The Four Children: Nurturing Diverse Daveners

A poll of New Community Jewish High School students points to a range of expectations regarding tefillah, insightful echoes of their parents, teachers, clergy, and classmates. The three most central hopes for tefillah are a connection to G-d, self-reflection, and the building of community. Regarding experiencing the divine in tefillah, we must recall that the G-d experience is a profoundly individual matter. It is one that cannot easily be coaxed into fruition at will. Martin Buber wrote, “The Thou meets me through Grace—it is not found by seeking.” If the individual cannot will such an I-Thou moment, can we expect to purposefully contrive such a moment for a collective? Has it happened since Sinai?

The expectation of tefillah betzibur as a moment of self-reflection, if not as theologically loaded as the G-d question, is almost as difficult to program for. But while the Hebrew infinitive “to pray,” lehitpallel, is a reflexive verb, sometimes translated “to judge oneself,” such self-reflection seems antithetical to the communal experience. As a nod to the value of meaningful “self-time” while surrounded by others, the extent to which contemplative prayer is validated in most communal settings is with “a moment of silence.” Togetherness and a sense of belonging are more attainable goals, but no less worthy in an age of lightning-fast fiber optic connections that has also ushered in a wave of loneliness and depression, especially among teens.

Multiply the force of each of these opposing expectations by the number of people in the room, and one can really wonder what to do and where to begin. Within the school setting, students are expected to move directly from the cerebral and academic to the soulful at the Pavlovian ring of a bell. “Pencils down... now pray.” In the community school setting there is the added challenge of divergent perspectives on tefillah, as well as different family background and support. The school setting requires us to ask: Can we carefully craft a prayer service for different daveners, as we would create a single lesson plan to meet the varied needs of our many learners?

The tricky reality about tefillah in the community school setting is that however many real challenges there may be, and however muddled an articulation of the expected results might be, we sense its intrinsic value and we know that sometimes it works. It works when our students’ faces remind us of the classroom; the look in their eyes lets us know that they have internalized some part of the lesson. We have planted the seeds deeply enough to know that something will grow. Heschel taught us that to be a prophet one must hold both G-d and man together at once. Thus it seems that the dictum “Da lifnei mi atah omed” means not just being aware that you stand before G-d, but we must know the people before whom we stand.

As teachers, we do. These are our kids; we spend hours a day with them. Every Pesach we hold a single seder for four wildly different children. Keneged arba’ah banim dibrah Torah, the Torah describes four different children. The good news is that the same approach that we take with a good seder or with a good classroom lesson can work during tefillah if we remember before whom we stand. Based on our experimental tefillah program, it has become clear that successful tefillah in the community day school requires consciously including students in creating the expectation you are working toward as well as crafting a purpose-driven multi-modal approach throughout the service.

Chakham mah hu omer? The wise child asks, “What is this testimony and what are the laws and regulations that our G-d has commanded us? Begin to answer this child with the laws concerning Pesach.” This child is at the heart of our tefillah program. The educational maxim “If they can do it for themselves, they should” applies to tefillah, too. If you want to educate the wise child, let him or her lead.

Our tefillah program is completely student-led. For the Chacham, we have created the Tefillah Kehilah Institute (TKI). A select core of motivated and proficient students take this leadership course as their regular Jewish studies course. In class they examine rabbinic text on tefillah and study the siddur. Special lessons are geared toward leadership: how to communicate engagingly; how to evaluate effectiveness; how to plan and coordinate a dynamic and varied forty minute all-school tefillah; how to elicit response through questions, through tone, and through nonverbal communications. There are regular classes that are geared toward the experiential: music, music composition, 2D art, media arts, Iyyun, creative writing, midrash, and dramatic skits. These experiences give TKIers a variety of modalities for them to create different experiences for their classmates as the service goes on.

Additionally, there are TKI club members who are not part of the class, but they are given meaningful leadership roles in planning and executing tefillah. They are included in weekly meetings, online Wiki planning sessions, and of course on the bimah during tefillah. Like a seder leader trying to keep the entire table happy while moving the seder forward, TKI leaders find the responsibility of crafting tefillah for the different needs of the kahal meaningful, challenging, and invigorating. The rest of the student body appears more attentive as tefillah has now become an opportunity to support their fellow students.

Rasha mah hu omer? The wicked child says, “What is this service to you? To you—but not him.” We know this student as well, and for him the key is engagement. The needs of this student lie not in skill, ability, or proficiency, but rather in a lack of trusting himself to fit in and in so doing, not lose his newfound individuality to the group. TKI students engage this wise but skeptical student through activities that don’t require personal sharing, such as a popular song that shifts to a quick lesson. Guitar, drums, and various vocals make this easy for the school to join in. A favorite is a song they have composed called “Tell Me a Story (About Jewish History),” set to the melody of “Alice’s Restaurant,” where different students pop up and give a quick lesson. The skeptical child does not have to confront any of his misgivings about tefillah during such parts of the service; it’s always fun and always light. Every tefillah has such a component that is primarily communal and only secondarily prayerful.

Tam…mah zot? The Tam, the open but uninitiated student, needs to be taught. “What is this,” she asks? This student might not yet have the background to be proficient, but she can be taught. The TKI students who have been given the opportunity to regularly study tefillah in class are tasked with education. The Tam learns from the Chacham, through Iyyun, question and answer sessions, and stories that TKIers create. In a recent tefillah, TKIers asked students to color in the words of the Shema on a page they were provided, while the leaders taught lessons about the different possible meanings of these central words. Their goal was to teach about the Shema in an aesthetic and kinetic way. The result was beautiful, and many of our Tam students incorporated lessons they heard into their colorful art—they turned “shema” listen into “shema” see. Over four different student-led tefillah sessions, the Shema portion of the service was taught in four different ways (art, music, meditation, and discussion).

Ze she’aino yode‘a lish’ol… The One Who Does Not Know How to Ask looks and feels lost. He is not familiar with the outline of the service, the words do not sound familiar to him, and the Hebrew is an impossible obstacle for him at this point. TKI students created and project a PowerPoint outline over the bimah throughout the service to help students know what is going on and what to expect next. They also project transliteration and lyrics to songs so that everyone can feel comfortable. These TKIers lead the core parts of tefillah and they help the student body through the different parts of the service. Their goal is to help the lost and uninitiated student feeling inadequate and disconnected from the service.

For Pesach we don’t hold four different sedarim, we hold one—for everybody. It’s not easy. We ask our students to create services whose modalities shift throughout the tefillah. They have to articulate what their goals are at each step (a G-dly moment, a reflective moment, a communal moment). Choices have to be made regarding which modality they should try in reaching that goal (song, art, discussion, chanting), and most importantly for leadership training, TKIers have in place a lengthy reflective process after every tefillah encounter. What worked, what didn’t, and why? Our students are fully aware of the challenges that tefillah in a community day school presents and meet them creatively head on. As teachers we support them, teach them, answer questions, and then we take a seat in the pews and kvell. ♦

Rabbi Tsafi Lev and Yonatan Rosner are teachers at New Community Jewish High School in West Hills, CA. They can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].