T’filah in the Religious School

by Cantor Jordan Franzel

One of my favorite things to do as the Cantor of Congregation Or Ami is to lead services with Rabbi Carr on Shabbat and Holy Days and with the students of our religious school on Sundays. Leading services is something that I grew up witnessing and participating in on a weekly basis as my father, now retired, is a Rabbi who was at his last synagogue, in Parsippany, NJ, for 25 years. As I grew up in my father’s Temple I took on responsibilities as his song leader for Shabbat services and as music teacher in the religious school. I took my love of Jewish music, especially the music of NFTY, and my interest in being a facilitator of prayer all the way to Cantorial School where I honed my skills in leading t’filah.

Ever since I was able to take on teaching jobs during my time at the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion - Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, I always wanted to concentrate on the prayers in the siddur and how to make them meaningful to students.

Many Jews had gone through their religious school experience learning the rote expression of the prayers without ever looking deeper for meaning or any meaning at all. In the past the expectation was that students would learn the prayers by doing them the same way every time they met for school with the same chants or melodies. This did indeed make the prayers stick in the minds of the students but because they never looked at a translation or had someone teach what the prayers meant, or never engaged in meaningful discussions about the prayers, the siddur became almost meaningless. This is, as we say, a shandah (a shame).

As we get more technologically savvy and as we start to expect answers to our questions almost instantaneously, it is harder and harder to relate to the idea of sitting in meditation or prayer. In this atmosphere it is hard to express real gratitude for the simple gifts of life and acknowledge that there may be a Higher Power in the universe that helps us find strength and courage within ourselves to face each day. Today, if asked whether someone is “spiritual” a more likely response would be, “is there an app for that?”

There may be an app for that. Actually there are plenty of apps that contain the prayers of the siddur but none of them can help to create a culture within a community of people, students, and teachers, where prayer starts to not only become something worthwhile to practice but something in which to take ownership.

This year in religious school we will be concentrating on the prayers of the siddur. Each month we will concentrate on one prayer or one part of the siddur. The students will learn what the prayer means, learn melodies to chant them, engage in discussions of meaning, find alternative ways to express each prayer (through art and dance) and, ultimately, learn how to lead the prayer. We will be inviting each grade to demonstrate their knowledge of prayer during a Shabbat service. In this very interactive model of teaching t’filah Rabbi Carr, Education Director Lauren Luskey, and myself hope that each student will find reason to look to our tradition, to our prayers and, like generations before, find in them comfort, strength, inspiration, and enough meaning to teach to the next generation.