topics) our graduates should be spiritually connected. While this spiritual connection may take many forms and guises as it necessarily evolves and matures, our graduates should be spiritually vibrant and engaged human beings. While I often wonder whether our students are “connecting” during tefila I have no doubt that they will miss the experience of setting aside time in the middle of their daily routine to pause, reflect, refresh, and connect. Rather than simply “missing” this context for spiritual exploration, our graduates should find new outlets and ways of connecting once they've left our schools.

While I agree mostly with the assessment and direction of the article, it really makes me sad to see such "wonderment" and lack of doubt that students won't continue davening when the school year is over.  Indeed it is nice that students "should be spiritually vibrant" upon matriculation, but how is your school evaluating this?

Any Takers for a Shiva Minyan?

What does it mean when your shul sends out the following email?

A member of our congregation is unfortunately sitting shiva for his parent.  It has been brought to our attention that he has not been able to get a minyan all week. 

Please, whether you know him or not, and if you are able to - please help him make a minyan tonight or tomorrow morning. 

A community is hard to establish and even harder to maintain.  In light of my recent post asking about minyan times and when the entire congregation gathers together as one - this recent email had me thinking about a reciprocal problem: how to best to garner commitments from people to sustain each and every minyan!

My father was a person who was adamant about supporting and sustaining a daily minyan and I remember once, when I was on recess in afternoon Hebrew School, leaving the basketball game at the request of the shul beadle to help make a minyan.  I could hear my father willing me out of my free time exercise to go help those that wanted to say kaddish; I think this says a lot about the value of community and the sacrifice of individuals for that cause.

One of the essential questions that drives this blog is how one can evaluate the success of teaching tefilla and I have struggled to share and offer qualitative resources.  Two instruments to measure 'success' is counting who shows up or whether the prayer happens on a regular basis.  If it is a school minyan, does the tefilla start on time or is it delayed because of stragglers?  Or despite the enthusiasm, can you celebrate that the tefilla has happened each day of the school year?

Regardless if these are your instruments to evaluate, sending out the above email to your congregation is a poor indicator of tefilla values.  Either there is a lack of attention to sustain a minyan under more extreme circumstances or there is a significant lack of kindness extended to those out of your immediate circle of friendship.   

Who's Afraid of an Evaluation?

It is May and the end of the school year is very much in sight.  Students are counting down, teachers are also counting down, and administrators are busy evaluating and making decisions that will impact next year's academic schedule.

However I am finding that some schools just don't want to talk about tefilla.  Doesn't matter that it is now "late" in the year - as it was during the summer prep time or in the beginning of the year preparing for the High Holy Holidays.  It is often stated that tefilla is an important part of the curriculum and that they are searching for ways to improve student engagement and participation but when given the opportunity to actually get free resources on the topic, some people are too busy with other important matters to give tefilla attention.

Pardon my frustration but isn't everything happening in a school important; rather there is a sophisticated juggling of priorities to ensure a clear educational message of content and values. How then does it seem that tefilla is always slipping to the bottom?  If you disagree, PLEASE speak up.

Educator Guest Post: Tzvi D. Daum

I am ever looking for educators that are experimenting with successful approaches to davening. If you, or someone you know, dabbles in the craft of teaching tefilla, please suggest they contact the blog.  

The following post is from Tzvi D. Daum, an experienced educator who actively incorporates technology into his classroom.  He is also the creator of TorahSkills.org. 

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In my school, I daven together with a group of 6-8 graders with the type of background I described in my Lookjed post.. many of them come from homes where parents hardly go to shul and if they do.... I find that even in very religious schools teffillah is very hard for this particular age group and I believe it is a struggle all around. As such, our main focus has been to train students about how to "act" during davening. The number one rule being not disturb others who wish to daven (talking etc) and to respect the sanctity of a shul, keep siddur open to the place etc. Hopefully once they get older they will know how to act in a shul and feel comfortable there. My understanding is that for better or for worse we are not the only ones with this attitude...

