You read the title correctly! This post is authored by Michael Feuer, who is on the faculty of Sulam Yaakov and whom I recently met teaching a course titled Prayer: the inner journey that leads outward. I welcome your reactions.
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The Vietnam of Day School Education
When I heard a respected educator apply these words to
prayer, my jaw dropped. But after the shock faded, the precision of the phrase
started to play on my imagination. Given that I share the sorrow and fear over
the “field situation” which provoked the comment, but not its hopelessness, I
figure some reflection is in order, so –
why Vietnam?!
Educators and community members rule the day, unengaged
students rule the night. Our children are not absent from prayer; we can make a
minyan and the shuls are full on Shabbat. But we grade prayer as attendance,
and praise the appearance of focus. It’s true, sitting quietly is a
praiseworthy habit in today’s culture. But we are not teaching them to
cultivate silence, but to pretend to say words.
What are we fighting for anyway? Only a real soul-search after
Gd and a lot of prayer can answer this question. How many teachers and parents
have a mature, living relationship with Gd and an active engagement with our
soul? How many of us find strength in prayer and have tasted its pleasure? If
these are absent from us, or not deemed relevant, then what are we asking from our students?
Teacher’s prayer groups are the weapon of the next generation.
In context of the liturgy, this conversation becomes a
minefield. Tracing a path through questions of doctrine, obligation, authority
and tradition without losing your company seems hopeless. And yet, these very
issues form the backbone of the Eighteen Blessings. Perhaps prayer is the
primary context created for this struggle and we should encourage our students
to take the fight there. If they don’t feel safe struggling with Gd, Torah and
Am Yisrael then what kind of relationship can they build?
In asymmetrical warfare, victory is not achieved through
force. Prayer is not an act to be imposed, it is a lifestyle to be cultivated.
Teaching it is a battle of hearts and minds. We must invest in the context of
prayer as well as its content. This means devoting more time for praying and
more resources for learning. It means developing a model of mutual awareness
and spiritual mentorship between all members of a school – staff,
faculty and students. At its core prayer is the pursuit of relationship, and as
such is the ultimate communal effort.
Awakening the emotions in service of prayer is essential. Are
our classrooms vessels where students feel safe to share their hearts? To we
encourage journaling, spiritual chevruta, giving and receiving of blessing?
The siddur is a
complex and powerful tool for awakening the soul, connecting to Am Yisrael and
turning to Gd. It must be engaged as an instrument to be mastered, and not as a
book to be read. Repetition becomes practice when the students sense they are
picking up a relationship where it left off each time they pray, and just not doing
it all again.
The attempt to reduce prayer to a deliverable educational
product is bankrupt. It must be replaced by a critical dialogue meant to
cultivate consciousness over the question of prayer. In order to accomplish this
we have to be prepared to take risks, and even lose battles. But that’s what
you do when you’re committed to winning the war.
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Michael Feuer has rabbinic ordination from the Sulam Yaakov Yeshiva,
under the guidance of Rav Dov Channan and has spent much of the past two years thinking intensively about the topic of tefilla. Since making aliyah in 2001, he has been Program Director of a
post-high school yeshiva, taught history, Jewish thought and Bible in several
Jerusalem yeshivot and midrashot and halacha at the Pardes Institute.
