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6/01 cJCIRC/DateDueptBS—p. 15

TEACHING PRAYER IN LIBERAL SUPPLEMENTARY SCHOOLS: AN
ANALYSIS OF THE CHALLENGES

By

Amy Wallk Katz

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Teacher Education

2002

ABSTRACT

TEACHING PRAYER IN LIBERAL SUPPLEMENTARY SCHOOLS: AN
ANALYSIS OF THE CHALLENGES

By
Amy Wallk Katz

This dissertation investigates the challenges involved in teaching traditional
formal prayer in a liberal supplementary school setting. It describes the origins of
traditional worship, explaining its development from biblical times to the present.
Additionally the dissertation explores the origins of liberal Judaism, and
distinguishes between the major movements (the Conservative, Reform and
Reconstructionist) within liberal American Judaism.

One of the significant institutions of the liberal American Jewish community is
the supplementary school. This dissertation describes the development of these
schools, explaining the differences between those schools founded by Jews from
Central Europe and those founded by Jews from Eastern Europe. The
dissertation also includes a summary and exploration of the waning religious
Observances of many liberal American Jews in the 19403 and 50s. Finally, I
continue by investigating how supplementary school educators sought to
compensate for what they thought was not being taught at home.

Besides investigating the historical and social contexts of the teaching of
prayer in the United States, this dissertation analyzes prepared curricular
materials that have been used in supplementary schools during the 1980s and

905. By examining how experienced, thoughtful educators articulated their aims

for teaching prayer, I hoped to have yet another lens for understanding the
challenges of teaching prayer in a liberal supplementary school setting.

To add yet another layer of understanding to this study, I investigated my own
teaching of prayer. As an ordained Conservative rabbi, I had some very clear
ideas about how I thought prayer ought to be taught in the supplementary school.
In this chapter I look closely at my practice and offer my analysis as one insider’s
view of how difficult it is to teach prayer.

The results of my investigations indicate that there may be some inherent
tensions to the teaching of prayer. For example, educators are unsure of how to
direct the supplementary school curriculum. They are struggling to decide
whether to focus on Hebrew skills acquisition or whether to teach big ideas of the
formal liturgy. In addition they are challenged to ﬁnd a way to present traditional
liturgy to Jews living in the modern world. No doubt, there are other ways to
characterize dilemmas faced by Jewish educators. These two are simply
illustrative examples that I offer based on my own experiences and analyses.

While this dissertation examines the teaching of prayer in a supplementary
school setting, its ﬁndings can be applied to many other liberal settings for both

children and adults.

Copyright by
AMY WALLK KATZ
2002

DEDICATION

When Moses had ﬁnished the work, the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and
the Presence of the Lord ﬁlled the Tabernacle.

When the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle, the Israelites would set out, on their
various journeys; but if the cloud did not lift, they would not set out until such time
as it did lift.

For over the Tabernacle a cloud of the Lord rested by day, and ﬁre would appear
in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys.
(Exodus 40:34-38)

This dissertation is dedicated to Tamar Yonina, Gabriel Ari, and Nina Ruth. May
they always have faith that the Divine Presence is with them on their journeys.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am thankful for the advice and support of many people during these
dissertation years. Suzanne Wilson, the chair of my committee, has challenged
me to think critically and ask important questions. She was both a superb
cheerleader and blunt critic, always knowing which role to play. The other
members of my committee, Dan Chazan, Deborah Lowenberg Ball, Steve
Weiland, and Sharon Feiman-Nemser were all helpful as well.

Before I began my studies at Michigan State University, I was a student at the
University of Judaism in Los Angeles and at the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America. The faculty at both of these institutions is exceptional. My professors,
Rabbi Benzion Bergman, Rabbi Elliot Dorff, Rabbi Gordon Tucker, Dr. Gail
Zaiman Dorph, and Dr. Elieser Slomovic, inspired me. They have continued to
support me in my academic pursuits, making time to talk with me about my work
whenever I called upon them.

In addition, over the years I have worked closely with Dr. David Ackerman,
Dr. Isa Aron, Mr. Alan Edelman, Rabbi Samuel Joseph, Rabbi Lewis Warshauer
and Rabbi Elana Zaiman. Their support and friendship have helped me complete
this dissertation.

I completed the course work for this dissertation while living in Lansing,
Michigan, working at Congregation Kehillat Israel. Before moving to Lansing, I
had never lived in such a small Jewish community. It was an adjustment for me
both personally and. professionally. Fortunately I met wonderful people (too many

to name) who supported me on my journey. The Kl community is special and I

vi

will always appreciate what I learned working with so many thoughtful people. I
especially appreciate the students in the KI school. They taught me a great deal
about teaching and Ieaming. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to work
with them, their parents and the members of the congregation.

My dissertation reﬂects my deep love of Judaism and my desire to help future
generations understand what Judaism has to offer Jews in the modern world. My
parents, Silas and Charlotte Wallk, were my ﬁrst teachers of Judaism. The
foundation they laid was exceptional. I know that many of my accomplishments
would not have been possible, were it not for the many opportunities my parents
provided me.

In addition, my in-laws, Sheldon and Judith Katz have been extremely
supportive of my academic pursuits. Their encouragement, babysitting, and
overall support have been invaluable.

I am painfully aware that the many hours I spent writing this dissertation was
time away from my three children: Tamar Yonina, Gabriel Ari, and Nina Ruth.
Each of my children has an infectious smile; it is the twinkle in their eye and the
joyous way they go about life that sustain me daily.

Finally, I want to thank my husband Kenneth Katz. This dissertation would
never have been completed were it not for his encouragement. He helped me
ﬁnd the time to write by doing more than his share at home. In addition, he
formatted and edited the entire text. He asked some hard questions and
encouraged me ‘to get the dissertation done’ when I felt like throwing in the

towel.

vii

I am grateful to him and thank God for allowing me to share my life with such

a supportive and loving man.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ........................................................................................................ v
LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................ xi
CHAPTER 1 B’RESHEET: IN THE BEGINNING .................................................. 1
Hidden Meaning .............................................................................................. 1
Alienated by Tradition ...................................................................................... 3
Relating to Prayer ............................................................................................ 5
Recognizing the Tension ................................................................................. 6
CHAPTER 2 THE ORIGINS OF JEWISH WORSHIP ......................................... 10
Introduction .................................................................................................... 10
Biblical and Historical Origins of Jewish Worship .......................................... 10
Denominations of Liberal Judaism ................................................................ 27
Liberal Jews’ Struggle with the Traditional Liturgy ......................................... 51
Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 65

CHAPTER 3 SUPPLEMENTARY SCHOOLS: FROM TALMUD TORAH TO BAR

MITZVAH PRELUDE .......................................................................................... 68
Jewish Immigration to the United States ....................................................... 69
Congregational Schools: Providing a Jewish Milieu Outside the Home ........ 83
Waning Jewish Practice in the Home ............................................................ 88
Curricular Responses to Waning Home Practices and Declining School Hours
...................................................................................................................... 95

CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS OF CURRICULAR MATERIALS ................................ 102
Families Attending Supplementary Schools: Ambivalent Needs and Desires
.................................................................................................................... 1 O2
Supplementary School Teachers: Committed but Unprepared ................... 105
The Critical Role of Curricular Materials ...................................................... 111
Method of Analysis ...................................................................................... 1 11
The Tension between Teaching Hebrew and Teaching Prayers ................. 116
Reconstructionist: Personal Meaning Paramount, Hebrew Minimal ............ 117
Conservative: Conceptual Ideas Primary, Hebrew an Adjunct .................... 121
Reform: Personal Meaning Stressed, Hebrew Is Integrated Into Each Lesson
.................................................................................................................... 124
Torah Aura: Hebrew and Personal Meaning: Equal Time ........................... 126
Behrrnan House: Hebrew Paramount, Personal Meaning Minimal .............. 129
The Curricular Landscape ........................................................................... 130
What Accounts for the Changing Ideas about Teaching Prayer? ................ 132

CHAPTER 5 'WHY WOULD YOU SAY A PRAYER IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE

WHAT IT SAYS?": EXAMINING MY TEACHING OF PRAYER ........................ 140
The Lansing Jewish Community .................................................................. 141

ix

How Prayer Was Taught Before I Arrived .................................................... 143
My Vision of What It Means to Study the Liturgy and Learn How to Pray.... 146

My Experiences with Prayer and Liturgy ..................................................... 150
A Typical Sunday Morning Sen/ice at Kehillat Israel ................................... 153
Method of Analysis ...................................................................................... 164
Teaching Prayer and Praying Simultaneously Leads to Compromised

Pedagogy .................................................................................................... 167
60 Students between 2nd and 7th Grades Creates Pedagogical Problems 168
Student-Generated Questions Not Addressed ............................................ 176
A Rabbi, Preacher and Teacher in Israel ..................................................... 182
Conclusion ................................................................................................... 194

CHAPTER 6 NA 'ASEH V’NSHMA: WE WILL DO AND WE WILL UNDERSTAND

.......................................................................................................................... 196
Negotiating the Tension Between Teaching Basic Hebrew Skills and
Teaching for Understanding ........................................................................ 198
Prayer and Modern Mindset ........................................................................ 200
Implications for Practice: In and Out of School ............................................ 203
The School Service as a New Practice ........................................................ 205
Teaching Prayer and Praying in Other Liberal Settings ............................... 208
Looking Fonrvard: A Story ............................................................................ 210

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 214

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 1 COMPARISON OF CURRICULAR MATERIALS .............................. 113
TABLE 2 MASTERY CHART ............................................................................ 127

xi

CHAPTER 1
B'RESHEET: IN THE BEGINNING

When Ma came in, Reverend Alden stood up and said they would
all have the refreshment of prayer together before saying good
night. They all knelt down by their chairs, and Reverend Alden
asked God, Who knew their hearts and their secret thoughts, to
look down on them there, and to forgive their sins and help them to
do right. A quietness was in the room while he spoke. Laura felt as
if she were hot, dry, dusty grass parching in a drought, and the
quietness was a cool and gentle rain falling on her. It truly was

refreshment. Everything was simple now that she felt so cool and
strong. (Wilder, 1939, p. 218-219)

This text makes me envious. At times, I want to be Laura, so able to have an
uplifting, rejuvenating prayer experience and so fortunate to have a religious
leader who can offer her strength. At other times, I am envious of the Reverend
Alden for knowing exactly what to say as a religious leader and how to lead the
Ingalls family in a powerful prayer experience. As a rabbi, people often look to
me to invoke prayer or make a prayer moment meaningful. I cannot imagine
being able to do what Reverend Alden did.

The Wilder passage is an image of what I wish prayer were like for me, my
family, my students, and my fellow Jews. In addition to being uplifting, prayer—a
form of dialogue with God—should be meaningful and spiritually connecting.

And yet, often it is not.

Hidden Meaning

The meaning and purposes of traditional Jewish prayers are difﬁcult for many
modern Jews to grasp. Commenting on the hidden meaning of prayer,
contemporary theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes:

Prayer does not complete itself in an instant nor does it move on a
level plane. lt thrusts itself forward through the depths and heights,

through detours and by-ways. lt advances gradually from word to
word, from thought to thought, from feeling to feeling, arriving, we
ﬁnd, on a level where words are treasures, where meanings lie
hidden, still to be discovered. (Cantor’s column of Congregation
Beth Shalom monthly bulletin, February 2002)

Heschel is describing an ideal. He understands that ideas are often hidden,
increasing the modern Jew's challenge to ﬁnd meaning in a particular prayer or
to connect to a prayer experience. While prayer has the potential to comfort,
invigorate, and uplift, many aspects of routine prayer can be monotonous, boring,
or alienating.

All too often, we fail to uncover prayer's hidden meaning. Searching for
meaning, we simply cannot ﬁnd it. Why? Perhaps ﬁrst and foremost, we confront
the stumbling block of the Hebrew language. Making matters worse, many Jews
lack the background to grasp the signiﬁcance or allusions of the extraordinary
texts being recited.

Sadly, knowingly, we laugh as we read Myla Goldberg’s description of what
occurs at a typical service in liberal Jewish congregations in the novel Bee
Season (Goldberg, 2000):

At the Amidah’s beginning, Rabbi Mayer tells the entire
congregation to rise. The congregants are supposed to remain
standing for as long as they wish to pray, sitting down when they
have ﬁnished. A lot of people actually do begin by praying, but most
stop soon after they start. They become distracted by thoughts of
the evening's primetime television lineup or by how awful the
perfume is of the old lady with dyed hair who always sits in that

seat under the air duct so that the smell of her goes everywhere. (p.
50)

Alienated by Tradltlorr

Too often, for too many Jews, formal and communal prayer hinders
spirituality. Worse, it can drive Jews away from worship or from Judaism. The
Hebrew seems impenetrable, the rules too rigid, the references too obscure.
Writing about the American Jew’s encounter with traditional prayer, Wieseltier
(1998) argues that, to many, prayer seems an ”obscure and arduous practice” (p.
vii).

Roger Kamenetz (1994) describes the plight of the typical contemporary
liberal Jew who had some nominal Jewish education but knows nothing of
Jewish ideology and is unfamiliar with Hebrew:

In short, I’d grown up the typical liberal American Jew, loyal to his
tribe and family, and very proud of the ethical heritage of the Jewish

people. My Jewish identity was like a strong box, very well
protected, but what was inside it?

The interior meaning of being a Jew was indistinct, smuggled,
inchoate—much like the Hebrew letters I could pronounce but not
truly read. (p. 57)

Kamenetz writes about a modern Jew who is alienated by tradition. He has no
sense of what Judaism is about but remains an identiﬁed Jew despite his
ignorance.

Allegra Goodman (1998) offered a somewhat different insight. She described
a Jewish man’s alienation while sitting in services. The disconnect between a
modern Jew and the traditional prayer experience is all too familiar:

Nina was sitting with the children in the women’s section, and
Andras sat alone in the sanctuary among the hundreds who were
fasting, alone, havng eaten breakfast that morning, and drunk his
coffee black as usual. He sat, listening to the Rav, and the fast day

was foreign to him, the community grieving together in this artiﬁcial
way. The holiday couldn’t move Andras, the day set aside for

sadness, the reading of this poetry, all prescribed, as if grief could
be expressed that way, as if mourning could be accomplished with
these simple and unthinking acts and, at the end of it, put away.
This is why he thinks these recitations and acts of prayer are for
children—because they are so ﬂat and simple, because magically
they are intended to discharge inﬁnite obligations. (p. 131)

For Andras, prayer was meaningless, uninspiring, and irrelevant. The notion that
traditional services are alienating is not unique to Goodman. Wieseltier (1998)
also describes how his prayer experiences alienated him from Judaism. ”One of
the reasons for my failure [in practicing Judaism]," he recalls, ”was my
experience of prayer. It was a disaster. Thinking and unthinking, in shuls and in
schools and in forests and in ﬁelds, I had been praying for decades, and not once
in those decades, not once, did I ever have the conﬁdence that the cosmos in
which I prayed was like the cosmos that my prayer described” (p. 19).

While often alienated from the formal liturgy, contemporary Jews often, at the
same time, ﬁnd themselves pulled back to their Judaism. The growing number of
memoirs of Jews-rebom being published attests to the fact that many Jews are
struggling to reconnect with their Jewish identities. We read of it through the eyes
of a journalist who discovers as an adult that his parents were Jewish, even
though he was raised a Catholic in upstate New York. We encounter it through
the eyes of a spiritually hungry author of self-help books who leaves her
professional life to enroll in divinity school (Orsbom, 1998). We re-live it through
Leon Wieseltier who recounts hundreds of ways that he was reminded of the
power, beauty, and wonder of formal communal prayer in his year of reciting
Kaddish. Wieseltier describes how the ”chubby, bratty” boys from the Jersey

Yeshiva shuffle into evening prayers:

Then it comes time for them to say amen; and they sing it out again
and again; and with every little chorus I melt. (p. 28)

A chilly Sunday morning. The hum of praying around me was like a
low ﬂame, warming me." (p. 261)

We can observe the search for meaning even in movies, such as the recent
Keeping the Faith, in which Ben Stiller tries to inspire his congregation with song,
jokes, and Baptist choirs.

Perhaps most encouraging, all over the United States, American Jewish
adults are involving themselves in Jewish education. The Florence Melton Adult
Mini-School, the ﬂagship of Jewish adult education programs in the United
States, was founded in 1986. Since its inception, more than 10,000 individuals
have completed or are in the midst of completing a two-year course in Jewish
Ieaming. These individuals are seeking to understand Judaism and how it relates

to their lives.

Relating to Prayer

To understand these seekers, we must try to understand how these modern,
non-traditional Jews relate, or do not relate, to worship. Prayers and praying are
at the root of Judaism and still pervade traditional Judaism today. The tradition
ordains prayer three times each day. Prayer also surrounds Jewish life-cycle
events. Even daily activities—such as eating, rising in the morning, going to
sleep, or going to the bathroom—are occasions for Jewish prayer. lf modern,
non-traditional Jews in ever-increasing numbers become alienated from these
core Jewish practices, we face the very real possibility of losing important

connections to our Jewish past, present and future.