Having said that we do speak twice a week during Shacharit about the importance of prayer and different aspects of it. Also, we recently introduced a "Minyonaires Club" where students are graded in four general areas 1) coming on time 2) Not talking 3) Saying certain parts of davening out loud (and the fourth category escapes me at the moment...maybe it is having the place)...in any event, the daily results are put on a chart in the hallway and students enjoy checking it. Basically one successful day entitles students to an ice cream at lunch, a successful week is some other prize and after a month there is a catered lunch and the students have their pictures hanging on the wall in shul as members of the club (there is some leeway for the occasional messup). I apologize for not being up on all the details as I don't actually administer the program, however I can certainly speak to the ones who do and get you some feedback as to its effectiveness to date. I would say we introduced it about six weeks ago. I find at this age you will have students who will naturally daven, others who simply won't and most are probably a couple of shades in between.

Tzvi D. Daum

Rav Schachter's Advice for Teaching Tefilla

I have been meaning to share the following interview With Rav Schachter about leading tefillah in day schools (I found this and other resources on tefilla at YU's High Sschool Chinuch Community website).

Whether you know who Rav Hershel Schachter is or not, I think that this video offers a candid glimpse into Orthodox Judaim's educational approach and qualms about tefilla.   Rarely in life do you see an interview of someone tops in their fields talking about the basic A, B's and C's of their subject field and pedagogical approaches for high schools students.

I am amazed at this interviewer's (Rabbi Kenny Schiowitz) approach to the challenging scenarios for contemporary educators and what questions were posed and not posed to this scholar.  Further, it is important to note how Rav Schachter is very open that he doesn't have much practical experience with implementing such approaches in the classrooms "with younger children".  The following are my gleanings from the Rav Schachter's answers:

• Tefilla should be considered optional in schools were students would want to opt out.
• Teaching the siddur is more important than teaching gmera (Talmud)
• Even Rav Schachter abbreviates his tefilla to accommodate what the community does - but it is important for teachers to be with their students, even if you have to interrupt your own tefilla.  
• The repetition of the leader (hazerat ha'shatz) could be dropped from school tefilla as was the practice of Morrocan Jews following the legal ruling of the Rambam (which reflected a low level of interest in the practice).
• Orthodox kids are not connecting to davening and this needs to be addressed seriously and with educational flexibility. 

As an educator, I think this session opens a lot of questions regarding how tefilla is working in schools today.  Are there Orthodox schools that are implementing any of Rav Schachter's approaches?

Best to end with his final words, "oy, we all have to improve in our davening!"

Can Intellectuals be Spiritual?

This questions came up at shul this past Shabbat.  Is it more difficult for intellectual people to daven?  Try and follow my argument:


My first assumption is that all of the readers of this blog are intellectuals.  By that I mean to cast intellectual in the broadest definition possible; people who extol higher learning and rational thinking.  To be more precise, I mean intellectual with a lower case i.  Perhaps we need to re-learn our own vocabulary to realize just how powerful these words are.  Similarly I would argue that we are all liberals (again with a lower case l, meaning liberalism) which reflects our Western democratic values (liberty, equal rights,. freedom of religion, open and free elections, etc).  While some readers might embrace a political agenda with a capital Liberal or Conservative, we, by virtue of our upbringing and societal influence, are indeed liberals.  Our educational upbringing are similar enough that signify a common direction and I think this reflects current attitutides to teaching tefilla.

With that in mind, I think it is a reasonable deduction that most of us are also intellectuals and thus have invested a great amount of our time in schooling, reading, and professional training that is more "white collar".  The trend for me that is instigating this specific blog post is that I observe a great dissatisfaction among some people in tefilla settings. Many of my co-participants bring books to read during shul, or open a Jewish text to pass the time, or just chit-chat with the person next to them on either a mundane or holy topic (I am not judging).  Further, the highlight of many shul-goers is the sermon/drasha where the attendees sit and receive the inspiration and digest the intellectual discourse.  Learning/reading is indeed easier than it is to daven, but have we detached ourselves from passion and emotion as well?

One final point for this esoteric post:  William Wordsworth wrote, "The world is too much with us" and I find this true today.  With the great competition for attention with information and technology, individuals have a more challenging time reflecting.  It seems that schools today generally succed in preparing our young people to be intellectuals; to read, write and think critically - but do not in helping them daven, why?

Dare We Change Our Educational Approach

One of my personal favorite bloggers and marketing gurus is Seth Godin.  Around my office we call him Rabbi Seth out of appreciation for some of his insights and perspectives.  Which prompts me to share the following anecdote about the job of a rebbe:

A college student once asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe what is his job. The Rebbe gestured to the ceiling of his room and replied:  Do you see that light bulb? It is connected by wires to a power plant that powers the whole of Brooklyn. And that plant is connected to turbo generators at Niagara Falls that power the whole of New York State and more.  Every one of us is a light bulb wired in to an infinitely powerful generator. But the room may still be dark, because the connection has yet to be made. The job of a rebbe is to take your hand in the dark room and help it find the switch.

