Thank you to all the parents and other adults who shared their personal reflections on תפילה בציבור with the students. It was fascinating to see the differing positions on whether תפילה בציבור challenges or encourages more כוונה and to hear about some of the sacrifices you make to prioritize תפילה בציבור. I think students appreciated your openness and honesty and I hope it can lead to future conversations! As always, I encourage you to comment on this post or e-mail me with any thoughts. I look forward to posting some of the exceptional reporting from the conference Rabban Gamliel and Rebbe Yehoshua attended in a separate post.

In gemara this week, we moved to our final unit in the 4th perek, focusing on WHAT and HOW to daven. In many ways, the issues raised are the most relevant to what makes davening challenging for all of us. Here are some of the key questions we raised:

1) Why did חז”ל choose to establish a set text for תפילה? Did they view this decision as לכתחילה or בדיעבד? What attitude/s towards the role of תפילה does there decision represent? Would, theoretically, there decision had been different today?

2) What is the value of having a set text for תפילה? Why would we not allow people to change the text and discourage them from adding to it? Are there ways to make תפילה less monotonous, more personal and meaningful without changing a word? What role can attitude, tone and atmospherics play in this regard?

3) Do personal requests belong in שמונה עשרה? Why would we want to separate the more communal content of שמונה עשרה from and individual’s personal needs and why would we want to place them together? If added to שמונה עשרה, do they belong in each ברכה or in a more generic one (like שמע קולינו)?

Today, I am introducing an End of Semester Tefillah Project to the class. Students will be assigned a ברכה of שמונה עשרה to translate and analyze from a 21st century perspective, using various books, articles and audio shiurim available to them online and in our library. Hopefully, this will encourage them to find ways to make תפילה more meaningful to them and will expose to excellent resources.  They will be asked to share their learning with the class one week from Monday during a class I hope to stream on TABCTV.  Thank you to our Librarian Leah Moskovits for her help with this project!