According to Jewish tradition, formal prayer is essential because it reinforces

Jewish values and priorities. It also teaches that:
it is never enough to pray for ourselves alone. Speaking as ‘we,’ the
individual discovers, acknowledges, articulates the needs, desires,
hopes, which he, though one man, shares with all men because he
is not only a private self but a member of humanity. Besides when
we are conscious of those with whom we stand, what we may have
wanted to pray by ourselves is generally made less selﬁsh, more

humble, and therefore more appropriate for utterance before God.
(Borowitz, 1977, pp. 59-65)

Despite its centrality and importance, many modern liberal Jews do not feel
bound to pray regularly. Yet, when they do pray, many also want to garner
meaning and understand the prayers. They want to be inspired. They want to
reach a spiritual peak. A problem erupts when—like instant gratiﬁcation in other
aspects of life—some modern Jews often expect instant nourishment from
prayer. And yet, as Heschel explained, the meaning is hidden and has to be

uncovered over time.

Recognizing the Tension

I am a Jew and a rabbi. I pray. I teach prayers. I want to help people become
pray-ers. Because—even as I envy Laura Wilder's ready access to the sublime—
l have experienced the rejuvenating potential of prayer. Ironically - and
frustrating to me in my role as spiritual leader - while prayer is central to Jewish
life, little is understood about how to teach prayer or inspire praying.

Teaching prayer or praying is difﬁcult. Jewish educators are now responsible
for teaching concepts and rituals that historically were learned at home and that
derived meaning as a course of regular practice. From a purely practical

perspective, teaching the skill and the meaning of prayer takes a lot of time—and

time is scarce in an already packed curriculum. In addition, Jewish educators are
challenged to interpret traditional ideas into a modern context.

Prayer should be a portal to religion. A point of connection, not disconnection.
Of attraction, not alienation. To derive true meaning from prayer, one must be
able to appreciate the experience; to appreciate the experience, one must be
able to understand the concepts; and to understand the concepts, one must
know the meaning of the words—words written in a language foreign to most
American Jews. Educators are caught in a difﬁcult cycle. Do we teach the ideas
ﬁrst and hope that will inspire students to acquire the Hebrew skills? Or do we
teach Hebrew so that eventually students are capable of participating in public
worship? It is not clear what should come ﬁrst—understanding or basic skills.
Does reason lead to faith? Does faith require the suspension of reason? These
unanswered questions are at the heart of what most spiritual leaders or Jewish
educators struggle to understand. The questions are not unique or limited to
Judaism. They are about how modemity and religion intersect and interact with
one another.

In this dissertation, I look to my colleagues, to bookshelves and libraries for
insights into how to help others commit to prayer, engage in praying, and
discover the power of prayer to provide inspiration, solace, love, and history. This
study is my attempt, drawing on our history, the writing of rabbis and teachers,
and contemporary experience in creating and teaching curricula, to understand

prayer and praying.

One deﬁnition of ”essay" is an attempt, endeavor, voyage into, or an effort to
explore. What follows is a series of essays that explores the difﬁculties and
complexities, undercurrents and challenges of teaching prayer to modern U.S.
Jews. No one essay represents the deﬁnitive answer to the questions I pose
here. Instead, each is an inquiry into the factors and forces that might help
explain the contemporary struggles that Jewish educators face as they attempt to
teach prayer and praying.

I begin the dissertation by retracing the development of Jewish worship. With
the Emancipation, Jewish life changed in profound ways. I describe these
changes and articulate various ways Jews have responded to modernity in the
United States.

In the next chapter, examine Jewish life in the United States during the last
100 years, describing the birth of the supplementary school and the lifestyle of
liberal Jewish families at this time. This historical lens gives us a context for
understanding how prayer has been taught.

While the historical circumstances are enlightening, I address the teaching of
prayer by examining some signiﬁcant curricular materials that are currently used
or have been used within the past 15 years. This curricular investigation allows
me to understand how other educators conceptualized the teaching of prayer and
sheds light on some of the challenges educators face as they teach prayer.

While the prepared curricula reveal a great deal about the teaching of prayer,
I thought it important to gather other kinds of data. Since I have taught prayer for

more than 20 years to both adults and children, I wanted to see how my practice

could inform my understanding of the challenges of teaching prayer in a
supplementary school. By examining the teaching of prayer from several different
angles, I hope to shed light on this critical challenge, one central to the continuity
of Jewish identity. In many important ways, the chapters that follow are a journey
I embarked on to understand the teaching of prayer and praying. I offer them as

descriptions of what I have discovered so far. The joumey continues.

CHAPTER 2
THE ORIGINS OF JEWISH WORSHIP

Introduction

The purpose of this dissertation is to better understand the teaching of
traditional Jewish liturgy in liberal supplementary school settings. This chapter
supplies background information for the reader who is unfamiliar with Jewish
prayer or liberal Judaism. It explains the origins of Jewish prayer, clarifying how a
ﬁxed formal liturgy became central to Jewish worship. Next, I describe the three
branches of liberal Judaism and reﬂect on how each movement has struggled
with traditional liturgy. Finally, I explain why contemporary liberal Jews are

challenged by the traditional liturgy.

Biblical and Historical Origins of Jewish Worship

A preliminary examination of the Hebrew Bible—where contrasting forms of
worship to God are introduced—greatly enhances understanding of the structure
and content of traditional Jewish prayer. Despite the changes and developments
that have taken place in Jewish prayer over the centuries, it is still the Bible that
contains the basic patterns and ideas of all Jewish worship. There are three
kinds of worship found in the Bible: spontaneous prayer, psalms, and animal

sacriﬁce.

Spontaneous Prayer
Moshe Greenberg (1983) points out that the Bible records many spontaneous

prayers that appear as part of the narrative of Bible stories. For example, the

Bible records several of Moses' personal spontaneous prayers. On one occasion,

10

Moses prayed for 40 days and nights, interceding on behalf of his people
(Deuteronomy 9:18). On another occasion, he prayed on behalf of his sister
(Numbers 12:13). David confesses wrongdoing and asks God for forgiveness (ll
Samuel 24:10). Eliezer expresses thanks to God for enabling him to know who
would be a good spouse to bring back to Canaan for Isaac (Genesis 24:27).
Hannah turns to God in prayer as she begs God for a child (I Samuel 1:11-13). In
total, Greenberg cites 97 examples of personal spontaneous prayers.

What characterizes these prayers is that they are direct expressions of an
individual who comes before God in conversation. There is no intermediary. No
priest, Levite, or prophet is necessary. The individual does not have to go to
some special place in order to speak to God. God can be spoken to or appealed
to without special formulas, without ﬁxed prayers, at any time that the person
wishes to do so. Such spontaneous individual expressions are not only

something we read about in the Bible. From the scholars of the rabbinic period to

the charismatic leaders of the Hasidim1, spontaneous expressions of gratitude,
concern, or anguish have been an important part of Jewish prayer (Dorff, 1992).
Few of us have not engaged in spontaneous prayer at one time or another.
When something good happens, or when something we had dreaded does not
happen, it is natural for an individual to say “Thank God!”,- often without even

realizing that a prayer has been uttered. Dorff (1992) explains:

 

1 Hasidism is a 18th-century east European religious-mysticaI-revival movement that spread to
nearly all parts of the worid; today, best exempliﬁed by the Lubavich movement. A Hasid (Hebrew
for 'pious one“) stresses religious fervor and devotion to good deeds, strict adherence to all laws,
customs, and traditions, shunning certain modern inﬂuences like television or popular culture.
Although study is encouraged, followers of the Hasidic movement are urged to approach Judaism
through the heart far more than through the mind.

11

Most people periodically ﬁnd themselves wanting to pray and
actually engaging in prayer. This especially happens at critical
moments in their lives, when they yearn to express exuberant joy,
deep sorrow, or ovenrvhelming need. Their prayer may not be
Iiturgically appropriate, and it probably does not come out of a
thoroughly developed theology, but the instinct to pray is universal
and natural for all. (p. 149)

The Book of Psalms

The Book of Psalms represents a more formal kind of prayer (Sama, 1993).
According to Jewish tradition, King David authored the Book of Psalms.
However, scholars suggest that the diversity of subjects treated indicate not only
multiple authors but also the lengthy period of the book’s composition. While King
David was the most prominent contributor, other authors were most likely
professional poets and musicians. In addition to multiple authorship, it is likely
that the Psalms were written for many different purposes. Many psalms were
written to be chanted in public worship (Hammer, 1994). There are, for example,
psalms that celebrate a military triumph:

Open the gates of victory for me
that I may enter them and praise the Lord.

This is the gateway to the Lord—
the victorious shall enter through it. (Ps. 1 18:19-20)

And there are psalms that were sung when people were about to enter the
Temple:

Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in His holy place?

He who has clean hands and a pure heart

0 gates, lift up your heads!

Up high, you everlasting doors,

So the King of glory may come in! (Ps. 24:3—4, 7)

12

Some psalms were sung to musical accompaniment as part of the service in
the Temple:

It is good to praise the Lord,

to sing hymns to Your name, 0 most High,

To proclaim Your steadfast love at daybreak,

Your faithfulness each night

With a ten-stringed harp, with voice and lyre together. (Ps. 9222-4)

Others were written for a special communal event or holiday such as the
Sabbath or the new moon:

The Lord is King,
He is robed in grandeur; (Ps. 93:1)

The Lord is King!
Let the earth exult,
the many islands rejoice (Ps. 97:1)

Other psalms, written in the singular, are more personal in nature. They
speak about the events in an individual's life, not of a nation:

God, You are my God;

I search for You,

my soul thirsts for You,

my body yearns for You

as a parched and thirsty land that has no water. (Ps. 63:2)

l extol You, O Lord,

for You have lifted me up,

and not let my enemies rejoice over me.

O Lord, my God,

I cried out to You,

and You healed me. (Ps. 30:24)

In distress I called on the Lord. (Ps. 118:5)

The Book of Psalms includes a range of prayers that were appropriate for
different ceremonies, moods, and circumstances. It is the attempt of humans to
communicate their feelings to God. Nahum Sama (1993) aptly describes the

Book of Psalms as follows:

13

In the Psalms, the human soul extends itself beyond its conﬁning,
sheltering, imperrnanent house of clay. It strives for contact with the
Ultimate Source of all life. It gropes for an experience of the divine
Presence. The biblical psalms are essentially a record of the
human quest for God. Hence, the variety of forms in which the
ancient psalmists expressed themselves, reﬂective of the diverse
and changing moods that possessed them as they do all human
beings. In short, the psalms constitute a revealing portrayal of the
human condition. No wonder they infuse and inform the basic
patterns of Jewish worship, give character and essence to [its]
liturgy, and govern the life of prayer and spiritual activity of the
individual and the congregation. (p. 3)

Sama explains that the 150 Psalms are a collection of prayer that reﬂect the
human beings’ experiences. Some are joyful; others articulate distress or
loneliness. Some express the concern of the individual, while others focus on the

community’s needs.

Animal Sacriﬁces

In addition to spontaneous prayer and psalms, animal sacriﬁce was a primary
form of worship during the biblical period (Hammer, 1994). The book of Leviticus
describes the circumstances that call for an animal sacriﬁce, providing details
about how the Israelites are to go about making offerings to God. Sacriﬁces
became a method of expressing human emotions—guilt, repentance, or
thanksgiving. By offering sacriﬁces, the Israelites were able to draw nearer to
God.2

The biblical understanding of sacriﬁces differs from those of pagan cultures of
the time. The Israeli biblical scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann (1960) argues that, in

the pagan religions of Canaan and the other neighboring nations, the gods were

 

2 The Hebrew word for sacriﬁces is korbanot - whose root koof, rash, bet (k-r-b) means to draw
nean

14

limited. Powerful, but not omnipotent. The pagan gods not only needed food and
drink but, like humans, were controlled by the mysterious realm of fate. Because
the ancient mind conceived of its gods as limited in power and subject to fate and
magic, human beings could actually persuade the gods to change their minds.
Thus, sacriﬁces in these cultures were more an attempt to inﬂuence or control
the gods. Worship was accompanied by gifts meant to please the gods.

In contrast, the God of Israel has no physical needs and cannot be controlled
by sacriﬁces; hence, the sacriﬁcial system developed in ancient Israel served a
different purpose (Kaufmann, 1960). For the Israelites, sacriﬁces became
symbols of Israel's desire to show deference to God and express feelings of
thanksgiving and reconciliation.

How animal sacriﬁces were conducted changed over time (Hammer, 1994).
Initially, following the conquest of the land by Joshua, there were many sites
where Israelites were able to offer sacriﬁces to God. People went on pilgrimages
to places like Beth-El, Gilgal, and Beersheba. In addition, there were regional
shrines in which sacriﬁces took place. No sacriﬁces to God were to be offered
outside of the Land of Israel. Over time, the sacriﬁcial system bemme even more
limited. Not only was it forbidden to build an altar outside of the Land of Israel, it
was equally forbidden to build one anywhere in Israel apart from the shrine in
Jerusalem:

Look only to the site that the Lord your God will choose amidst all
your tribes as His habitation, to establish His name there. There

you are to go, and there you are to bring your burnt offerings and
other sacriﬁces. (Deuteronomy 12:5-6)

15

As a result, sacriﬁces, which were the main form of communal worship, could
no longer take place anywhere outside of Jerusalem. Males were required to

travel to Jerusalem to appear before God on the three pilgrimage festivals:

Pesach (Passover)3, Shavuot4 , and Sukkofs.
Three times a year—on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the
Feast of Weeks and on the Feast of Booths—all your males shall

appear before the Lord your God in the place that He will choose.
(Deuteronomy 16:16)

Once animal sacriﬁce was restricted to the Temple and male Israelites were
required to travel to Jerusalem three times a year, the religious life of the
Israelites changed (Hammer, 1994). On the one hand, it was probably a glorious
time in Jerusalem: Thousands of Jewish people from all over the world gathered
to worship God. On the other hand, those unable to travel to Jerusalem were

unable to personally participate in organized Jewish worship.

The Aftermath of the First Destruction: Emergence of the Synagogue

The Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed twice: once by the Babylonians in
586 BCE and again by the Romans in 70 CE.6 Scholars generally agree that in

the aftermath of these crises, Jewish life was transformed as the synagogue and

 

3 Peach (Passover), the Feast of Unleavened Bread, is the ﬁrst of me three pilgrim festivals
described in the Hebrew Bible. Known as the festival of freedom, Passover commemorates the
exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage.

4 Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, is one of the pilgrim festivals described in the Bible. It falls exactly
seven weeks after Passover, hence its name. The festival is celebrated as the time of the giving
of the law on Mount Sinai, and simultaneously as a holiday of the ﬁrst fruits, which in Temple
days were brought to the Temple.

5 Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, is one of the pilgrim festivals described in the Hebrew Bible. It
celebrates the completion of the harvest. It also reminds Jews of the wanderings of their
ancestors in the wilderness before entering the land of Israel.

6 Jews do not accept the term AD when recording history as it stands for the Latin Anno Domini,
meaning the year of our Lord. Since Jews do not accept Jesus Christ as their God, they use CE,

16

more formal liturgy replaced the Temple and the sacriﬁcial rite (Bright, 1981;
Bamavi, 1992; Hammer, 1994; Hoffman, 1979; Purvis, 1995; Schiffman, 1991).

Scholars concur that the development of the synagogue followed the
destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE (Hammer, 1994; Levine, 1981;
Millgram 1971). During this period, Jewish exiles in Babylonia formed an
organized, an almost autonomous community, structured according to places of
origin, clan, and social status. Biblical and post-biblical literature contain no
speciﬁc details about the origins of the house of prayer, later known as the
synagogue. Millgram (1971) suggests the following scenario:

The religious void which was created by the destruction of the
Jerusalem Temple called for a new type of religious experience.
But no new form of worship could be deliberately devised; This
would have implied the abolition of the divinely ordained sacriﬁcial
ritual of the Temple. What did develop was merely the custom of
gathering informally on Sabbaths and festivals, a custom that is
common wherever there are immigrants from a common homeland.
The Jews would gather periodically for mutual support in their
foreign surroundings. At these gatherings they would encourage
each other in their faith and in their hope of a speedy restoration.
These makeshift, informal gatherings in small domestic settings—
never planned as worship meetings—ultimately developed into a
permanent religious institution. (p. 64)

Levine (1981) describes a similar phenomenon:

The need of the exiles for a substitute for the Temple, the newly
instituted fast days for mourning its destruction (Zechariah 7:5), and
perhaps the inauguration of public scriptural readings, dated by
tradition to this period, were all factors leading to regular meetings
which eventually became the basis of what we know as the

synagogue. (p. 3)
Hammer (1994) also suggests that it is plausible that the synagogue

originated during the Babylonian exile following the destruction of the First

 

meaning the Common Era, or BCE meaning Before the Common Era instead of BC, before

17

Temple. He argues that the synagogue was not intended to be a place for
worship, using as evidence a Greek inscription on the ﬂoor of a ﬁrst-century CE
synagogue in Jerusalem. The inscription, attributed to Theodotus, says that the

synagogue was built as a place for "reading the Law and studying the

commandments] and as a hostel with chambers and water installations to
provide for the needs of itinerants from abroad" (p. 61).