Seth Godin has a new free book, Stop Stealing Dreams - it is a manifesto, or in his own words, "This is more of a rant than a book".  I think it is a must-read for educators and believe it has much to say about the structure of our schools and how we improve on what we are trying to do.  In graduate school I remember being strongly impressed by John Dewey's works as well as George Counts who questioned the motivation and overall purpose of trying to teach children.

One point that Seth makes in the beginning of the manifesto is that our schools are essentially training students to be obedient and the skill set for an economic reality that has since disappeared.  On the topic of tefilla, I firmly believe that a significant number of Jewish schools, both day schools and supplementary, have similarly not fully adjusted to the reality of a new economic and cultural reality and how to best prepare their charge for living Jewishly post-graduation.  By this I mean the fast pace nature of today's communication systems, the interactive nature of social networking and sharing of information, and the powerful forces of agency working on the individual identities in a post-modern era.  So it is worth reflecting on the meta-educational approach to what it means to teach kids how to daven and how to prevent their proverbial dreams from being stolen.

The Hawthorne Effect and Evaluating Davening

An interesting question was raised out of a recent post - whether it is easier to daven with people around or by one's self?

There are clearly advantages and disadvantages to each and I will not weigh in on either side except to share that I think the rabbis of old wanted there to be a tension; you can decide for yourself, or perhaps your already have.  But I wanted to begin to push our intellectual comfort zone a bit more (isn't that the point of this blog?) to see how our educational institutions teach people about this tension between public and private prayer.

The Hawthorne effect describes how people react to changes in their environment – particularly to the knowledge that they are being paid attention to. Turn up the lights in the factory and productivity goes up. Turn them down and productivity goes up (a nod to Seth Godin for recently sharing this concept).

Pretty much all of school prayer is with the proverbial lights on and teachers watching - and rarely are the results significant (I may have been persuaded that TV camera lights might make difference after seeing the footage of the Beren Academy davening).  The inverse of this theory is not true either - neglecting to coach tefilla will not develop spiritual souls.  So there is obviously a balance of sometimes tuning up the attention and other times easing back - which I think is probably the pedagogical approach of most tefilla teachers.  However, when it comes to evaluating the success of said pedagogy there seems to be an absence of criteria and literature to share and criticize.  Most Jewish Day Schools have tefilla on a regular basis and prayer is a conceptual part of most supplementary schools (formerly called Hebrew school) curriculum - but how are they being evaluated and are the results positive?

Perhaps we need to shine light on the administrators, paying attention to see if tefilla productivity will go up.

Davening Advice From the Yeshiva World

In my snooping (or surfing) around the web, I have come across some pretty interesting tefilla related stuff.  Most recently I re-discovered The Yeshiva World, which apparently functions as a news wire.  More interesting is that they have a "coffee room" that allows for readers to post issues and have an exchange of ideas that have observed in other talkback forums.

In the Tefilla/Davening forum, readers have raised the following interesting topics (just to give you a sampling if you are weary to make the jump):

• Cellphones in Shul
• Good Kedusha Tunes
• Davening at Fast Minyanim
• Shul in Louisville, Kentucky
• Non-slip Taleisim
• "Prayer" for jobless people

and my personal favorite with 91 talkbacks:

• Something I noticed a lot of people do because they probably don't know this

But the topic of today's post is titled "A problem with tefillah":

my problem is that i find it EXTREMELY difficult to daven well. i am always in a rush to get out to work in the morning, and my tefilla is often lip service. and it pains me greatly. ive tried the makom kavua, ive tried concentrating on one small part of davening, and i even tried getting myself an interliner siddur so that i can read the translations of the words. nothing seems to help. and i know, especially in this time period of my life, that i need my teffilos. everyone always says that teffila is a direct connection to Hashem. the thing is, i dont feel in any way that my connection with Hashem is suffering. i talk to Him all the time. and i have a much easier time with saying tehillim then i do with davening. i guess because i dont know the words of tehillim and i HAVE to look inside and concentrate on what im saying. but i REALLY want to improve my daily davening. any suggestions?

