Google Glass and Tefillin, What?

One way to get people to do the mitzvah of davening with tefillin is apparently to offer Google Glasses to say the blessing - what this author terms "geeky religious marketing".  I think this proves there really is a first time for everything. 

Shared-Post: Giving Prayer a Prayer of a Chance

The following article was published on the 25th of May by Aryeh Ben David in the Times of Israel.  It offers a honest, pointed, and pedagogically sound theory - so why won't administrators and teachers try this approach?  Cliches are reflection of an effectual prayer and I am thinking more and more that we need to reboot our teaching of tefilla.
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Giving Prayer a Prayer of a Chance

Rav Kook writes that one of the signs of the coming of the Messianic Era is that people will begin to hate rabbis. I think we’re getting pretty close.

Why hate rabbis? Because they will still be consumed with the small stuff, the details – and people will want more.

Organized prayer is an example. It’s just not working.

The overwhelmingly widespread disaster of organized prayer in religious high schools and synagogues is impossible to ignore – yet the rabbis keep offering the same worn-out clichés.

It’s not the system’s fault – you just have to try harder

This is how we've always done it and it worked for our grandparents

It’s a slippery slope and if we tamper with anything, the whole system will fall apart

From “lo l’shma – ba l’shma” (doing without connection will eventually bring connection)

It provides community-building

The system is not working – and we’re living the Emperor’s clothes story by choosing to ignore the extent of the problem.

As educators, we know that if one student fails a subject, it’s his fault. But if the whole class fails – then it is the teacher’s fault. Well, what if the whole school fails? What if the whole district fails? What if the whole city fails? Then there is a systematic problem going on which is bigger than any individual student, class, school, or district. That is what we have on our hands.

I was shocked by one particularly ghastly personal educational experience. I asked many orthodox rabbis and educators the following question: If a kid was having trouble connecting to organized prayer and you could look into your crystal ball and saw two potential alternatives – which path would you advise him?

Either: The boy could take a month off from praying the prayer book and just sit, meditate on God, look for God’s footprints in the world, and then after a month begin to say just a few lines – but only lines he was personally connected to and had meaning for him. Then he would keep slowly adding lines for the next months. And your crystal ball told you that this would dramatically improve his prayer focus and depth for the rest of his life.

Or: He would keep praying, trying harder, but there would be no significant deepening of his prayer life for the rest of his life.

To my shock and dismay – EVERY single rabbi and educator answered me that they would not advise taking the first route, even if they knew 100% that it would have positive effects for the next 50 years!

Well, I guess I am a heretic or maybe just an apikoris – but I don’t get the educational wisdom of that approach.

Personally, I took the first route, stopped davening for several month. I sat in tallit and tefillin, reflected on my relationship with God, and very slowly began to add selected words and phrases from the prayer book. The effect on my prayer life has been astounding. I really look forward to praying now. It is personal, meaningful, and from my heart.

The Talmud itself says that the core prayer experience should be “the work of the heart.” We have to bring our hearts into prayer – and today, a vast majority of guys keep telling me that they are just going through the motions.

The relationship with God is a core Jewish and human experience. The morning conversation creates a template for all the other conversations during the day. When kids (and adults) begin the day by having a mindless, unfocused, mumbling, “how long is this going to take and why is the shaliach tzibur taking so long” conversation with God – how does this portend for all of that day’s succeeding relationships?

Fixed and organized prayer serves a need to bring the community together and provides a structure for the formal, external exigencies of prayer. But now kids and adults are wanting more – wanting something that also evokes and responds to the inner voice of their heart and soul. Something that they are connected to and has personal meaning.

If we do not stop and consider how to give it to them – they will simply check out, or go somewhere else. It’s happening all around us.

Let’s not be consumed by the details – the time has come for more. The slope isn't that slippery. Isn't it time we started recognizing that we have a systemic failure on our hands and start seeking beyond the cliches?

If You Could Ask God One Question?

Tefilla is special time to think and ponder - not just to chant words and verses (sometimes I forget this).  One of the biggest tensions in tefilla is that between form and substance - the rules of what must be said and when against the feelings and thoughts of the heart behind the structure. The Mishna in Brachot cites Rebbe Eliezer teaching, "one who makes his prayer fixed (keva) - his prayer is not a prayer (tahnunim)". The natural structural platform for spontaneous prayer is during the shma koleuni section of the Amidah - we you can add your own requests and ruminations.

But what if you only could as one question?  Chief Rabbi Sacks answers this question arguing that it is the "best question anyone should ask God."  I think this is a great exercise to ask your students - and push each person to focus the essence of their prayers and actions.

Who is Your Davening Mentor?

I came across an article by Rabbi Shumely Boteach in the Times of Israel about Eli Wiesel's Healing Jewish Spirit.  Having heard Boteach speak publicly before I was certainly expecting a more controversial approach to whatever topic he was going to address.  In this article he rather brings out a different aspect to Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Wiesel. The article propelled me to think of who I want to ask about their relationship to davening and Hashem.

Boteach writes:

Once I asked him, “Did you lose your God after the Holocaust.” He answered, “God was my friend as a boy. I was a young Chassid, and God accompanied me everywhere. And for a time, after the war, I did not wish to have a relationship with Him. But He never left me completely, and now He is back fully in my life. But the relationship has changed. I have a right to assert my place. It is now more a rapport, not of equals, of course, but of two parties with a real and painful dialogue.”

As adults, how did each of us develop to be the soulful and purposeful people we strive to be?  I revel in this question every time I go to a minyan of mostly older people who have logged decades of rising early in the morning to shul to keep the relationship and commitment going forward.  We are stuck in the sandwich generation, between the great ones and the young ones - trying to find the proper ways to continue the traditions, for their own benefit and for greater mission of the Jewish people.

Are You Your Prayer?

I just came across the story of Zach Sobiech- as some of the readers here may have heard since he just died yesterday. This short twenty minute documentary shares his story and life values.

It is hard and emotional - and for me captures the essence of a tefilla.  I am my prayer!  ואני תפילתי

Zach's story reminds me to have the kavanah to my actions and prayers; I hope that one can lean this lesson without cancer as an instructor.  May his memory be for a blessing!

Benching Gomel

Perhaps it is the most mumbled prayer in shuls - by both the person who says it and the jumbled, awkward response that is beyond the normative "amen".  Birkat HaGomel is recited on various conditions explained here, one of which is by someone who has be released from prison. You can watch and read here about Gilad Shalit's recent recitation of birkat hagomel for the first time since his release from captivity - consider the importance of context in all of our tefillot and how when a prayer is said in the right way by the right person, it can really take your breath away.

A Parent's Prayer

On the eve of Rosh Hodesh Sivan, it is some people's custom to recite a special tefilla, by the Shla - Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz. He wrote a Parent's Prayer on the eve of Rosh Hodesh Sivan pointing to it as the most auspicious time to pray for the physical and spiritual welfare of one's children and grandchildren, since Sivan was the month that the Torah was given to the Jewish people.

One side not: my son came home from school and the prayer that he wrote for his parents was that we should have enough food to feed him (he is already saving up to buy himself a kindle)!