By the middle of the ﬁrst century, the synagogue represented the central
Jewish institution in any given community (Levine, 1981). The most frequently
mentioned activities include prayer, study, sacred meals, repository for
communal funds, courts, general assembly hall, hostel and residence for
synagogue ofﬁcials. Levine claims that, while the synagogue was a very busy
place, "ﬁrst and foremost the synagogue, in its formative stages at least, served
as a place for the reading of the Torah and its study“ (p. 4). Levine describes the
variety of study-related activities that probably took place in the synagogue at this
time:

Study—This activity might take one of a number of forms: schools
for children, reading and expounding Scriptures at prayer services,

regular study sessions for adults generally, or for local sages (in the
absence of an academy). (p. 3)

Prayer continued to develop (although not systematically) during the period
from the return from exile until the destruction of the Second Temple. The Book
of Ben Sira (the Christian Bible calls this book Ecclesiasticus) records many

prayers that are similar in theme and vocabulary to contemporary prayers.

 

Christ.

7 There are 613 commandments found in the Hebrew Bible—365 ”do riots" and 248 'dos,‘ In
addition there are many post-Biblical commandments.

18

Similarly, the Christian Bible, which reﬂects Jewish life in the ﬁrst century CE,

also demonstrates that prayer was a normal activity (Matthew 6:5-13, 26:36,

26:41-42; Mark 14:32-39; Luke 5:33, 11:14). Finally, rabbinic literature8 of the
time suggests that prayer was deﬁnitely a part of Jewish life (Tosefta Rosh
HaShanah 2:17; Berachot 5:1 ).

The evidence strongly indicates that whatever prayer took place in the
synagogue prior to the destruction of the Second Temple was either connected
to study or secondary to it. Levine (1981) describes prayer in the ﬁrst century
synagogue as follows:

Prayer—Whether regular communal prayer services were held in
the synagogue before the destruction of the Second Temple is a
matter of conjecture. On the basis of scattered information culled
from the New Testament, the Theodotus inscription and several
early rabbinic traditions, it would seem that communal daily prayers
were institutionalized only after the destruction. In any case,

already at an early period regular Sabbath and holiday services
were held and attracted large numbers of worshippers. (p.3)

The synagogue was not a rival to either the First or Second Temple. Both the
synagogue and Temples served the purpose of worship to God, but did so in
very different ways. While the Temple offered service through the sacriﬁcial rite,
the synagogue offered service through study. The full development of prayer and
its connection to the synagogue did not evolve until the era following the

destruction of the Second Temple.

 

8 Rabbinic literature is a very general term that generally refers to the Talmud (which includes
both Mishnah and Camera), Midrash and the Toseﬁa. The Mishnah is the ﬁrst systematic
codiﬁcation of Jewish law, written in 200 CE by Rabbi Judah. During the centuries that followed
generations of rabbis studied the Mishnah. Eventually their commentaries and discussions were
recorded in theTalmud. The Palestinian Talmud was edited in around 400 CE, while the
Babylonian Talmud was compiled about a century later. Both versions of the Talmud contain

19

The Aftermath of the Second Destruction: Emergence of the Formal
Liturgy

Within 50 years of the Babylonian exile, the Jewish people had enough
resources to be able to send 50,000 people back to their homeland (Bamavi,
1992; Purvis, 1994). Most of them came from the poorer strata of Babylonian
Jewry. When they began returning to Jerusalem as early as 538 BCE, Jerusalem
was in ruins. For the ﬁrst few years after the return began, the land had suffered
a drought. The city walls were in ruins, many of the repatriates had accumulated
heavy debts, and there was dissension among the leaders as to whether the
Jews ought to try to re-establish the Davidic dynasty or settle for the religious
autonomy granted by the Persian rulers. For all these reasons, the construction
of the Second Temple by the exiles who returned from Babylonia did not begin
until 516 BCE:

And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord,
they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites
and the sons of Asaph with cymbals to praise the Lord, after the
ordinance of David King of Israel. And they sang together by course
in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, because he is good, for
his mercy endureth forever toward Israel. And all the people
shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because
the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the
priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men,

that had seen the ﬁrst house, when the foundation of this house
was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice. (Ezra 3:10-13)

If the synagogue emerged from the crisis of the destruction of the First
Temple and the exile of the Jews to Babylonia, the destruction of the Second
Temple may be seen as the catalyst that brought about the creation of a ﬁxed

liturgy and the entire system of Jewish worship that has informed modern

 

laws, legends, ethics, philosophy, medicine, agriculture. astronomy, and hygiene—making it a

20

Judaism (Cohen, 1995; Hammer, 1994; Schiffman, 1994). The sacriﬁcial order of
the Temple had been the focal point of Judaism and the Jewish people from the
time of their return from exile until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70
CE. With no legitimate king of the lineage of David, it was the Temple that served
as a symbol of Jewish unity and of the Jewish people's devotion to God. Scholars
generally agree that the Roman destruction of the Second Temple and the
cessation of the sacriﬁcial cult was an enormous blow to the Jewish people. The
crisis created a spiritual and ritual void, demanding that the Jewish people
reorganize. In that reorganization, the community’s leaders needed to ﬁnd ways
of deﬁning Jewish identity.

By the time of the destruction, the synagogue had become a well-established
institution (Hammer, 1994). Although the Temple was central and its ritual was
the divinely sanctioned means of obtaining forgiveness for sins, the synagogue

was also important, allowing every worshipper to pray personally to God and to

hear the Torah9 read and explained. The sacriﬁcial ritual of the Temple was
accompanied by a liturgy that was originally secondary to the sacriﬁces but
assumed greater importance in the synagogue after the destruction of the
Second Temple. Ultimately, almost all the liturgy recited in the Temple was
incorporated into the synagogue liturgy (Millgram, 1971 ; Schiffman, 1994).
Critical to Jewish continuity, in addition to the synagogue, were great religious

leaders who dedicated themselves to saving the Jews from destruction. The

 

gerpetual source of study for generations of Jews.

The Torah refers to the Five Books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
Deuteronomy). The Hebrew word Torah literally means “teaching“ or "guidance”. The Torah
contains not only laws, but also history, legend, folklore, and moral and ethical teachings.

21

Talmud, for example, records the story of Rabbi Yohanah ben Zakkai who
escaped from Jerusalem at some point before the Second Temple was
destroyed and pleaded with the Roman general Vespasian for the right to
establish a school in the small town of Yavneh. Vespasian agreed to this plea. As
a result, when Jerusalem was captured by the Romans in 70 CE, ben Zakkai and
his disciples were in a better position to help the distraught community adjust to
the Temple's destruction. One of ben Zakkai's most signiﬁcant acts was to argue
that the utterance of prayer, the study of Torah, and the performance of good
deeds were as acceptable to God as the sacriﬁces of the Temple:

It is thus that Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, his disciples, and their

successors, the sages of the Talmud, succeeded in transferring

much of the authority, prestige, and function of the Temple ritual to

the synagogue service. (Millgram, 1971 p. 82)

Post-exilic Judaism had redeﬁned the synagogue, prayer unconnected to
sacriﬁce, communal study, and a non-priestly group of leaders and teachers
(who eventually became known as the Sages), all of which had coexisted with
the Second Temple (Cohen, 1995; Hammer, 1994; Schiffman. 1994). These now
stepped in to ﬁll the void left by the absence of the cultic center, not by
denigrating the Temple’s importance, but by symbolically incorporating the
Temple and its service into the newly enhanced synagogue and its pattern of
prayer and study.

The new structure and content of Jewish worship symbolically incorporated
the Temple service. The Sages taught that, since the Temple no longer existed,

the reading of the biblical portions describing the sacriﬁces could substitute for

the actual sacriﬁces. To this day, the traditional liturgy includes references to

22

sacriﬁces. For example, on holidays, the biblical portion describing the sacriﬁce

for that day is read as part of the Torah service and is also incorporated into the

basic prayer, the Amidah.10 In addition, prayers asking God to restore the
Temple were also composed, and the daily psalm that had been recited in the
Temple became part of the daily prayer service. Finally, based upon the biblical
description of sacriﬁces, the rabbinic tradition ordains prayer three times each
day, with four services on the Sabbath (observed from Friday sunset through
Saturday sunset) and Festivals (including Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot) and
ﬁve on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

The Sages also stressed the connection between sacriﬁce and worship. They
argued that without a Temple for sacriﬁces, prayer was the substitute
commanded by God in the Torah. Prayer was not merely a substitute for
sacriﬁce, it was a reminder of a glorious past, offering a grieving nation hope for
the future. By making prayer a central element of Jewish life after the Temple
was destroyed, the Sages enabled the Jewish community to continue a life of
communal worship to God (Cohen, 1995; Hammer, 1994; Schiffman, 1994).

The pattem of worship that developed after the destruction of the Second
Temple was to recite the Shema" in the morning and evening. In addition, the
Amidah was recited by itself three times a day—moming, afternoon and evening.

Sometime in the third century, it became customary to combine the two into one

 

10 Amidah is the Hebrew word for 'standing.‘ This is the central prayer of every service. The
name reﬂects the fact that this prayer is recited while standing. It is sometimes called ha-t’ﬁlla (the
prayer) because of its central importance.

23

unit. When this happened, the basic structure of today's prayer book (in Hebrew,

Siddur’z) was set. The Shame and the Amidah are recited together in the
morning and evening, and the Amidah is recited by itself in the aftemoon service.
Jewish liturgy. which has continued to develop for more than two thousand years,
is found in the siddur.

Through the prayer book, a Jew is introduced to Judaism’s struggle to
understand God, humanity, and the world. In addition, the prayer book immerses
the Jew in the thought and value system of Jewish tradition. Franz Rosenzweig
explains:

The sum and substance of the whole of historical Judaism, its
handbook and memorial tablet, will ever be the Prayer Book He
to whom these volumes are not a sealed book has more than
grasped the "essence of Judaism." He is informed with it as with life

itself; he has within him a ”Jewish world." (cited in Glatzer, 1953, p.
251)

For Rosenzweig, the prayer book consists of words and formulae, most of
which were composed centuries ago. Formal in nature, these prayers serve as a
guide to Judaism, articulating the Jewish concept of God and the universe.
Hammer (1994) explained:

The words speciﬁcally reﬂect Jewish belief, Jewish ideals, Jewish
history, and Jewish hopes for the future. They are based upon
uniquely Jewish concepts of God, the nature of God and our

relationship to Him. To pray in the words of traditional Jewish
prayer is to be steeped in the thought and value system of Judaism.

(p.11)

 

11 The Shame consists of three paragraphs (Deuteronomy 6:4—9, Deuteronomy 11:13-21;
Numbers 15:37-41) from the Torah that are recited in the morning and evening services every
day. The Shame expresses Judaism's central belief in one God.

12 The word Siddur comes from the Hebrew seder (order). It is the Hebrew name for the prayer
book.

24

While political upheaval and destruction of the Second Temple precipitated
dramatic changes in the way ancient Jews worshipped, equally severe crises
have emerged in more recent times to challenge Jewish religious survival. Such
crises have caused the liturgy to further evolve, but in signiﬁcantly different

contexts.

Another Kind of Crisis

After the French Revolution, emancipation became the central issue for Jews
throughout Europe. Whenever and wherever Jews were given the opportunity to
associate freely with non-Jews and to become a part of the majority, many
willingly embraced their new economic, social, and political opportunities. With
each step toward full emancipation, many Jews became more assimilated into
the host culture. By the end of the 18th century, both in Europe and the United
States, constant exposure to non-Jewish culture brought about a gradual decline
of certain religious practices, including the neglect of both religious and cultural
Judaism.

Addressing how the Emancipation transformed the Jewish community,
Hertzberg (1952) examines how life in a free democratic country affected the
Jewish community. He recognizes that Jews from Eastern Europe were able to
make choices as free citizens in a democracy, choices they were never able to
make as subjects to a hateful czar. But the transition from oppression to freedom
had its costs:

With this shift from a forced to a freely chosen Jewish identity, there
came, however, not only defections, but also a change in the inner

nature of the Jewish allegiance. Jewish religious traditions as
practiced in the ghetto, had always been in large measure

25

authoritarian. God had revealed both the written and the oral law
and it was one’s duty to obey. In the atmosphere of democracy,
sanction shifted from duty to sentiment. Sentiment obviously differs
in degree among individuals. It is much more responsive to
considerations of convenience. (p. 362-363)

Hertzberg is arguing that with exposure to the freedom of a democracy, Jews
became more lax in their religious practices. Thus, the legal Emancipation of the
Jews in Europe led to a profound transformation of Jewish society. Jews became
ﬂuent in the language of the country in which they were living, they entered new
careers and professions, became involved in political life, and enthusiastically
welcomed the values of their host civilization, its culture and education. In many
instances, if there were a conﬂict between Judaism and the values of the host
civilization, the latter prevailed. Thus, Jews in the modern period embraced the
economic, social, and political opportunities that were made available to them,
often at the expense of their Judaism. The Emancipation offered Jews an
opportunity to leave the ghetto and become equal citizens. The opportunity was
unprecedented in European history.

In earlier times, the cohesiveness of the Jewish community enabled it to
respond to external demands for accommodation. This cohesiveness was largely
shattered by the Emancipation, as Blau (1964) asserts:

As a by-product of emancipation, the raison d'etre of the Jewish
community disappeared. Full citizens of modern Western states
needed no structure to stand between them and their governments.

Thus emancipation weakened Jewish group life. It destroyed
almost completely the viability of the Jewish community. (p. 26)

After the Emancipation in the 19th century, the organized Jewish community
in Western Europe dissolved, as the need for it diminished. As citizens of

Western European states, Jews no longer needed to rely on the Jewish

26

community to relate to the non-Jewish community world in which they lived.
Instead of one uniﬁed response to social and political change, there were many.
Blau (1964) argues that the Emancipation created new problems for the
individual Jew:

One to which attention should be called is that of the ”hyphenated
Jew” —the Gennan-Jew, the French-Jew, the English-Jew, the
American-Jew. In the earlier periods, when the Jews lived perforce
in a community apart, it was unlikely that any conﬂict would arise
between their loyalties. The Jew who lived in France or Germany
knew himself to be a Jew permitted to live in France or in Germany.
No circumstance could put him in the intolerable position of trying to
decide whether his ﬁrst loyalty was to France or Germany, or
whether it was to Judaism. As far as France or Germany was
concerned, he knew himself to be a barely tolerated outsider. The
hyphenated Jew is forever confronted with precisely this sort of
decision. There is scarcely a major issue with respect to which he
does not need to decide whether his primary loyalty lies with the
Jewish roots of his being or with the country into which he has
been, as it were, adopted. (pp. 22-23)

The Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform movements are all
responses to the social changes which Jewish emancipation brought with in its
wake. Each movement offers the individuals a different way of understanding
their responsibilities and obligations as a Jew. While there are signiﬁcant
differences between the movements (which will be explained in the next section),
for the purposes of this work, I regularly use the term liberal Judaism to include
Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform Judaism. The next section brieﬂy

describes the history of each movement and the liturgical innovations introduced.

Denominations of Liberal Judaism

There are major philosophical differences among the three liberal

movements. Still, liberal Jews share certain challenges in ﬁnding meaning in

27

traditional prayers (Ariel 1998; Dorff 1992; Gillman, 1990; Gordis, 1995;
Kamenetz 1994, 1997; Hoffman 1997; Holtz, 1993; Wieseltier, 1998; Wolpe,
1990, 1992, 1993). Before discussing these difﬁculties, the philosophy of the

three movements and their liturgical history will be considered.

Reform Movement

Reform Judaism was a response to the Emancipation in Germany:

Reform Judaism was solidly rooted in the optimistic faith of the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, and its
German expression (the Aufklamng), emphasized a ﬁrm belief in
human progress and the ability of reason to promote such
progress. Reason could bring men and women together by
demonstrating that behind the different religious expressions there
was a common faith—the religion of humanity. This religion
distrusted irrational doctrines and repressive institutions,
superstitions, and unreasonable authority. It was enough to worship
a personal and good God, to believe He created a world that is
getting better, to accept an ethical system whose precepts were as
self-evident as the postulates of reason, and to make a clean
sweep of those prejudices long darkening the emergence of a
culture of universal reason. (Raphael, 1984, p. 6)

The emancipation brought many new opportunities for Jews to take their
place in the economic, social and civic life of the larger communities in which
they lived. France, Germany, Italy, and Holland Jews were given the right to vote
and other civil liberties. In many places they could enter universities, work at
almost any job they chose, and even accept public ofﬁce (Meyer, 1988). Some
argue that the Emancipation was really a contractual quid pro quo, not always left
unspoken, in which Jews agreed to forsake their religious observance in return
for civil rights and economic opportunities (Katz, 1972).