I like the honesty of the post and the maturity of the person who seems to be undergoing a process and a struggle.  And the readers responded with some sincere suggestions and a calm debate whether it is better or easier to pray with other people watching or by oneself. 

This comment also stood out:

This always works: Leave time before Shemonah Esrei for 2 minutes to completely empty your head and medidate on the fact that you are literally standing in front of G-d to ask Him for your daily needs and those of the Klal.

Do we teach this concept to our students?  Or provide for a quiet, less rushed moment to reflect before we shuffle and shuckle?  Again I think one of the challenges for educators is that the techniques of meditation are not often taught and sometimes has a bit of hippy dippy stigma to it that pushes many mainstreamers away from trying it.  If davening is a skill that can me taught to the masses, are we really succeeding in imparting the proper tools and desire to practice when they are out of school?  How do you measure this? We are looking for a set of standards.  

Improving and Evaluating Tefilla in High Schools

Responding to a query on the Lookjed list about experimenting with an explanatory tefilla in high schools, Zvi Grumet wrote the following:

Years ago I ran an explanatory/exploratory tefillah. It was mandatory, not optional. Some students appreciated it and wanted to stay, others found it curious and thought-provoking, while others outright hated it. That was to be expected. There were considerable limitations – we were bound by halakhic requirements as well as by time (our tefillah could not be longer than the school’s regular minyan.) The purpose was three-fold – to slow down the pace enough that students could actually pay attention to the words, to allow a few minutes for discussion of ideas related to general issues in tefillah, and to shake-up the experience so that it was not rote. Some of the activity was designed to make students think (there was unfortunately no time for discussion) while there were clearly other activities designed to create tefillah experiences.

As I wrote in a Ten Daat article many years ago, much depends on the kinds of resources (time, space, latitude, etc.) that the school is willing to invest.

I think the most poignant point in Zvi Grumet's comments is the last paragraph (sentence) - indeed, isn't it the limitations of each school's resources that really dictate the dynamic potential of their student's tefilla experience? 

Another respondent to the query was Chana Zweiter who makes a sharp comment about listening to your students to evaluate the success of your tefilla program: 

I would like to share with you comments that yeshiva high school students made after participating in our Ohr Hadash Tefila workshops. The first comment was made by a 9th grade boy during our reflection after one workshop. I asked the students, “What have you learned here about yourself? What have you learned about tefilla?” One student responded,” I learned that I could relate to tefilla better if I had more time to think about it before and after I davened. The trouble is that we don’t have that time in school.” The other comments were made by 10th grade girls. I came back to the school a few months after the workshop to assess the effect that the one workshop had on the girls’ davening. One girl answered that she kept the work sheet that we used in her siddur and looked at it before she davened. “My tefilla has really changed because I focus on it before I daven..” Most of the girls said that “you can’t just have one workshop. We are busy with so many things that the effect wears off unless you keep it up.” 

I think it’s critical to listen to these reflections when implementing tefilla programs. They are telling us how important time, reflection and an ongoing process is to tefilla. We have used the strategy of working with select groups that Rabbi Kaminetsky proposes (not yet with our Ohr Hadash program) when the object is that they become mentors for their peers, the other students. Our approach is based on the positive effects that peer tutoring can have and on a constructivist approach to education where we begin to pave the way and they learn through their own exploration and constructing. And it is based on Rav Kook’s approach to tefilla, making it meaningful by connecting it to our daily lives. We connect it to social and emotional competencies. It’s a spiral effect – the tefilla affects how they develop these skills and the skills affect their tefilla. 

I Am My Prayer

The #1 goal of this blog is to start a conversation on the state of prayer today and gather resources to help educators grow professionally; it hasn't been very easy.  A lot of the resources online and in books on the topic of tefilla are either limited to a specific age group or population and there doesn't seem to be so much cross pollination.  There are only few national leaders or educators that have picked up the banner to improve and evaluate the pedagogical framework of tefilla today.  I appreciate those who have participated in the conversation here, but I pray that more people will spread the word, share, and help connect tefilla minded educators and individuals to collaborate.

For me, one of the most powerful sentences in our liturgy is the following from Psalms 69:14:

ואני תפילתי לך ה' עת רצון

One translation of this pasuk is: But as for me, let my prayer be unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time. (An aside, it was fascinating to see the greater context of this verse which it is not usually read in - I recommend the jump).

Today I'd like to offer an alternate translation: But I am my prayer, to you Hashem, at a propitious time.  The key idea being that I am a prayer - the life I live is an expression of tefilla. Too often people compartmentalize their prayer and their actions, and think their spiritual world does not or cannot flow into their professional lives.  One thing to consider is that we, with our power of prayer, have the ability to make an עת רצון  - a favorable time to daven whenever we want and it isn't always dependent on the season or location and thus carry our prayerfulness whenever or wherever we are.

The reveal here is that this blog is an extension of my own personal tefilla, and not just a professional endeavor. I always pray that my tefilla will go higher and higher, and now add to it that as a collective, we can push the professional field of tefilla teachers and leaders to have a greater impact.

Towards a Theory of Practice

The title of this post was stolen from a 2009 study of the same name written by Saul P. Wachs and published by The Solomon Schechter Day School Association.

The study opens with the following disclaimer:  

This paper is based on a presentation by Dr. Wachs at the Solomon Schechter Day School Association Professionals Conference in January 2008. The conference, which took place at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Las Vegas, was devoted to the spirituality of students and day school professionals.

Dr. Wachs here a comprehensive and thought provoking framework for developing the spiritual dimension of tefilla–a framework that can inform the practice not only of Schechter schools, but all who hope to initiate students into Jewish spiritual life. 

The Solomon Schechter Day School Association offers this booklet as part of its vision of assisting Jewish days schools to be places of ahavat torah and yirat shamayim.

So with that said, I want to share some reflections and critiques that I observed.  I think it is important to state that in my search for materials on the topic of tefilla and how to evaluate its instruction, this is one of the few pedagogical documents out in the public sphere.  

Wachs identifies a lot of the problems with tefilla in day-schools and concludes that it "has to do with what was done when the pupils were young and in the process of forming a basic set of attitudes towards tefilla" and that for most it was an "exercise in skills and nothing more".  I think this to be a astute diagnosis.  To his credit Wachs puts forward a list of suggestions to develop what he calls "omek" (depth) in the service.  One general criticism (and one that some readers have made of this blog) is that the suggestions make for good "one-off" lesson plans that will inspire students for that specific day, but do not create a systematic approach to build  spiritual confidence.  

The title of this booklet - Towards a Theory of Practice - is appropriate in that it I am unsure if a) the approach is anything more than a collection of anecdotal experiences coalescing into a theory and b) if it was ever implemented and analysed for statistical analysis.  (On page 16 Wachs indicates that he surveyed three schools in differen parts of the US).  Some of Wachs' idea for engaging students in "Kedusha and Yofi", dance, poetry and art are worthy approaches but I question whether they offer more than temporal inspirational experiences. Further, are teachers in this school ready to take on this task of moving beyond skills and theory? 

I very much liked Wachs' idea of iyun tefilla - "a process wherein teacher and pupils search together for meanings that are stated or implied in the text" (17).  This conceptual approach is already used by many schools but there is not any standardized or published texts that can be shared with other educators nor is there evaluative research for different approaches, ideologies or ages.  

Over the next two weeks I will be sharing specific nuggets from the booklet that I think are worth noting. One final point, I would also be interested to hear from other teachers, from Conservative, Orthodox and Non-Denominational schools whether this paper reflects a road map to improving tefilla.   

Can Education Alone Save the Jewish People

Recommended Reading from The Canadian Jewish News - By Robert Eli Rubenstein.  The only question I ask on this article is how can we evaluate our educational approach and measure the results?

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Can Education Alone Save the Jewish People?

Since biblical times, we Jews have been a famously contrary lot, and the erosion of traditional values in the modern period has only deepened the divisions. Yet there is a single article of faith proclaimed with startling unanimity and certitude by all who profess to care about the survival of the Jewish people.

From one end of the broad Jewish spectrum to the other, from secular humanists to the most rigidly devout, Jewish education is promoted as the key to securing the Jewish future. In last week’s CJN, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman added his powerful voice to the chorus. As he put it, “Nothing is more crucial to advancing this goal [of ensuring the continuation of a strong Jewish identity] than Jewish education. At all levels, from the earliest age in the home, through formal and informal education at all levels, there is no alternative to exposing the next generation to Jewish values, traditions and identity.”