But Emancipation came at a high price for the Jewish community. Raphael

(1984) explains that not all Jews reacted the same way to their change in status.

28

For some, Orthodox13 Judaism seemed old-fashioned and out-of-date. These
Jews moved further away from their Judaism as they embraced the European
culture in which they were immersed:

Many German Jews inhaling the ﬁrst breaths of the Enlightenment
and Emancipation but painfully aware that their religion placed on
them many de facto, and, in most places, still de jure disabilities,
especially in career opportunities, chose the path of conversion.
Others followed the same path not for political or professional
advancement but because they found the Judaism of their
ancestors—the only Judaism available in the 1790s and early
18003 anachronistic, unenlightened and unappealing. (Raphael,

1 984, p. 6)

Others tried to change Judaism to meet the needs of the new life they were
living. Reform Judaism was born in this effort and in the hope that changes would
stop the wave of assimilation and conversion:

Reform Judaism offered Jews seeking to remain Jewish but
simultaneously enthusiastically wrapped up in the Enlightenment an
expression of Judaism that abolished much of the Mosaic
legislation that many German Jews found meaningless and utterly
outdated and that they viewed as separating themselves from their
environment. It offered, in the vocabulary of the times, an
"enlightened” religion which sought to stem the tide of conversion to
Christianity by Jews estranged from what they perceived as the
obsolete rituals of Judaism and fnrstrated by the discriminatory
practices of their society. (Raphael, 1984, p. 7)

Initially, there was no Reform movement. Rather, there were individual
synagogues throughout Germany (notably Seesen, Hamburg, and Berlin) trying
to modernize Judaism and update religious worship (Meyer, 1988). The ﬁrst

Reform congregation was established in Seesen in 1810 by Israel Jacobson

 

13 Orthodox Judaism strictly follows the full tenets and regulations of Jewish law. Although the
Orthodox wing of Judaism was by far the strongest in pre-Worid War I Europe, it met with severe
problems when Jewish immigrants arrived in the United States and quickly adopted a less
observant way of life. For many years, while the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist

29

(1768-1828). Jacobson articulated the following motivations for founding a new
congregation:

(1) to eliminate rituals, customs and prayers that he considered
unenlightened, unintelligible and unaesthetic;

(2) to arrange the manner of worship to ﬁt contemporary
standards of beauty, dignity, and taste;

(3) to demonstrate to Protestants and Catholics in attendance
that Judaism was as progressive, modern, and enlightened
an expression of the common religion of humanity as any
other faith; and

(4) to bring back wayward Jews into the religious community of
acculturated Israelites. (Raphael, 1984, p. 7)

In congregations like Jacobson's, sermons were delivered in German, choirs
and organ music became a part of the service, and vernacular German prayers—
as well as scriptural readings—were introduced. In addition, men and women sat
together and there was a greater emphasis on slow congregational readings in
unison. These individual synagogues wanted to make their services more
modern in the hope that Jews would not be drawn to Protestant or Catholic
churches. They differed substantially from Orthodox synagogues where the
prayers were all recited in Hebrew, individuals often recited the liturgy at their
own pace and no musical instruments were incorporated into the service.

As more synagogues in western Europe began to make similar changes, the
rabbinic leadership sought to build cohesiveness and consistency by articulating
authoritative principles of faith (Meyer, 1988; Plaut, 1963). The quest for such

principles gained momentum as rabbis discussed how to accommodate Judaism

 

movements grew, Orthodoxy was on the wane. In the last decade or so this trend has reversed,
and Orthodox schools, synagogues, and groups are expanding in numbers and inﬂuence.

30

to the "spirit of the age” (Mendes-Flohr & Reinharz, 1980). Believing that
Judaism was an evolving religion, one that would disappear if it were not kept up-
to-date, one that needed constant reform and change, these rabbis gathered
together at various conferences (Brunswick in 1844; Frankfurt in 1845; Breslau in
1846) to articulate a philosophy of Reform Judaism. Mitzvot and customs—such
as the dietary laws, strict Sabbath and festival observance, and the exclusive use
of only Hebrew for prayer—were changed or abandoned. These conferences
marked the beginning of a Reform movement.

A history of Reform Judaism in Europe is inseparable from the active role of
government authorities (Meyer, 1988; Plaut, 1963). In many instances, the
growth of Reform Judaism was inhibited because of government intervention
(Meyer, 1988). For example, the Prussian government closed the Berlin Reform
Temple and forbade all changes and innovations in the ritual (Raphael, 1984).
Similariy, later in the century, Prussian, Austrian, and Hungarian governments
stopped Reform services.

[l]t did not want to promote sectarianism of any kind nor see
Judaism vital and vibrant—and Reform Judaism might provide this
very attractiveness to a new generation of Jews and their children.
(Raphael, 1984,p. 7)

Clearly, such interference hindered the movement's free development. In
other instances,

these same governments felt that any form of Judaism that might
wean Jews away from the traditions of their ancestors and improve

their image in the eyes of enlightened Christians ought to be
supported. (Raphael, 1984, p. 7)

Unlike many places in Europe, where church and state were intertwined, the

Reform movement grew and prospered in the United States. The liberal US.

31

spirit allowed for freedom of religious expression and thus, reformers faced fewer
barriers in modernizing Judaism there than in Europe (Meyer, 1988; Raphael,
1984). As early as 1824, a group of Jews in Charleston, South Carolina, had their
own liberalized service, leading the way for the ﬁrst Reform congregation in the
United States. Reform societies and temples were soon founded in Baltimore,
New York, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Reform rabbis were generally
imported from Western Europe.

These rabbis were responsible for reforming congregational practices in order
to modernize the religion and prayer service. Many different forms of Reform
Judaism co-existed at this time, as some rabbis wanted a radical reform, while
others were eager to retain Jewish traditions (Plaut, 1965). Consequently, the
extent of "reform" in each congregation varied (Meyer, 1988; Plaut, 1965;
Raphael, 1984). As in Germany, a series of rabbinic conferences was convened
to give the movement a greater coherence and direction (Plaut, 1965). Thus,
common features emerged among early Reform congregations in America in the
late 1800s.

All ﬁve installed an organ and a mixed choir; all introduced
conﬁrmation14 ceremonies for boys and girls; all abolished the

 

14 Conﬁrmation was originally a substitute for the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony. When the Temple
stood Jews brought offerings of ﬁrst fruits, Bikun’m, to the Temple on Shavuot. Today, parents
bring their children to participate in Conﬁrmation. These young people are the ﬁrst fruits of each
year’s harvest. They represent the hope and promise for the future. During the service the
conﬁrmands reafﬁrm their commitment to the covenant. The purpose of the ceremony is to
encourage the intellectual and spiritual growth of young people who are approximately 16 or 17
years old. The ceremony contrasts to the traditional Bar mitzvah ceremony. The Bar Mitzvah is
the occasion on which a boy is formally ushered into the adult Jewish community, and is
expected to assume full religious duties, including responsibility for his own actions. The Bar
Mitzvah is generally celebrated by a boy's being permitted to chant selections from the Bible
aloud for the congregation. The Bat Mitzvah is a recent innovation ﬁrst introduced less than 100

years ago.

32

second day of festivals15 and substituted the triennial16 Torah
reading cycle for the traditional one-year format; and all made
changes in the liturgy, including eliminating some prayers, and
adding, in the vernacular, others. (Raphael, 1984, p. 11)

During this time, at least a half dozen rabbis produced their own prayer books
(Meyer, 1988; Plaut, 1965). Because these prayer books were often used outside
of the editors congregation, many reform Iiturgies were developing. To solve the
"disunion and dissension" that resulted from the multiplicity of prayer books, the
Central Conference of American Rabbis established a committee to compile one
central prayer book for the Reform movement (Plaut, 1965). The Union Prayer
Book (the ﬁrst ofﬁcial collectively-produced Reform liturgy) was published in 1892
(Meyer, 1988; Plaut, 1965; Raphael, 1984). A majority of congregations used this
prayer book for almost 80 years (Hoffman, 1977; Meyer, 1988).

The Union Prayer Book (1892) is a drastically abbreviated version of the
traditional prayer book. Unlike traditional Hebrew books which open from right to
left (as Hebrew is read right to left), its two volumes opened from left to right as
beﬁtted a prayer book that was primarily in English. Meyer (1988) observes:

Necessarily, the prayer book also reﬂected the optimistic mood of
late nineteenth-century America. "We rejoice that after the long,
dreary night a new mom is dawning,” the worshipers were asked to

enthuse. "The truths revealed to Israel are becoming the
possession of an ever greater number of men.” p. 279)

 

15 The greatest change that the Sages made in the festival calendar was the addition of a day to
each of the holidays ordained in the Torah, except Yom Kippur. This was done in around the ﬁrst
century. Compelling circumstances at that time forced the Sages to make this change. Reform
Judaism from its very inception abolished the observance of a second day of the festivals and
retumed to the observance of the festivals as the Hebrew Bible prescribes.

6 The Hebrew Bible, the single most important document in Jewish life, is read in synagogues
throughout the year. The Sages divided the Hebrew Bible into portions so that each week in
synagogue Jews read a portion of the Torah. Jews all over the world read the same portion of the
Torah each week. In Reform and many Conservative congregations the entire portions are not
read aloud.

33

The content of the Union Prayer Book also differed from the traditional prayer

book. All references to exile and suffering are omitted. In addition, the editors
rejected the sacriﬁcial cult, a personal messiah, miracles, Zionism" (political and

religious), and the doctrine of resurrection18 of the dead. Individual petitionary
prayers are not included in the Union Prayer Book, and very little Hebrew was
incorporated into the service. Describing the prayer book, Raphael (1984) writes:
The liturgy is stmctured in a manner that enables rabbi and choir to
conduct an esthetically beautiful and coherent service for the
congregation—with the dignity and decomm of High Church
Christianity—but one without opportunities for spontaneity,
creativity . . . Both the Sabbath and high holiday services demand
that the rabbi pray for the congregation, indicate that the worship is
but a prelude to the essence of the service, the sermon, and
maximize the opportunities for worshipper passivity in prayer and
song. (p. 66)

The editors of the Union Prayer Book assumed that the congregation was to
be prayed for, preached to, and sung at. By the 19503 and 19603, many
criticized the prayer book because it left worshippers passive, with little room for
informality, spontaneity or creativity (Meyer, 1988; Raphael, 1984).

For American Reform Judaism, the 19703 was a period of intense liturgical
change. During the two previous decades many Reform rabbis found the Union
Prayer Book limiting (Meyer, 1988; Raphael, 1984). Struggling with the aftermath

of the Holocaust, some Jews found the theological claim that God was an

 

17 In 70 CE the Romans exiled the Jewish people from their homeland. Since that time the land
of Israel has always remained at the very center of Jewish consciousness. Throughout the
centuries small numbers of Jews continued to live in the land of Israel, even under the most
adverse circumstances. In modern times the commitment to a homeland was expressed not only
through the liturgy but also through political action. Zionism is a political movement born in the
18003. The goal of the movement was to establish a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel.

18 Belief in resurrection is one of the 13 principles of faith enunciated by Moses Maimondies in
the 12th century.

34

omniscient and omnibenevolent deity problematic. After all, if there was such a
God why would that God have allowed the Holocaust to occur? Why didn’t that
God intervene in history? For others, the lack of traditional prayers and the
archaic English rendered the book difﬁcult to use. There was no consensus as to
how to change the liturgy, although most Reform rabbis were looking for change.
As a result, many congregations created their own prayer books:

Many of these Iiturgies initially developed around the weekly

headlines (civil rights, brotherhood, opposition to the war, social

justice); others consciously sought to deal with the theological

problems of worshipers who disliked the idea of God contained in

the Union Prayer Book, congregants who sought a greater amount

of Hebrew as well as spontaneity, participation, and spirit, and the

desire, by rabbis and those praying, for the use of a vernacular

language that would speak to the "Me” or "Now" Generation.

(Raphael, 1984, p. 67)

This plethora of "creative liturgy" formed the foundation of what became, in
the 19703, the ﬁrst new Reform prayer book (Meyer, 1988; Raphael, 1984) in
nearly a century: Sha'are TeﬁIIa—Gates of Prayer (Stern, 1975).

Gates of Prayer (Stern, 1975) was well received almost immediately. Meyer
(1988) asserts that "it was a compendium of multiple Iiturgies done by many
hands” (p. 374). Refon’ners who wanted to incorporate more tradition into the
service found it contained many of the traditional prayers and ideas. "In fact, in
one form or another, in one place or another, the new prayer book contained
nearly every classical theme" (p. 375). At the same time, the more radical
Refonners' needs were also met by Gates of Prayer, which included innovative
services, a lot of English, and some radical theology:

Because Gates of Prayer offered something for everyone and

because at least some of the innovation possessed wide appeal, it
was able—after some resistance—to win acceptance even in

35

temples where attachment to the earlier Reform prayer book was
profound, especially among older congregants. The new prayer
book represented—and celebrated—the diversity that, for better or
worse, characterized the movement. (p. 375)

The new prayer book was intended to meet the changing needs of Reform
Judaism in America. It presented choices drawn from the tradition that appealed
to the liberally educated American Jew.

Our Jews are intelligent and informed, though they are still
struggling with the Jewish aspect of their education . . . The events
of the Holocaust and the birth of modern Israel stand foremost in
their mind, but the increasing necessity for developing a synthesis
of Americanism and Judaism is high on their agenda. A3 Reform
Jews, they want to be free to draw nourishment from the totality of
the Jewish tradition, be it Hasidic joy, Talmudic wisdom, philosophic
wonder, Kabbalistic19 mystery, prophetic idealism or liberal
openness to experimentation and change. And they want to blend
this with the best of modern culture: colloquial English, modern
poetry, new music, American democracy, and the commitment
(both Jewish and American) to an educated constituency.
(Hoffman, 1977, pp. 162-163)

Gates of Prayer is an attempt to respond to the needs of the Jews who are
using it. The American Reform Jewish community is well educated in secular
studies and is searching for meaning. The assumption is that the people who
pray from Gates of Prayer want to understand and relate to the prayers they are
reciting. Gates of Prayer offers different religious services, allowing Reform Jews
to choose for themselves an appropriate service.

The Reform movement continues to struggle with liturgy. Gates of Prayer is
not ”gender sensitive". God is regularly referred to as ‘He" or ”Him". Also, central

prayers describe God as the God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob

 

19 Kabbalah is Jewish mysticism. Jewish mystics believed that it was incumbent upon Jews to
live in a state of sanctity, brotherhood, and unity. They believed that mystical doctrines were

36

and do not include the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. A gender
sensitive version of Gates of Prayer has been published. In addition, in the next
three or four years a new Reform prayer book is scheduled to be published with
Rabbi Elyse Frishman as the editor. Speciﬁcs of the prayer book are not yet
clear. But it is said to be offering more options from both traditional and

contemporary liturgy, more transliterations and gender sensitive language.

Conservative Movement

Most Conservative thinkers who write about the history of the movement
(Davis, 1963; Gillman, 1993; Waxman, 1958; Wertheimer, 1997a; 1997b) claim
that, as with the Reform movement, the foundation of the Conservative
movement was established in Germany but that the major work was done by
those on the American scene:

They [those on the American scene], themselves, were frequently
the communicators of ideas rather than their inventors. But the
ideas, having been distilled through their personalities and through
the American environment, were more applicable and acceptable

than the general formulations made, for example, in Germany.
(Waxman, 1958, p. 41)

These scholars agree that the ideology of Conservative Judaism began with
Zechariah Frankel in Germany. Frankel (1801-1875) argued that Judaism was a
changing and developing entity which, through the ages, had recognized both the
changing conditions of modernity and temper of the times. Throughout history,
Frankel argued, Judaism had adjusted to these changes without sacriﬁcing its

own integrity. In explaining Frankel's philosophy, Waxman (1958) argues:

 

given to Moses on Mount Sinai and are hidden in the Torah. The movement ﬂourished in the 15'h
and 16‘" centuries.

37

that Judaism historically was both mobile and static, that it must in
measure adjust to the spirit of the time and in measure resist it, and
that a conclusive factor in all judgments must be sensibility to the
history, needs and unity of the Jewish people. (p. 7)

In 1854, Frankel became the ﬁrst president of a new rabbinical school in
Europe, the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau. The seminary was
grounded in a ”positive-historical” approach to Judaism. Frankel was ”positive”
because he wanted to preserve the commandments and Jewish law,20 unlike the
Reform movement. And he was ”historical" because he believed that Judaism
and its laws and institutions had grown and changed through the centuries, and
that it was vital to study that historical growth so as to understand Judaism
properly (Davis, 1963; Gillman; 1993; Waxman, 1958; Wertheimer, 1999).

While Frankel was willing to modify tradition, he was not willing to abandon it
completely, as Raphael (1984) explains: Because Frankel was committed to

an historically evolving dynamic Judaism (in contrast to Orthodox),

[he] viewed the essentials of Judaism, especially the law, through
the prism of history (like the reformers) and feeling (unlike the

 

20 Jewish law is ﬁrst recorded in the Five Books of Moses. In addition, there is an Oral Law, or
legal commentary on the Torah, that explains how the commandments in the Torah are to be
enacted. There are generally three ways in which the Oral Law can be illuminating. First, there
are very few details in Torah legislation. For example, the Torah commands the Israelites to
“Remember the Sabbath day to make it holy' (Exodus 20:8). Yet the Bible does not give speciﬁc
laws regulating just how one is to observe the day. The bible prohibits lighting a ﬁre, going away
from one’s dwelling, cutting down a tree, plowing and harvesting. Most of the laws associated
with making the Sabbath holy are not found in the Torah but are found in the Oral Law. It is the
Oral Law that describes candle lighting, reciting kiddush, a festive meal. Second, some laws are
incomprehensible. For example in Genesis 2:24 we are told “Therefore shall a man leave his
mother and father and cleave to his wife and they shall be one ﬂesh.“ Nowhere in the Torah are
the details of a marriage ceremony recorded. It is the Oral Law that provides the necessary
details. And ﬁnally some laws in the Torah are objectionable. For example the Book of Exodus
(21 :24) demands a policy of an ”eye for an eye.” The Oral Law explains that the verse cannot be
interpreted literally but must be understood as requiring monetary compensation: the value of an
eye is what must be paid. Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Orthodox Jews recognize
that when talking about Jewish law it is important to remember both the Written Law and the Oral
Law. However only Orthodox Judaism believes that the Oral Law dates back to God's revelation
to Moses on Mount Sinai. According to Orthodox tradition, when God gave Moses the Torah, God
simultaneously provided him all the details found in the Oral Law.

38

reformers). While the reformers applied primarily intellectual and
historical criteria in deciding what to retain and what to abolish,
Frankel asked not only what part a particular ritual, custom, belief,
or law played in the people's past (for Frankel the past was a
source of values, inspiration, and commitment) but also what the
feeling and sentiment of the Jewish people of his own day was
toward that item. (p. 86)

In his magnum opus, Darkhei HaMishnah (Paths of the Mishnah), Frankel
amassed considerable scholarly support for his contention that Jewish law had
always developed in response to changing historical conditions (Gillman, 1993).
Frankel argued that it was the Jewish community that was responsible for
changing and shaping Jewish belief in practice (Davis, 1963; Gillman, 1993;
Raphael, 1988; Waxman, 1958). In contrast to the polar positions of Reform and
Orthodoxy, Frankel proposed a program of development that would be ”carefully
disciplined, academically justiﬁed and communally based" (Gillman, 1993).
Raphael (1984) asserts that:

Frankel's approach to Judaism was neither Reform or Orthodox.
Although he shared much with . . . other reformers, he strongly
disagreed with them over the legitimate criteria for religious change
in his insistence on limiting the role that scientiﬁc scholarship,
relevance, reason, and precedents for change might have in
determining such change and in his deep commitment to traditional
piety and observance. He also fought bitterly with the Orthodox
over his view that the Oral Law (Tamud) was completely rabbinic in
origin rather than Sinaitic, that this law (halacha) was dynamically
evolved, and that the source of observance (e.g., the Sabbath) was
not in the divine origin of the halacha but in the role the various
rituals and observance had for the Jewish people over the
centuries. (p. 87)

Though the positive-historical approach to Judaism did not enjoy wide
success in Europe, it did in the US, thanks to leaders like Alexander Kohut,

Sabato Morais, Israel Friedlander, and Solomon Schechter (Gillman, 1993;

39

Waxman, 1958). These men rejected the ideology of the Reform movement even
though they were determined to modernize traditional practices.
Rabbi Alexander Kohut was ordained at the Breslau Seminary and served as

a congregational rabbi in Europe before coming to the United States. Gillman
(1993) claims that Kohut was largely responsible for transmitting the ”positive-
historical” approach to Judaism from Europe to the US. From his New York
pulpit and in his writing, Kohut sharply attacked the emerging shape of the
American Reform movement. In an article published in 1885 and reprinted in
Waxman's ( 1958) Tradition and Change, Kohut writes:

The sphere of Reform must be limited . . . for the law must always

be ﬁrmly established and irrevocable so far as concerns the

revealed Law and Religion . . .. The true idea of Liberty excludes

the idea of License. Development does not mean destruction.
Recasting is a very different process from casting aside. (p. 73)

He introduced the term "Conservative" in the late 18003 at the opening
exercises of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Raphael, 1984). The
term referred to conserving or preserving Jewish tradition. In addition, it would be
conservative in opposing the drastic changes of Reform while accepting less
revolutionary but necessary changes.

If Kohut was the ideological father of Conservative Judaism in America, its
institutional father is Sabato Morais (Gillman, 1993). In 1886, Morais gathered a
group of supporters to create a new seminary for the training of traditional
American rabbis. The Jewish Theological Seminary of America opened a year
later with eight students. The new school made its purpose clear. It would be

“faithful to Mosaic Law and ancestral tradition,” and it would teach the Bible and

40

rabbinic literature faithfully, training its rabbis in Jewish knowledge, Hebrew
language and Jewish law (Gillman, 1993; Raphael, 1984; Wertheimer, 1999).

The Jewish Theological Seminary of America continued to grow over time. In
1902, Solomon Schechter became its third president. Schechter was well suited
for the position. He had a traditional Jewish education, practiced traditional
Judaism, and had studied in institutions of western learning in Vienna and Berlin.
Before accepting a position at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,
Schechter served as a Reader (lecturer) in Rabbinics at Cambridge. According to
Raphael (1984), Schechter clearly articulated what the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America and Conservative Judaism were all about: ”Conservative
Judaism unit[es] what is desirable in modern life with the precious heritage of our
faith . . . that has come down to us from ancient times.” (p. 88).

This blend of modernity and tradition is clearly seen in the Sabbath and

Festival Prayer Book (Silverrnan, 1946), the ﬁrst official Conservative prayer

book21. It is based upon the work of Rabbi Morris Silven'nan, who had compiled a
prayer book for use in his own Hartford congregation. A Joint Prayer Book
Commission, consisting of nine Conservative rabbis, edited Silvennan's work.
Like the leaders of the Reform movement, these editors struggled to make
”prayer more palatable to the American Jew" (Waxman, p. 330). In their struggle,
the editors were unwilling to alter the liturgy radically, for Hebrew language and

the traditional organization of the prayers were seen as essential.

 

21 Before that time most Conservative congregations used prayer books generally identiﬁed as
Orthodox, with none of the changes that have come to characterize Conservative liturgy.

41

Three fundamental principles guided the Commission in the preparation of the
Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book (Silverrnan, 1946): (1) maintaining traditional
liturgy; (2) making the traditional liturgy more relevant; and (3) intellectual
honesty. In certain instances, these principles represented competing
commitments of the editors:

These basic principles, continuity with tradition, relevance to the
modern age, and intellectual integrity, are obviously not easy to
harmonize. The extent to which one or another principle ought to
prevail in a given case will naturally be the subject of differences of

opinion. Our procedure has varied with the circumstances involved
in each instance. (Gordis cited in Waxman, 1958, p. 332)

Gordis explains that the Joint Prayer Book Commission was not willing to
initiate all the changes necessary to make the prayer book more accessible to
the modern Jew. For example, consider the concept of Israel as a people chosen
by God. Because of the editors' commitment to continuity and tradition, they
remained faithful to the idea of chosen people, a problematic idea for the modern
Jew. To eliminate it from the prayer book because the modern Jew had trouble
with the concept of chosen people was not acceptable to the Prayer Book
Commission as:

it would mean surrendering to error and incidentally perpetrating an

injustice upon the prophets and sages of Israel who understood the
concept aright

In every instance the Prayer Book associates the election of Israel,
not with any inherent personal or group superiority, but with the
higher responsibilities which come to the Jew as the custodian of
Torah and the devotee of the Jewish way of life. This is no modern
reinterpretation, but an instance of the correct understanding of
both the letter and the spirit of the tradition. (Gordis cited in
Waxman, 1958,. p. 333)

42

In other instances, changes were deemed necessary. For example, the
traditional Hebrew prayer asking God to restore the sacriﬁces was altered to
become a historical recollection of the ancient service. This change was
introduced by leaving the entire paragraph intact, except for changing the tense
of two verbs. Thus, instead of asking God to bring Jews back to their land where
"we will once again bring the offerings [sacriﬁces] ordained for this day,” a new
and modiﬁed prayer asked that God bring Jews back to their land where ”our
forefathers brought the daily offerings" (Silverman, 1946 p. 141). Notice that in
this case, the editors were willing to change the liturgy to make the traditional
prayers more meaningful to the modern Jew who, in their view, could not
possibly be praying for a time when animal sacriﬁces would be reinstated.

Similariy, the preliminary blessings that praise God ”for not having made me a
woman,” ”for not having made me a non-Jew” and "for not having made me a
slave” were replaced by ones that praise God for having made me ”in Thine
image,” “a Jew,” and “a free person.” Gordis (1946) explains:

These blessings express the sense of privilege that the Jew felt in
being able to fulﬁll the Torah and the Mitzvot, which were not
obligatory in equal measure for non-Jews, slaves and women.
However, the negative form in which these blessings are couched
caused Jewish leadership much concern through the ages.

Supported by the trend of tradition, the Commission decided to
rephrase the blessings in the positive form. (p. 335)

Once again, the Commission was willing to change the traditional prayers to
make them more palatable to the modem Jew. The changes in the traditional
liturgy that Gordis describes may seem trivial or insigniﬁcant to the Conservative

Jew of the 19903, but they were considered bold changes in the 19403.

43

The Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book (Silverman, 1946) was the
predominant prayer book in the Conservative movement for 40 years (Gillman,
1993). In 1985, Siddur Sim Shalom (Harlow, 1985) introduced more radical
changes than the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book. For example, rather than
simply changing the tense of the verb pertaining to sacriﬁces, many more
alternative versions of the traditional prayer referring to the restoration of the
Temple service are added. None of the four alternatives ask God to allow the
Jews to sacriﬁce to God in the future. The most traditional of the alternatives
reads:

May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors who
restores His children to their land, to lead us in joy to our land and
to settle our people within its borders. There our ancestors
sacriﬁced to You with their daily offerings and with their special
offerings, and there may we worship You with love and reverence
as in days of old and ancient times. And the special offering for

Shabbat they offered lovingly, according to Your will, as written in
Your Torah through Moses, Your servant. (p. 447)

This prayer reminds the reader that Jews brought sacriﬁces to God in ancient
times and asks that Jews one day be able to worship God with love and
reverence. Notice the absence of any explicit request to reinstate sacriﬁces. Sim
Shalom also includes alternative texts that abandon any reference to sacriﬁces.
Compared to the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book, anyone examining Sim
Shalom cannot help but notice such radical changes.

Another strategy for handling problematic liturgical texts in Sim Shalom was
to retain the traditional Hebrew and shade the translation in a way that would
sidestep the problem. For example, in one of the concluding prayers included in

all services, Jews praise God who ”hath not made us like the pagans of the

world, nor placed us like the heathen tribes of the earth; He hath not made our
destiny as theirs, nor east our lot with all their multitude.” This rather accurate
translation of the Hebrew appears in the Sabbath and Festival Prayer Book. In
Sim Shalom, the Hebrew was not changed at all, but the new English text praises
God who ”made our lot unlike that of other people, assigning to us a unique
destiny.”

Finally, Sim Shalom is more egalitarian than the Sabbath and Festival Prayer
Book (Silverman, 1946). In a prayer asking God to bless the congregation, the
Sim Shalom text no longer asks for God to bless ”this holy congregation. . . ,
them, their wives, their sons and their daughters.“ Women are now recognized to
be members of ”this holy congregation." In the introduction editor Jules Harlow
(1 985) indicates that:

the modiﬁcations, additions, and deletions which distinguish this
prayer book affect a small portion of the classical texts of Jewish
prayer. A Jew of ancient or medieval times familiar with Jewish
prayer would be at home with the overwhelming majority of the
Hebrew texts in this volume. We are linked to Jews of centuries
past who have used the same liturgical formulations in addressing

our Creator, confronting challenges of faith, and expressing
gratitude and praise. (p. xx)

Notice that Harlow represents the prayer book as a traditional text, with a few
minor changes. The Conservative movement's prayer book reﬂects the
movement's commitment to traditional Judaism. Unlike the Reformers, who
focused on the unique needs of the modern American Jew, the Conservative

liturgists strove to maintain traditional liturgy.

45

Reconstructionist Movement

The youngest of the religious movements in American Judaism is the
Reconstructionist movement, which is based on the work of Mordecai Kaplan,
who rejected both the Reform and Conservative approach to Jewish law and
traditions. Born in 1881 in Poland, Kaplan immigrated to the United States when
he was nine years old. In the US, Kaplan lived in both a Jewish and a non-
Jewish wortd. He received a good Jewish and secular education, studying both at
the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and at New York's City College and
Columbia University. Ordained a rabbi in 1902, Kaplan joined the faculty of the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America just seven years later. First he trained
Hebrew teachers and eventually joined the Rabbinical School faculty.

While on faculty at the Seminary, Kaplan studied and wrote about his
understanding of Judaism. In 1922, he founded the Society for the Advancement
of Judaism, a synagogue that served as a laboratory for developing his ideas
about reconstructing Judaism and Jewish values. Describing Kaplan's work,
Raphael (1984) claims that:

as a congregational rabbi, Kaplan tried to programmatically
reconstruct Judaism. He believed that Judaism was not just a
religion but a civilization. In 1917 the ﬁrst story of a $1-million
synagogue-center was completed on West 86th Street, and Kaplan
officially became the rabbi. He implemented a program of worship,

study, and "meeting," and the latter included drama, song, dance,
basketball, and calisthenics. (p. 180)

Almost 15 years later, Kaplan published Judaism as a Civilization (1934),
introducing a fully developed program for the reconstruction of Jewish theology,
philosophy, ritual and communal life. In it, Kaplan presented his theory that the

Jewish people—not God—should be seen as the center of Jewish life, and

46

everything must be done to preserve that people, even if it means discarding old
ideas and values while creating new ones. Explaining Kaplan's philosophy,
Raphael (1984) writes:

He proposed a ”reconstructed" historical Judaism (thus its linkage

to the Conservative Jewish wing) without supernatural revelation or

supernatural "choosing” of the Jews, but with an abundance of

customs, ceremonies, rituals, holidays, and festivals from the rich

storehouse of Jewish tradition—all to be celebrated and observed
for reasons other than that they were divinely revealed. (p. 181)

Kaplan argued that Judaism needed to be evaluated as the "civilization” or full
expression of a people. He wanted to reconstruct Jewish tradition to
accommodate modernity in the United States. He argued that Jewish practices
and beliefs were created and shaped by community. For Kaplan, this ensured
Judaism's survival. He was not disturbed that the community had such a powerful
role in determining what Judaism would look like; rather, he understood the
community's actions to be the work of God. Not the supernatural God of the
Bible, but rather God as a process within nature and within human beings
(Kaplan, 1934):

For Kaplan, "modem" Judaism was Judaism without
supematuralism, that is, without revelation, divine commandments,
miracles, and chosenness. Such a Judaism is essentially, classical
Judaism ”reconstructed" in consonance with modernity, for Kaplan
refuses to discard either Jewish rituals or the Jewish religion and, in

fact, urges that they ﬁnd their rightful place as the underpinning of
Judaism as a civilization. (Raphael, 1984, p. 182)

Kaplan’s radical ideas made him unpopular amongst the faculty at the Jewish
Theological Seminary of America (Gillman, 1993). For a short time, he even
considered teaching at the Reform movement's Jewish Institute of Religion. But

his ideology was distinctly different from the Reform movements and, as a result,

47

he could not join its faculty. Unlike the Refom'iers, Kaplan did not abandon
Jewish nationhood as a dimension of Jewish identity. A committed Zionist, he did
not believe Judaism was just a religion. In addition, unlike the Reforrners, Kaplan
was a traditionally observant Jew. While he was willing for the community to
reconstnrct Jewish practices and beliefs, he was not willing to discard all of
traditional Judaism.

For most of Kaplan's career, he was reluctant to introduce a new independent
movement to the American Jewish scene (Gillman, 1993). Kaplan wanted
Reconstructionist Judaism to be a school of thought inﬂuencing North American
Judaism rather than a fourth denomination (Raphael, 1984). He remained on the
faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America until 1963, trying to create
a Reconstructionist following within the Conservative movement. Ultimately,
however, he realized that in order to spread his ideas and programs, he could not
work within in the Conservative or Reform movement and so founded the
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in the late 19603 (Raphael, 1984).