I began entertaining doubts about the conventional wisdom regarding Jewish education years ago, and these have only increased as I raised my own children and became ever more involved in the lay leadership of the Jewish schools they attended. Let me make clear that I am not saying I no longer value Jewish education. Rather, what I mean is that in the distant past, the lives of our people were suffused with a critical mass of Jewish content, and this preserved in them a strong sense of self as Jews. Today, however, the great majority of Jews wish to replace the actual practice of Judaism with mere knowledge of Judaism. As a consequence of this shift, we tend to have overblown and unrealistic expectations regarding the efficacy of Jewish education in building Jewish identity.

In 1986, the Canadian Jewish Congress, Ontario region, commissioned a “Task Force on Assimilation, Intermarriage and Jewish Identity”, which I was privileged to co-chair. Following an intensive investigative process, the taskforce issued a report setting forth recommendations for counteracting the erosion of affiliation among Jews. Looking back, I am struck by the fact that almost all the recommendations involved promoting Jewish education in one form or another. In the years since, our community’s deep conviction that Jewish education is the panacea for assimilation has continued to grow, as reflected by its ever-expanding investment in Jewish educational facilities and resources. Yet parallel to this trend and notwithstanding our heroic efforts, we have witnessed a relentless increase in the rate of attrition.

Some years ago, I was visiting in Borough Park, a Brooklyn neighbourhood heavily populated by readily identifiable chassidic Jews. While strolling along the main street on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I came across a group of people wearing baseball caps and clutching cameras, listening to a tour guide’s animated explanation of the significance of the different types of garb worn by the local residents. I was intrigued to learn that these were members of a synagogue adult education group from Long Island, who had come to catch a glimpse of how their ancestors in eastern Europe lived long ago. They were no doubt having a fine educational experience learning about their ancient heritage, but this does not mean they had any interest in living significantly Jewish lives themselves. It is the difference between being a spectator at a sporting event and being a player: the self-perceptions and actual commitments of the two are simply incomparable. And if the goal of “Jewish education” is to ensure that there will be Jews in the world of the future, no one could seriously argue that the photo-snapping tourists from Long Island were as likely to have Jewish grandchildren as the bemused black-clad chassidim walking by.

Our Jewish community is one of the most affluent, generous, and dedicated in the world, and we are justifiably proud of the wonderful schools and other institutions that we have created. The great majority of parents I know who send their children to day schools wish them to be Jewishly knowledgeable, so that one day they will be in a position to make informed decisions about how they will choose to fulfil themselves as Jews. Deep down, they hope their children will ultimately vindicate their own life choices by choosing to be just as non-observant as they themselves are. Many are the stories of day school parents, including even some leaders of the community, who have called the principal to complain indignantly about a particular teacher who “brainwashed” their child into requesting that the family start having Shabbat dinners together on Friday nights, at an hour when the parents customarily go out with their friends.

I have acquired from my own Holocaust-survivor parents an appreciation for the sacred imperative after Auschwitz of transmitting a strong Jewish consciousness to the next generation. Although my parents never attended Jewish schools, which simply did not exist in small prewar European communities, their Jewish identity has always been unwavering and vigorous, absorbed intuitively from the personal example set by their own parents in the family home. Yes, I know, times have changed. For this reason, our challenge today is to identify the success factors of times past and try to make them work in our contemporary situation.

The truth is that it requires very little objective knowledge to live a vibrant Jewish life, and in our increasingly interconnected world, this knowledge is easy to attain. The real issue is the individual Jew’s degree of motivation to seek it out and act on it. I can agree with Lieberman and many others that Jewish literacy is a worthy objective, but on the available evidence, I have my doubts that it necessarily leads to the development of a strong Jewish identity. One can acquire a comprehensive Jewish high school education, one can even become a university professor of Jewish studies, without necessarily forming an emotional commitment to living a Jewish life. The key to forming such a commitment is actually doing the rather simple things one has learned about, and doing them consistently. Such observance can move beyond mere nostalgia or folklore and become an integral part of a person’s being. An individual who embraces an all-encompassing core of Jewish activity is apt to seek a like-minded spouse, and together they will strive to raise children on this model.

A respected Jewish community professional recently told me that she herself did not observe any Jewish rituals because she never had the benefit of a day school education. I responded that it does not take very much education to know how to light Shabbat candles, for example. All that is required is the determination to do it and the ability to strike a match. My ancestors, like hers, knew what they had to do to live richly satisfying Jewish lives, without having enjoyed a formal Jewish education. Clearly, something has changed dramatically. If we truly care about securing the future of the Jewish people, as we profess, we owe it to ourselves to examine what that “something” might be, and what we need to do about it.

The celebrated 19th-century German Jewish bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider was a modern man with modern sensibilities, unwilling to lend credence to any religion, including his own. People would ask him in puzzlement why a totally non-observant Jew had chosen to spend his days cataloguing musty old Jewish books with such loving devotion. His unsettling response was that he saw it as his mission to give Judaism a decent burial. If they wish to avoid being among the pall-bearers, the many present-day Jews who share Steinschneider’s modern sensibilities yet yearn paradoxically for a bright Jewish future, need to discover meaning and satisfaction in the Jewish experience beyond merely being knowledgeable about it.

As we survey the contemporary scene, there is, to be sure, much to cause us consternation. But in all fairness, there is also much to give us hope. In Montreal and Toronto and other hubs of Jewish life, we see young people creating dynamic new communities where they devise innovative, stimulating and joyful new ways to reconnect to their sources and celebrate the age-old treasures of Judaism. Throughout our long and tortuous history, we Jews have rebounded from countless existential crises by pulling together. I am confident that in the end, we shall once again meet the challenge, for “a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”

Robert Eli Rubinstein, a Toronto businessman, is the author of An Italian Renaissance: Choosing Life in Canada, which won a 2011 Canadian Jewish Book Award.

Justin Bieber and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

I found the following article on a #jedchat conversation on twitter: Justin Bieber and the principal: The real story by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post.  

While this article is not about tefilla, I think it is inspirational story for educators and serves as a necessary reminder about how we cannot discuss teaching to higher level cognitive abilities - the pursuit of self-actualization - without treating the basic needs of our students.  There are many distractions in and around the classroom, and these especially crowd the arena of tefilla.  Below is a diagram of Maslow's theory: 

At first glance, tefilla seems to be a higher order activity -at the top of the pyramid.  But thinking through this theory more it is clear to me that many people daven solely for their physiological needs, or for safety and for all the different components categorized.  I think that davening can be appropriate for each of these levels but it is immensely challenge to teach and practice tefilla with students at various stages of this paradigm.

For me,  I think in terms of tefilla of the reflective ability to reach my personal potential and missions of the Jewish tradition.  This is very much the vision of self-actualization.  However, modeling this for students who are cognitively, emotionally, or socially at a different place can be a recipe for disaster.  

How to Teach Tefilla - Part 1

So this is the million dollar question - how can one succeed to teach kids how to daven and evaluate your results?

I see the following ten variables at play here:

1. The calisthenics of proper prayer - when to move and what gestures are appropriate
2. Symbolism in the physical environment - being comfortable in any minyan
3. The vocabulary of prayer - what are the key trigger words
4. Hebrew
5. Introspection and self-examination
6. Meditation and blocking out mental distractions
7. God 
8. Repetition of ritual performance and maintaining a sense of purpose 
9. Music and training of the ear to the melodies of tefilla
10. Balancing personal needs with communal benefit

Over the next few weeks I will be suggesting resources and ideas for developing these variables and methodology for evaluating their implementation.   

Evaluating What You Do

Evaluating the work and impact of teachers is one of the more controversial topics on the subject of education reform.

On the topic of tefilla, I am interested on how schools evaluate the progress made by students as individuals or in a group setting? I see the following five possibilities:

1. Attendance - that there are tushes in the seats at the proper time.
2. Spirit- that there is significant participation or a lack of disruptive behavior (are students saying "Amen").
3. Feedback - either compliments or complaints that come to the administrator's desk or formal evaluations that are given to students at the end of semester. (not so clear that it is fair to check if the prayers were answered from above).
4. Overflow - that students attend other prayer events (i.e. shul) or talk about tefilla in other classes.
5. Performance of skills - that individuals demonstrate an ability and/or comfort with specific tefilla skills (leading or reading Torah) that satisfies a benchmark.

These possibilities explore how to evaluate the student - but how does the supervisor evaluate the educator on this aspect of their job. Do you know of specific guidelines for teachers in their professional reviews? What criteria has your school given you to measure your educational return on investments for tefilla?

Some educators have contacted me have to say that they are compensated more for running or attending tefillot in their school and explicitly mentioned that there compensation has no relation to the performance aspect of the students.

What professional standards are in the Jewish Marketplace?