The Reconstructionist movement, while smaller than either the Conservative
or Reform movement, has inﬂuenced both. Raphael (1984) explains that scores
of Conservative rabbis continue to acknowledge their

indebtedness to their former teacher, Kaplan, and to
Reconstructionism for stimulating their thinking on numerous
issues. In addition, Reconstructionism played a major role in
shaping the ideas of Reform Judaism, especially the notion that
Judaism includes a cultural component, that naturalist theology is

legitimate, and that Jewish communal democracy must be
continuously afﬁrmed and implemented. (p. 193)

The Reconstructionist Prayer Book (Kaplan 8. Kohn, 1945) offered

Conservative and Reform Jews an alternative understanding of God. In its

48

introduction, the editors explain that the prayer book was complied primarily for
those who were not at home in the synagogues and temples of that time. The
purpose of the prayer book was to offer meaningful prayers for the modern Jew
who found services meaningless. As a result, many traditional passages were
eliminated and inspirational readings were added.

Kaplan's approach to the liturgy was a simple one: "If you don't'believe it,
don't say it" (Gillman, 1993 p. 80). In the introduction to the Reconstructionist
prayer book, the editors explain that a prayer book must:

Be reverential of the traditional worship-text

Draw generously on those vast resources of historic Judaism which
have hitherto not been tapped

Take clear cognizance of the problems and aspirations of mankind
and Jewry today

Exhibit courage . . .to set aside or modify such prayers or phrases
as are unacceptable to modern men, whether intellectually, morally,
or aesthetically. (Kaplan & Kohn, 1945, p. xviii)

The Reconstructionist prayer book, therefore, eliminated all references to the
resurrection of the dead, the Chosen People, and the personal Messiah.22 It
dropped the middle paragraph of the Shema (Deuteronomy 11:13-21) because

the editors no longer believed that a person's behavior inﬂuences rain or drought.

 

22 The traditional outlook of Judaism is that the Messiah will be the dominating ﬁgure of an age of
universal peace and plenty. Through a restored Israel, the Messiah will bring about the spiritual
regeneration of humanity, when all will blend into one brotherhood to perform righteousness and
with a perfect heart. The prophet Zechariah (14:9) explains that “on that day [when the Messiah
has arrived] the Lord shall be One and his name one.“ The Jewish liturgy is replete with
references to the messianic hopes and aspirations.

49

It also dropped the entire Musafza service because it evokes the additional
sacriﬁce of the Sabbath and modern Jews no longer need to pray for a return to
the Temple cult with its sacriﬁcial system.

In 1994, the Reconstructionist Press published a new Reconstructionist
prayer book, KoI Haneshamah, which means ”all with the breath of life.” David
Teutsch, chair of a committee that edited the new prayer book, argued that there
was a need to publish the new prayer book because the situation of North
American Jewry had changed so much since the 19403:

Then Jews were struggling to assimilate into North American
society. Today many North Americans are trying to ﬁnd their way
into Judaism. In the 19403 the horror of the Holocaust and the
emergence of the State of Israel had not yet redeﬁned the Jewish
sense of self, and the ethnic awakening of Jews had not yet begun.
The language of prayer had not yet been affected by the growing
informality of American manners. Changes in women's roles had
not yet had a major inﬂuence. There was no way of anticipating the
smaller groups that would join in prayer, the return to lay leadership
in worship, and the growing desire for a sense of inclusion
English usage, too, has changed considerably in the last forty
years. (T eutsch, 1994, p. xxi)

Teutsch is arguing that a prayer book must reﬂect the Jewish community's
experiences, whether those experiences involve how the English language is
used, the role of women, the Hebrew skills of the community, or the reality that
they encounter. Unlike the traditional Jew who believes the liturgy is static,
Teutsch argues that the prayer book changes to accommodate the times.

The differences between KoI Haneshamah and Kaplan's Sabbath
Prayer Book include transliterations, commentaries, English

readings, alternative versions of many traditional prayers, and
gender-sensitive language. The new prayer book was intended to

 

23 Musaf is an additional service that is recited on the Sabbath, festivals, and ﬁrst day of a new
month. The additional service is reminiscent of the additional sacriﬁce that was brought to the
Temple on those days.

50

meet the needs of Jews "who are ﬁnding their way to fuller Jewish
lives despite scanty Jewish education and scarce memories of
powerful experiences of worship and ritual." (T eutsch, 1994, p. xx)

Kol Haneshamah is thus the most recent example of the struggle of all three
movements — Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist - to make sense of
the traditional liturgy in the context of the opposing forces of emancipation and
Jewish tradition. Each movement has published at least two prayer books. The
Reform prayer book reﬂects a commitment to social action and to reforming the
liturgy (Hoffman, 1977). The Conservative Sabbath prayer book came into being
in 1946 and emphasized tradition, but modernized it to match American
aesthetics—exactly the self-image of Conservative Jews moving to the suburbs
(Sklare, 1972). Although a separate Reconstructionist movement was not
founded until the late 19603, Mordecai Kaplan published a Reconstructionist
prayer book (Kaplan 8 Kohn, 1945) in which a radical conception of God as a

natural force within the universe was introduced.

Liberal Jews’ Struggle with the Traditional Liturgy

Thus far we have considered the history and liturgical changes of the Reform,
Conservative and Reconstructionist movement. In this section, the roots of the
contemporary liberal Jew's struggle with the traditional liturgy is explored. Once
the nature of the contemporary liberal Jew’s struggle with prayer is better
understood, we can begin to investigate the challenges in teaching prayer in a

liberal supplementary school setting. There are three main reasons for these

51

struggles: (a) the Hebrew language; (b) keva versus kavannahz"; (c) theological

problems. Each is discussed in turn.

The Hebrew Language

According to the Sages, it was critical for the pray-er25 to understand the
prayer. The Mishnah (Sotah 7:1), a second century codiﬁcation of Jewish law
recorded by Rabbi Judah, explains: "These may be said in any language . . . the
Shema, the Amidah and the Blessings After Meals.” Although Jewish law does
not demand that prayer be offered in Hebrew, traditional Jewish prayers were
composed in Hebrew.

According to the Conservative movement, Hebrew is an essential aspect of
for Jewish prayer. Hammer (1994) argues that an emotional element is added to
the experience when prayers are recited in Hebrew, even if the pray-er does not
comprehend every word:

There is a feeling of identiﬁcation with an ancient tradition and with
other Jews wherever they may be which enhances the experience
of prayer. There is nothing magical in Hebrew, but there is

something culturally meaningful that is lost when traditional prayers
are said in other languages. (p. 13)

There is also a sense of historical rootedness. Though Hebrew has not been
the spoken language of the Jewish people throughout most of their history, it is
the language of the Bible and many sacred texts. Like any language, Hebrew has

certain allusions and culturally speciﬁc imagery. As a result, the fullest meaning

 

24 Keva is the Hebrew word for "ﬁxed', deriving from the root “permanent." Keva means that the

words of prayers are ﬁxed, permanent paths to guide our praying. Kavannah is the Hebrew word

for “intention", deriving from the root ”point“ or 'aim.‘ Kavannah is when you 'aim' your heart and
really mean something with all your feelings.

5 I use this term pray-er to refer to the person engaged in the act of praying.

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of a particular text lies in its original language. The terms that are used, the
multiple meanings and echoes within them, can seldom be fully conveyed in
translation. For example, in the prayer book, God is described as being kadosh.
The word kedushah (holy) comes from the word kadosh, meaning set apart,
unique, separate, holy, special. The word kedushah is rich in associations from
Jewish literature and culture. On Friday evenings, Jews take wine and recite the
kiddush, a blessing which declares the next 25 hours kadosh. The blessings
recited at a wedding ceremony are known as the blessings of kiddushin, for they
create the sacred union of a man and a woman. When praying in the synagogue,
Jews face the Aron HaKodesh, the holy ark. In many blessings, Jews recognize
God as the "One who has sanctiﬁed us with God’s commandments—asher
kidishanu b'mitzvotav." Finally, in the book of Leviticus, God challenges the
Jewish people kedoshim tihiyu, "make yourselves holy."

In all of these instances, the word kadosh suggests a God-like behavior or
relationship. Knowing Hebrew allows one to see the interconnections and
relationships. The English translation does not conjure up the linguistic roots nor
the imagery or and emotional impact of the word kadosh.

In addition to conveying a richer meaning, praying in Hebrew allows the pray-
er to identify with an ancient tradition and with Jews all over the world. Dorff
(1992) suggests that although Jews may not know the Hebrew language, praying
together in Hebrew helps create bridges for Jews worIdwide. To illustrate this
point, he cites Elie Weisel’s Jews in Silence. Wiesel describes being in

synagogue on Yom Kippur in Moscow as he tried to speak in Yrddish with the

53

Russian Jews surrounding him. They pretended not to understand him: "It was
only when I began to pray aloud, in witless desperation, that the barriers fell. The
Prince of Prayer had come to my aid. They listened closely, than drew nearer;
their hearts opened” (cited in Dorff, 1966, pp. 19-22).

Conservative ideology has always considered Hebrew to be the language of
the liturgy. In Darkhei HaMishnah, Frankel pleaded for retaining Hebrew, arguing
that Jewish history demanded that Hebrew continue to be the language of Jewish
prayer. Traditionalists who advocated retaining prayer in Hebrew recognized that
Hebrew is rich with biblical and literary allusions. An example of such a literary
allusion is the "Song of the Sea" (Exodus 14:30-15:19), which is included in the
early morning portion of the weekday and Sabbath morning service. This
dramatic poem expresses both praise and faith in God. It is a song of triumph
sung after the Israelites successfully crossed the Red Sea. Most people reciting
the text probably do not recognize the historical or Biblical references, let alone
the poem’s many literary allusions. They certainly do not realize that the well-
known Hebrew text Mi Khamokha (Who is Like God), found a few pages later,
comes directly from this poem.

Leaders of the Reform movement originally rejected Hebrew as the primary
language of worship, embracing the vernacular instead (Petuchowski, 1977).
There were two reasons for this decision (Mendes-Flohr & Reinharz, 1980). First,
after the Enlightenment, as Jews were welcomed into the secular world, many
abandoned Ieaming in traditional Jewish schools where Hebrew was prevalent.

As a result, Hebrew was increasingly unintelligible to many Jews. In addition,

until the Emancipation, Jews had looked at themselves and had been looked
upon by others as a separate nation. The message of the Emancipation was that
they could be citizens and active participants of the nations in which they lived.
As a result, reformers rejected the use of Hebrew because it was the national
language of the ancient commonwealth of Israel. As an expression of Jewish
national identity and nationalism, Hebrew was a problem for Reform Judaism in
the years following the Emancipation (Meyer, 1988). By conducting services in
English, Reform Jews tried to minimize the national aspects of Judaism.

The Reform movement—and its orientation toward Hebrew—has changed a

great deal since its early beginnings.26 While worship was once conducted
almost exclusively in the vernacular, now most Reform congregations incorporate
some Hebrew into their service. Once Hebrew became a part of worship, many
Reform Jews were frustrated because they knew little or no Hebrew and, as a
result, could not understand the liturgy. Addressing how lack of Hebrew
knowledge affects the liberal community, Jakob Petuchowski (1977), a Reform
liturgist, described the modern Jew's problem with traditional prayer.

The worshipper without the requisite background in Hebraic

scholarship can only experience the height of boredom during the

recitation of the piyyutim [poetic prayers], a boredom which will lead

to conversation with his neighbor, and to an inevitable disturbance

of the decorum. Or—and this is hardly any better—he may devoutly

recite page after page of words which are utteriy incomprehensible
to him, regarding them as some kind of magical incantation. (p. 21)

 

26 For example regarding statehood, in 1976 the movement formally embrawd the State of
Israel. ”We are privileged to live in an extraordinary time, one in which a third Jewish
commonwealth has been established in our people’s ancient homeland. We are bound to that
land and to the newly reborn State of Israel by innumerable religious and ethnic ties“ (A
Centenary Perspective cited in Borowitz 1983, p xxiii)

55

Petuchowski's assumption about the Reform Jew's inability to understand the
liturgy is right on the mark. While he is describing the situation in the Reform

temples, his comments apply to most Jews worshipping in liberal congregations.

Keva Versus Kavannah

Jewish tradition recognizes that the individual will not always feel moved to
pray. As a result, the Sages structured prayer, by prescribing keva, a required
schedule for praying. Though the time was ﬁxed, originally the speciﬁc prayers
were not. Scholars of the liturgy believe that prayer was originally intended to be
a spontaneous outpouring of the individual (Petuchowski, 1977). The content of
that verbal expression was to be based on a set of ﬁxed topics said in a certain
order. Prayers would vary according to the individual’s ability to write prayers.
This process was slow and the innovative personal side of the prayers remained
present for many years (Holtz, 1990). Over time, the liturgy became ﬁxed.
Perhaps one of the most difﬁcult aspects of prayer for liberal Jews is that the text
has become set. This rigidity is troubling for many, and yet commitment to the
text of the prayer book is an essential element of Jewish prayer.

Even so, Jewish prayer is not just mechanical. It also requires kavannah—not
only concentration but meaning and intention—when expressing ourselves
before God. Judaism acknowledges that there is an impulse to pray and the
spontaneous words a person addresses to God are a form of prayer (Dorff, 1992;
Hoffman 1988; Petuchowski, 1977). The Jewish tradition recognizes that most
people periodically ﬁnd themselves wanting to pray. This is especially true when

they want to express joy or anguish at critical moments in their lives. Or when

56

they are in need. Their free outpourings of the heart may not come from the
traditional liturgy, but they are authentic Jewish prayers.
This tension between the ﬁxed nature of prayer and the need for spontaneity
in prayer is articulated in traditional Jewish sources. The Mishnah (Berachot 4:4)
quotes a deﬁnitive statement by one Sage: "If a man makes his prayer a ﬁxed
task, it is not a [genuine] supplication.” The Talmud (Berachot 29b) later deﬁnes
”a ﬁxed task" as prayers that consist of an established liturgy with nothing new
added. Clearly, the early Sages worried about reconciling these two conﬂicting
requirements of worship. On the one hand, they knew true worship demanded
the spontaneous outpouring of the human heart. Rote-like prayer would lack
sincerity and meaning. On the other hand, the Sages realized that meaningful
prayer experiences do not just happen spontaneously; they must be planned.
Holtz (1990) argues that the set liturgy provides certain themes essential for

Jewish worship. It is like a collective and cultural autobiography "ghosted' by
another. The traditional prayers are the words Jews should want to say if they
were capable of writing eloquent prayers:

Therefore, although they are words that can help us or guide us,

our relationship to that language is different from our relationship to

words of our own choosing. What we seek to develop, then, is a

more ﬂexible stance in our personal connection to the words of

prayer. The liturgy, in other words, is there to assist us; rather than

letting our difﬁculties with the words hinder us, our goal should be

to attain the ability to go beyond the words while at the same time
taking advantage of what they have to offer us. ( pp. 119-120)

He explains further:

The tradition provides the melody, so to speak, but our own
personal improvisation upon the melody varies it, changes it,
makes it different perhaps from its original intention, but it makes
the song our own. (p. 120)

57

The challenge, Holtz asserts, is for the liberal Jew is to ﬁgure out how that
improvising can occur.

It has been my experience that Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist
congregations all struggle with the tension between keva and kavannah. Each
movement addresses the issue a bit differently. In Conservative congregations,
the ﬁxed liturgy of the prayer book is both a blessing and an obstacle. It is a
blessing because it is a great educational tool, as Dorff (1992) indicates:

By following the course of the set liturgy, the Jew is taught and
reminded of some of the primary values and tenets of Judaism in
the context of emotionally inspirational words and music. This

enables Jewish prayer to be morally and educationally enriching as
well as emotionally expressive. (p. 153)

Prayer—like ritual objects and acts of all sorts—helps us to
remember our commitments so that we have a better chance to
make them a part of our lives. (p. 171)

Yet, the text is also an obstacle. Unwilling to part from the text of the Siddur,
Conservative Jews often experience prayer as mechanical and boring (Gillman,
1990). For the most part, Conservative Jews have forgotten, or do not know, that
spontaneity was once an essential element of Jewish prayer (Holtz, 1990).

Reform and Reconstructionist congregations experience the tension between
keva and kavannah a bit differently. In some settings, rabbis freely change the
liturgy, thus abandoning the keva of prayer. Sometimes the blueprint of the
service is changed, so that the traditional themes and structure are abandoned.
Other times, the blueprint is maintained but the traditional prayers are replaced
with new readings or prayers, which are more accessible to the modern Jew.

Often these innovations themselves become ﬁxed. This is problematic.

Ironically, these English responsive readings or abridged prayers (created to

58

make praying more accessible to all congregants) can become so set that there
is no room for spontaneity. Petuchowski (1968) writes: "One generation's
expression of kavanah becomes the next generation's heritage of keva” (p. 15). l
have observed another problem: Many rabbis and cantors are creating their own
liturgy, abandoning any commitment to a ﬁxed liturgy, changing the service from
week to week. I wonder if congregants yearn for more keva in their services, as
repetition might help them learn the prayers and allow them to ﬁnd a deeper
meaning in the liturgy. Future research in Jewish education might take on such
inquiries, probing the interests, perspectives, and needs of congregants. While
not the focus of this dissertation, such research would have much promise for

contributing to Jewish education.

Theological problems

One central theological challenge for liberal Jews involves the disjunction
between our modern attitudes toward God and those who wrote or edited the
prayer book. Holtz (1990) looks closely at Nishmat KoI Hai (The Breath of Every
Living Thing), one of the central hymns of the Sabbath and festival morning
service, as an example. Placing the hymn in context, Holtz cites scholar Joseph
Heinemann, who claimed that the text was ”the most exalted and eloquent prayer
in the hymnic style to be found in the statutory liturgy" (p. 115). The translated
hymn follows:

The breath of every living thing

shall praise your name, 0 Lord our God,

and every mortal being

shall ever glorify and exalt your deeds, 0 our

King. From eternity to eternity
You are our God.

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And we have no one but You as our King,

our Redeemer, our Savior, our Deliverer

in every time of trouble and distress.

God of ﬁrst things and of last things,

Lord of all creatures, Master of all generations You are endlessly
praised.

If our mouths were ﬁlled with song
as the sea

and our tongue with joyful praise

as the roaring waves;

were our lips full of adoration

as the wide expanse of heaven,

and our eyes sparkling

like the sun or moon;

were our hands spread out in prayer
as the eagles of the sky,

and our feet swift as the deer—

we should still be unable to thank you
and bless Your name,

Lord our God.

Therefore

the limbs which you have given us

and the spirit and soul which You have breathed into our nostrils
and the tongue which You have placed in our mouths—all join in
giving thanks and in praising Your name, O our King. (pp. 115-117)

Holtz (1990) describes Nishmat KoI Hai as a journey of self-discovery. First,

the hymn establishes that God is "our King, our Redeemer, our Savior, our

Deliverer in every time of trouble and distress.” By describing God’s

omnipotence, the writer leads us to critical questions: If God is omnipotent and

God is both the master and source of language, then who are we to praise God?

And how will we ﬁnd the prOper words to bless God? Our inadequacy is

ovenrvhelming. But, as Holtz points out, the author of the hymn concludes that we

can praise God because ”it is God who has given us the ability to pray.“ By

acknowledging that God enables us to pray, the individual becomes capable of

praising God. Thus, in the third section it is no longer our limbs, but rather ”the

60

limbs which You have given us." It is not our tongue, but rather "the tongue which
You have placed in our mouths.” Holtz concludes that, according to Nishmat, we
can pray because God allows us to. God is the source of prayer. God is the
source of our strength. The perspective that the author of Nishmat Kol Hai
assumes is difﬁcult for the modern liberal Jew, who has conﬁdence in humanity’s
abilities but doubts and questions God's existence.

In earlier times when Jews were struggling with prayer, they felt inadequate to
pray to God, but the liturgy does not suggest that they ever doubted God's
existence. Their doubt focused on their ability to speak before their Creator.
Before the modern era, prayer was an address to God, and God heard and
responded. Modernity, Holtz (1990) asserts, is accompanied by doubt that makes
prayer problematic. Modem Jews are troubled, for making a request of God
assumes that God will answer our requests. Thanking God for something
assumes that God is responsible for what happened. Praising God assumes that
God exists. Such beliefs are not so easy to hold in the modern world.

Recently, a great deal has been written about contemporary liberal Jews'
struggle with traditional Jewish prayer (Ariel, 1988, 1995, 1998; Dorff, 1992;
Gillman, 1990; Goldman, 1991; Gordis, 1995; Hammer, 1994; Heschel, 1954;
Hoffman, 1997, 1998; Holtz, 1990, 1993; Kamenetz, 1994; 1997; Kushner, 1989;
Schulweis, 1994; Staub, 1996; Wieseltier, 1998; Wolpe, 1990, 1992, 1993).
Wolpe (1990) describes the situation for wntemporary liberal Jews:

Questions of whether Judaism can stand without the God-Idea and
attempts to redeﬁne God in impersonal terms are part of a general

struggle to understand anew the nature of Judaism. Is it a religion?
Is it a people, a nationhood, a civilization? If Judaism is something

61

more than a religion, can God be erased or ignored? Suspending
deﬁnitional entanglements, we may simply ask: how central is God
to Judaism?

Many modern Jews will give an obligatory nod but insist that the
centrality of Judaism lies elsewhere. Conceding that God was at
one time the fulcrum of Judaism, they maintain that in our day the
balance has shifted. Now the people of Israel are the true focus of
Judaism. . . . the land of Israel, revived by historical legerdemain
and massive sacriﬁce, . . . God is not central because, we are told
in those hard dichotomies so beloved of people who come out on
the right side, Judaism is a religion of action, not belief, centered in
this worid, not standing with its head thrust in clouds, that for all
their loveliness, do obscure vision...

While God is acknowledged as part of the redoubtable triad—God,
Torah, and Israel—some are convinced that one leg can be
removed and still the structure, in a neat twist of metaphysical
carpentry, stays standing. (p. 4)

Wolpe recognizes that the modern liberal Jew is struggling with the idea of
God. Rather than acknowledging God as central to Judaism, modern liberal Jews
are wondering if Judaism can be redeﬁned, with Israel in the center, especially
given the extraordinary historical circumstances that led to the founding of the
state of Israel.

The liberal Jew is faced with many other theological questions. To whom
does one pray? Does God hear prayers? If so, will God answer them? If prayer is
not heard and answered by God, then why pray? Why would an omniscient God
need us to articulate our prayers? Shouldn't God just know what we are thinking?
These questions are not easily answered and often prevent a liberal Jew from
praying (Dorff, 1992). Why are liberal Jews asking so many difﬁcult questions?
Why don't they have the faith in God that their ancestors had? Why is the one leg

of the triad—God—being challenged?

62

There are several reasons for this erosion of faith. First, Western culture is
grounded in scientiﬁc inquiry that depends upon knowledge, critical questioning,
empirical data, and belief based upon evidence. Following Emancipation, Jews
eagerly embraced opportunities to study secular subjects and pursue heretofore
off-limits professional endeavors. They achieved notable success, but
acceptance in the intellectual milieu of the university and the salon often required
abandonment of belief based on faith, habit, religious tradition or accidents of
circumstance. For many Jews, the logic behind forsaking obligations to an
unproven God proved irresistible.

Perhaps one reason for this erosion of faith is that liberal American Jews live
in a social and cultural milieu where faith does not uniformly play a major role.
The environment of material abundance and popular culture do not lend
themselves to faith. In addition, for liberal American Jews, attendance at college
or university is the norm. The paradigm of the modern American university looks
down upon determining one's beliefs about academic subjects based upon faith,
habit, religious traditions and accidents of circumstance. That suspicion of
unsupported beliefs can easily leak into one’s personal life as well.

Yet another reason why contemporary liberal Jews struggle with these
traditional images of God is because in traditional Judaism, God is the King and
the Jewish people are servants, obligated to fulﬁll God's commandment. The
Enlightenment repudiated the divine right of kings. As a result, contemporary
liberal Jews do not see themselves as servants but as individuals with rights.

Traditional understandings of God reject this view of the world, claiming that God

63

can be arbitrary, God is all powerful, and mortals have no way of understanding
exactly what is God's will.

In the modern period, Jews have felt an increasing distance from the God
described in the traditional liturgy: God as Creator, Revealer, and Redeemer.
Scientiﬁc inquiry about how the world was created, and how the universe
functions raises many questions about God for many modern liberal Jews.

Yet another challenge to traditional theology was the murder of six million
Jews during the Second Worid War. Contemporary Jewish theologians have
been forced to ask hard questions about God's role in history. How could a
merciful God permit these unspeakable horrors? What was God's purpose for the
mass murder of so many millions of innocent people? Most contemporary liberal
theologians reject the traditional notion of an active personal God who is
responsible for reward and punishment. For example, the extreme view of one
modern Jewish theologian, Richard Rubinstein (1966), is that God is dead. If God
is not dead, at least belief in God is dead because there is no good answer to the
vexing question, "Why did God not intervene to prevent the suffering?"

Still, for many, the Holocaust has not succeeded in undermining faith in God.
Many American Jews believe in God, but they do not always turn to God in a
Jewish setting like the synagogue. In a study of the American Jewish community,
Cohen and Eisen (2000) found that:

The Jews we interviewed overwhelmingly believe in God, far more
so than we would have expected or that survey data about
American Jews led us to believe. They are also surprisingly content
with, and even fondly attached to, their synagogues. But they rarely

make any straightforward connection between the two. God for
them is a Being or Force who/which they encounter as individual

human beings rather than as Jews. . . . When they come to
synagogue, it is to enjoy the pleasures of Jewish community and of
attachment to Jewish tradition. God is rarely sought or found there,
and is certainly not brought near by the words of the prayer book,
which—to our subjects at least—rarely carry personal signiﬁcance.

(9.11)

American Jews, then — according to Cohen and Eisen—may come to
synagogue for many reasons: spirituality, personal awareness, moral aspiration,
community or perhaps tradition. But they do not necessarily come to synagogue
because the liturgy inspires them or because they expect to encounter God.
While one might not agree with the researchers’ conclusions, Cohen and Eisen’s
research is intriguing nonetheless, for they claim that American Jews might
believe in a God and yet make no direct connection between God and the prayer
book or the synagogue. In part, this may be due to the fact that the God in the
prayer book is very difﬁcult to understand for many Jews today. The words of the
liturgy do not reﬂect what they believe. As a result, these scholars claim, ”they

are distinctly uncomfortable with the act of prayer" (p. 155).

Conclusion

Worship has always been embedded in the fabric of Jewish life. In the ancient
world, animal sacriﬁces, psalms and spontaneous prayer allowed human beings
to feel closer to God. With the destruction of the Second Temple and exile, which
forced an end to the Temple cult and sacriﬁces, synagogue and prayer assumed
a new central role in Jewish life, with the reading of the biblical portions

describing the sacriﬁces substituting for the actual sacriﬁces.

65

Thus, for more than 2,000 years, Jews have relied upon a set liturgy to
worship God. Modern Jews—particularly since the early 1800’s—have struggled
with this ancient liturgy. Yet, despite the introduction of many changes in both
form and content, they have yet to create a framework for prayer that resonates
broadly among the majority of contemporary Jews.

The question then arises: Is this failure to resonate primarily due to the
theological and other reasons outlined above for liberal Jews' struggle with the
traditional liturgy, or is it perhaps due, at least in part, to our failure to properly
teach prayer?

Despite the centrality of praying to Judaism, little scholarship exists on
teaching of prayer. Historically, formal school settings have not included prayer in
the traditional Jewish curriculum. Traditional Judaism assumed that boys would
learn the prayers by praying with their fathers and that girls would absorb any
liturgy they needed to know from their mothers. Consider the Mishnah, where a
boy's studies are outlined. Yehudah ben Tema states:

At ﬁve years of age—the study of Bible, at ten—the study of

Mishnah, at thirteen—responsibility for the mitzvot
[commandments], at ﬁfteen—the study of Talmud. (Pirke Avot

5:23)27
The text does not specify when liturgy should be studied formally. The
assumption was that children would learn to pray, not that they would study the

liturgy.

 

27 When referring to texts from the Mishnah it is customary to cite by chapter and verse, not by
page number.

66

The reality of Jewish life changed considerably in the modern period.
Yehudah ben Tema’s teaching no longer described the Jewish studies of the
typical American Jewish boy or girl. In the next chapter, I describe how the
teaching of prayer developed in liberal Jewish supplementary schools in the

wake of these cultural, religious, and social shifts.

67

CHAPTER 3
SUPPLEMENTARY SCHOOLS:
FROM TALMUD TORAH TO BAR MITZVAH PRELUDE

As Jews assimilated in American society, many still sought ways to maintain
and develop their Jewish identity. The response of the Reform, Conservative,
and Reconstructionist movements to modernity articulated in their prayer books -
- as we saw in the last chapter - illustrate the diversity of theological and
practical religious issues that have dominated liberal Jewish thought for more
than two centuries. Supplemental schools and their approaches to teaching
prayer offer another window through which we can view that same struggle. Most
Jews sent their children to public schools and created supplemental schools to
educate them about Judaism. This chapter examines how prayer was taught in
supplementary religious schools in the United States during the last century.

There are many potential fool for such an analysis. My analysis focuses on
how the teaching of prayer developed in liberal Jewish supplementary schools,
for that is the object of this inquiry. We begin by examining two large-scale waves
of Jewish immigration to this country. While the structure and focus of the
schools established by each group differed, both recognized the need for
supplementary schools where Jewish studies would be taught.

The ﬁrst wave of Jewish immigrants, between 1848 and 1880, brought
200,000 Jews from central Europe. The second, which began in 1881and lasted
until 1924, brought an additional two million more Jews from Eastern Europe to

the United States. Both groups of immigrants embraced the public schools and

developed supplementary schools to complement the public school system. We

68

begin with an overview of the two major waves of Jewish immigration, the
schools they founded followed by a discussion of the trends in American Jewish
life that led to the creating of congregational supplementary schools. The chapter
concludes by describing how prayer was taught in the congregational

supplementary school through the 19603.

Jewish Immigration to the United States

First Wave 1848 - 1880: Central European Jews Embrace America

The ﬁrst large-scale wave of Jewish immigration began in 1848 as political
conditions in central Europe deteriorated. These immigrants wme mostly from
Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, and Posen (Hertzberg, 1989). By 1880,
approximately 200,000 had come to the United States (Hertzberg, 1989; Karp,
1985). These immigrants were poor and not particularly religiously observant.
They embraced their new homeland and were eager to make a place for
themselves.

In his popular 1868 novel Sunshine and Shadow in New York, Matthew Hale
Smith described the religious observance of Central European immigrants:

Chatham Street is the bazaar of the lower Jews. It is crowded with
their places of trade, and over their stores they generally live. Noisy
and turbulent, they assail all who pass, solicit trade, and secure
general attention and general contempt. They know no Sabbath.
On Saturday, their national Sabbath, they keep open stores

because they live in a Christian country. On Sunday they trade
because they are Jews. (Smith cited in Karp, 1985. pp. 121-122)

Transplanted from their villages where the culture supported their religion,
these immigrants responded to the foreign American culture by abandoning their

holy Sabbath in order to keep their stores open on the busiest days of the week.

69

Economic success was their primary concern and some scholars have argued
that they were willing to abandon traditional Jewish practices so they could
prosper. Other changes were introduced so that Judaism would not look so
different from Christianity. In synagogues, men and women sat together, organs
were introduced, and prayer was offered in English. The American Judaism of
this wave of immigrants was thus reactive, compromising itself in order to ﬁt more
comfortably with the non-Jewish majority (Hertzberg, 1989).

Of course, in the absence of scholarship that explores the intentions and
experiences of those immigrants, it is impossible to conclude that this was the
case. As is the case with all historical research, we are dependent on the records
left of these immigrants. We cannot possible know — for certain - their desires,
motivations, and experiences as they faced the challenge of holding onto their
cultural and religious traditions while trying to successfully adapt to their new
environment.

Thus, there are many unanswered questions about the experiences of these
immigrants. For instance, Sama (1995) rejects the argument that all Central
European immigrants were willing to reform Jewish practices to assimilate.
Rather, he suggests that while these immigrants were initially willing to reform
Judaism, many became part of a ‘revival,’ ‘awakening,’ or a ‘renaissance' in
American Jewish life. Ironically perhaps, Sama argues that this trend toward
more religion was not due to the inﬂux of a new group of immigrants from
Eastern Europe, but reﬂects the inﬂuence of contemporary Protestants and the

parallel religious revivals that other religions experienced at the time.

70

While Sama (1995), Hertzberg (1989) and Karp (1985) focus on different
aspects of the Central European Jewish immigrant experience, all three
historians would recognize that the immigrants developed synagogues tailored to
ﬁt into American society, they established schools with that same goal. Most

were committed to supporting public schools where Jews and non-Jews studied

together (Grinstein, 1969; Schultz 1982).28 But parents also recognized the need
for Jewish schools where children could learn about Judaism in an organized
manner. Thus, individual congregations sponsored schools to supplement public
ones and developed their own curricula (Zeldin, 1983). The autonomous
character of each congregational school became the dominant pattern for Jews
of Central European descent. As a result, schools’ educational aims and
purposes varied.

These congregational supplementary schools met either on a weekday
afternoon or a weekend morning. The main subjects of study were Bible, history,
Jewish religion, and Jewish ethics (Katzoff, 1949; Zeldin, 1983). The teaching of
Hebrew was given either a secondary position or disregarded entirely because
prayer was offered in English. That being the case, teaching Hebrew and Hebrew

prayers became largely peripheral, if not irrelevant.

 

28 It should be noted that the supplementary scth system evolved in the United States only
because the vast majority of Jewish children now were able to receive their general education
together with their non-Jewish neighbors in the American public school system. In addition to the
supplementary school, some American Jews have always received their Jewish education at
private day schools. In this setting, children studied both Jewish and secular subjects. In 1935,
there were 16 day schools in all of the U.S., involving about 4600 students with only three high
schools with a population of not more than a few hundred students. By 1965, there were said to
be over 300 elementary and secondary day schools in which over 55,000 children were studying.

71

Grinstein (1969) describes the routine in a typical mid-18003 Sunday school.
The school met in one room; the teacher sat on a raised platform. Children were
seated on long benches, ten to a bench. The teacher opened the day with
prayer, the children repeating the prayer after her, sentence by sentence. Then
she read a chapter from the Bible followed by a series of questions and answers
concerning theology, Jewish holidays, and Jewish religious practices. Questions
included, “Who formed you, child, and made you live?” The school closed its
session with a Hebrew hymn sung by the children. This image is striking in its
similarity to much public schooling at the time, where teachers taught in one-
room schoolhouses, and children of mixed ages responded in choms.

Consider the portrait of US. schooling offered by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her
account of nine-year-old Almanzo’s experience in public school in 1866:

Mr. Corse rapped on his desk with his ruler, it was time for school
to begin. All the boys and girls went to their seats. The girls sat on
the left side of the room and boys sat on the right side, with the big
stove and wood-box in the middle between them. The big ones sat
in the back seats, the middle-sized ones in the middle seats, and
the little ones in the front seats. All the seats were the same size.
The big boys could hardly get their knees under their desks, and
the little boys couldn't rest their feet on the ﬂoor. (Wilder, 1933, p.
6)

The one-room schoolhouse was a mainstay of public school education at the
time. The teacher sat at the front, the students sat in rows, with the youngest
children sitting up front, the older children in the back. In addition to oral
exercises and catechisms, the teachers read stories intended to transmit
important moral lessons. In sum, the development of the Jewish school in mid-

nineteenth century America can be seen as being highly inﬂuenced by the public

schools of the time, for the supplemental schools took on the structure and

72

norms of the larger American society and of Protestant Sunday schools (Zeldin,
1983).

Grinstein (1969) suggests in addition to the Sunday school, the Central
European Jewish immigrants also sponsored some all day schools. These
schools offered a Jewish curriculum that consisted of reading the prayer book,
religion in the form of catechism, and biblical history. The English curriculum was
usually extensive and sometimes competed with the best of the non-Jewish
private schools.

Finally, some Jewish children received their Jewish education from private
teachers. Grinstein (1969) explains that in some instances the private tutor
taught at the synagogue and in other instances he taught in the homes of his
pupils. “He limited himself to instruction in Hebrew, but it is doubtful whether he

taught more than a mechanical reading knowledge of the prayer book” (p. 40).

The Second Wave 1881 - 1924: Eastern European Jews Preserve
Cultural Inheritance

A second major wave of Jewish immigration began in 1881 following the
assassination of Czar Alexander ll of Russia. The Russian government and
people, seeking a scapegoat to blame for the economic depression of the times,
targeted the Jews. This scapegoating became the rationale for pogroms and
restrictive laws aimed at eliminating Jews from economic and civic life. As a
result, between 1880 and 1920, another two million Jews immigrated from
Eastern Europe to the United States (Hertzberg 1989; Karp, 1985).

One must exercise caution in attempting to generalize about the experiences

of the two million people who arrived over a 40-year period. There was, no doubt,

73

considerable variation in the desires and dispositions of the individuals who
participated in this second wave. Still, most scholars agree that the more
observant of the Eastern European Jews preferred not to emigrate. It was a
common assumption that a Jew could not easily be faithful to God or tradition in
America (Hertzberg 1989; Karp, 1985).

Consider the observations of Shalom Aleichem, an important Jewish writer
who came to the US. before World War I, and whose views on American Jewish
life are reﬂected in his last major work, Mattel Peise, the Cantor's Son (Howe &
Wisse, 1979). Mottel Peise, like many immigrants, came to the US. and
immediately went in search of other immigrants from the same hometown in the
old country. When he ﬁnds his "extended family" from Europe, he is perplexed.
Those who were considered ignorant and socially unacceptable in Europe had
become community leaders. Paradoxically, a Ieamed man—a ritual slaughterer
back home—had been reduced to helplessness and total poverty. Transplanted
on American soil, the Jewish world was turned upside down. Several scholars
agree that deeply observant Jews avoided the United States for this reason
(Hertzberg 1989; Karp, 1985). Again, we cannot know for certain: we have very
little concrete and direct evidence that sheds light on these aspects of Jewish
immigration.

Many of those who did come, while not strictly observant, were nevertheless
motivated to maintain some religious traditions and were committed to some form
of Jewish education (Hertzberg, 1989; Schultz 1982). The compact Jewish

neighborhoods in the larger cities constituted the cornerstone of the Eastern

74

European communal approach to Jewish education (Ben Horin, 1969; Hertzberg,
1952; Katzoff, 1949; Pilch, 1969):
The communal school was a product of Jewish life in America
during the immigration period and immediately following its
stoppage. In the environment of immigrants and ﬁrst—generation
American Jews, the Talmud Torah was a familiar and natural
phenomenon in the general scheme of things. In the buildings of

the larger units were housed many socio-cultural institutions and in
some instances a synagogue. (Pilch, 1969, p. 128)

A walk through the East Side of New York, South Philadelphia, Chicago’s
West Side, Boston’s North End, Rochester’s Joseph Avenue section, Baltimore’s
Lombard Street and similar neighborhoods in other American cities of the late
19th and early 20th centuries would disclose the variety and vitality of the East
European Jewish immigrant community. These neighborhoods recreated much
of the rich culture of the immigrants’ homelands, shtetl or metropolis.
Newsstands offered newspapers and journals in both Hebrew and Yiddish.29 In

Baltimore, several blocks of Lombard Street were a market for dry goods and old

clothes, but its specialties were prayer shawls and kosher foods.30

 

29 Yiddish is the language spoken by many Jews who lived in Germany and Eastern Europe. It is
based largely on German and Hebrew. As a rule, Jaws only spoke Yiddish in societies where
they did not have equal rights. The Jews of Poland and Russia, for example, spoke Yiddish, while
the overwhelming majority of Jews in 19th century France and Germany spoke French and
German. When Jews migrated to countries where they had equal rights, they usually only spoke
Yiddish for the ﬁrst generation.

30 I draw images of the Jewish neighborhoods from the literature and ﬁlms that came out of this
period. Abraham Cahan lived in the Lower East Side and wrote a novel and many short stories
describing the life of these Jewish immigrants. Similary Mary Antin’s (1969) autobiography is
illuminating. Also the most famous contemporary account of the literature of the Lower East Side
is Irving Howe's World of our Fathers (1976). Finally, the Bintal Brief, a collection of letters written
to the Forward, a Yiddish newspaper published in New York during the ﬁrst half of the 20th
century, paints a vivid picture of immigrant Jewish life at this time. The letters described the life
and times of the immigrants who were trying to ﬁnd their way in a strange land. Finally, there are
several movies depicting the early Jewish neighborhoods in the United States, including Hester
Sheet, Avalon, The Imported Bridegroom and the original Jazz Singer.

75

Dozens of small synagogues sprinkled the neighborhoods. Leading
congregations brought the star cantors of Europe to their pulpits.‘31 Newly arrived

immigrants, whether from Poland, Russia, or Lithuania, could ﬁnd a synagogue
with familiar liturgy and worship practices. In dozens of neighborhood schools,
immigrants from all over Eastern Europe could ﬁnd a school that reﬂected their
communities' cultures and customs

Two very important cultural institutions of the Jewish neighborhoods were the
Yiddish press and theater. In the 19203, deish newspapers published in New
York sold over 200,000 copies daily (T elushkin, 1991). Both the Yiddish press
and theater promoted Jewish culture and knowledge and became an essential
part of the ﬁrst Jewish-American generation.

Concentrated and crowded Jewish neighborhoods were ﬁlled with Jews,
selling and buying, talking and arguing, all with their own connection to Judaism.
Landsmanshaftn, societies of people from the same town or district, were formed
for emotional and ﬁnancial support, offering sickness and death beneﬁts, life
insurance, and help with weddings and other expenses. Jews living in these
neighborhoods re-craated much of the Jewish gestalt of their Eastern European
communities. Looking after one another, they nurtured environments and
lifestyles permeated by Jewish values and customs. Hence, in many ways, the

Jewish neighborhoods were educational agents as well.

 

31 A cantor leads the congregation in prayer. Generally, a cantor has a pleasing voice.

76

Jacob A. Riis, famous for describing the debilitating affects of the Lower East

Side, also described one very positive aspect of the Jewish neighborhood in

Children of the Poor”:

It happened once that I came in on a Friday evening at the breaking
of bread, just as the four candles on the table had been lit, with the
Sabbath blessing upon the home and all it sheltered the
patriarchal host who arose bade the guests welcome with a
dignity a king might have envied. (Riis, 1892, p. 44)

Notice that guests in the home Riis is describing are invited by the family to
share a traditional Friday night experience. Similarly, Mandela Mekher Sefarim
beautifully describes Sabbath observance in the immigrant’s home in many of his
novels and short stories. For example, in The Sabbath of the Poor he writes:

Six days in the week Shmulik the rag-picker lives like a dog. But on
the eve of the Sabbath all is changed in his house. The walls are
whitewashed, the house is cleaned; a new cloth shines on the
table, and the rich and yellow bread, a joy to the eyes, rests
thereon. The candles burn in their copper candlesticks, burnished
for the Sabbath; and a smell of good food goes out of the oven,
where the dishes are covered. The little girls, with bare feet, have
come back from the bath; their hair is coiled in tresses; they linger
in the corners of the room; by their faces it may be seen that they
are waiting, joyous hearted, for those whom they love.

”Gut Shabbos” says Shmulik, as he enters; and he looks with love
on his wife and his children, and his face beams. ”Gut Shabbos"
says Moishele, his son, loudly, as he too enters hurriedly, like one
who is full of good tidings, and eager to spread them. And to and
fro in the house the father and the son go, singing, with pleasant
voices, the Shalom Alaichem songs that great the invisible angels
that come into every Jewish house when the father returns from the
house of prayer on the eve of the Sabbath.

The rag-picker is no longer a dog; today he has a new soul. It is
Shabbos, and Shmulik is the son of a king. He says the Kiddush

 

32 The Jewish Sabbath is observed from Friday sundown through Saturday sunset. The Sabbath
is intended to allow individuals to set aside one day a week for spiritual and physical rest, study,
prayer, song, and renewal. In the home, meals are especially prepared, with wine and a special
Sabbath bread known as challah. In addition, candles are kindled to mark the Sabbath’s onset.

77

over the wine, and he sits down at the table. His wife is on his right,
and his children are around them. (Sefarim cited in Lieberman 8.
Benngause,1987,p.300)

Clearly, certain aspects of traditional Judaism remained an important value
for Jews living in the Lower East Side. Shabbat dinners, holiday observance and
keeping kosher co-existed with a strong desire to enroll children in the public
schools, which were considered to be the great democratic institution, the bridge
to a new society, and the key to self-improvement (Ben-Horin,1969; Hertzberg,
1989; Karp, 1985).

Central and Eastern European Immigrants: Assimilation Challenges
Tradition

Similar to the Jews who came in the ﬁrst wave of immigration from Central
Europe, the Jews who left Eastern Europe in the middle of the 19th century were
the poorest and the least educated (Hertzberg, 1989; Karp 1985). While some of
the Jews who came from Central Europe were perhaps willing to abandon their
religious and cultural distinctiveness, many of these Eastern European Jews still
considered religious practices to be somewhat important and worth transmitting
to the next generation. For example, Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily
Fonvard and a leading voice of Jewish socialist secularism, recounted that the
majority of Jewish workers whom the labor unions were trying to organize
observed the Sabbath and Jewish festivals. Hertzberg (1989) describes their
ambivalence:

In the struggle to make a living, tens of thousands of these
conventionally pious workers and petty bourgeois from Eastem
Europe did work on the Sabbath, but they did so reluctantly and

with pain. Those who were joyfully abandoning the older ways in
the name of socialism or anarchism were a minority. In the

78

immigrant days, most of the homes on the Lower East Side
continued to keep kosher. (pp. 159-160)

At least two historians (Hertzberg, 1989; Karp, 1985) argue that the Central
European Jewish immigrants willingly and wholeheartedly embraced American
culture and accommodated their Jewish practices to order to ﬁt in. In contrast,
they claim that the Eastern European Jewish immigrants wanted to adapt
themselves to American life, while maintaining their ethnic and cultural
inheritance (Hertzberg, 1989; Karp, 1985; Sachar, 1954). Like their Central
European Jewish peers, the Eastern European immigrants were committed to
the secular public school and to the establishment of their own supplementary
religious schools. But the supplemental schools developed by this second wave
of immigration were markedly different from those of the Central European Jews
in two signiﬁcant ways: organization and curriculum.

While the Central European Jews organized congregational supplementary
schools (most of which met on Sunday morning), the Eastern European Jews
believed the synagogue was a place of worship, separate from a communally-
sponsored school which would educate children. Over time, they developed a
community school system known as the Talmud Torah (Katzoff, 1949).33 The
assumption was that children would receive their Jewish education at the Talmud
Torah in the afternoons, after they were dismissed from their public schools. This

Jewish school system was modeled on the public schools, requiring orderly

 

33 In Eastern Europe, the Talmud Torah was established to make provision for the education of
orphans or children of the poor. Originally, the Talmud Torah was transported to the United
States for the same purpose. However, by 1910 educators like Dr. Samson Benderly insisted that
the Talmud Torah must cease to be a school for the children of the poor and become a

79

classrooms and a more formalized curriculum (Aron, 1995) than was the case
with the more autonomous congregational schools of the Central European

Jewish immigrants.

Central and Eastern European Immigrants Create Their Own
Supplemental School

Like the Talmud Torah schools of Eastern Europe, the early Talmud Torah
schools in the US. were attended mostly by children of the poor who, in many
instances, had to be given shoes, clothing, and food (Ben-Horin, 1969). The
schools were funded by those members of the community who were more secure
ﬁnancially. Early descriptions of these schools paint a rather dreary picture:

Their daily two-session instruction from 4 to 8 pm. and Sundays
from 9 am. to 3 pm, the Talmud Torahs offered in quarters which
did not permit standards of cleanliness, ventilation, and light to be
high. The equipment was very poor, and so was the teaching.
Frequent relocations of families in search of a livelihood caused
attendance to be highly irregular. The lower grades were
overcrowded, the upper grades meagerly attended. (Ben-Horin,
1969 p. 68)

Learning also seems mechanical and dry. Katzoff (1949) writes:

The ability to join in the Hebrew service was indispensable in the
life of the Jew, and proﬁciency in the use of the Siddur was the
prerequisite for such participation. Since prayer, both private and
communal, were the norm of Jewish life, knowledge of the Siddur
was augmented through actual life situation. This know-how was
generally limited to the facility of mechanical reading and of
following the order of the service. However, the Siddur was not
used as a textbook for imparting ideas about Jewish life. (Katzoff,
1 949, p. 76)

Ben-Horin (1969) described the situation in a similar manner:

 

community institution for all children. He argued that a system of education which separates
facilities for rich and poor children was both un-American and un-Jawish.

80

Pupils study only prayer reading, without understanding of the
Hebrew text. Those who head these schools call this religious
education and thus discharge their obligation without realizing that
from such schools can emerge only ignoramuses and that instead
of endearing Judaism to the students they implant in them a hatred
for it. (p. 62)

After Dr. Samson Benderly became the ﬁrst director of the New York Bureau
of Jewish Education, the structure and content of the Talmud Torah changed
dramatically. Benderiy devoted his professional efforts with the Bureau to
strengthening school system infrastructure and curriculum. For example, under
his tenure at the Bureau a salary scale for teachers was developed, and a Board
of License to examine teacher candidates and issue certiﬁcation was
established. In addition, the Bureau conducted courses in English, Jewish
history, history of education, educational methodology, and classroom
management. Under Benderiy, the Bureau borrowed $10,000 and created a
Textbook Fund for the preparation and printing of textbooks and guides for
teachers. To standardize courses of study, the Bureau created a General Board
of Talmud Torahs and Hebrew Principals' Association, reﬂecting new emphasis
on curriculum. One of the purposes of this Association was to enable principals
to standardize curricula. The new curricula reﬂected a commitment to the Zionist
movement and the Hebraic Renaissance.34 It promoted identiﬁcation with all the
Jewish people, as reﬂected in its aims:

To induct the child into the institutional life of the Jewish
community, including but not only the synagogue, and to lead him

 

34 Today it is taken for granted that Hebrew is a modern language. However, a little over a
century ago, Hebrew was not a spoken language. Jews prayed in Hebrew and often studied
Hebrew texts but nobody conversed in Hebrew. Hebrew was like Latin until Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
resurrected it by creating new words and using old Hebrew words in new ways. Ben Yehuda also
started a dictionary for the new language.

81

to recognize his responsibility as a Jew, the deﬁnition of the term
denoting belonging to a people. (Pilch, 1969, p. 129)

Talmud Torahs recognized that students not only needed to know how to
read the prayer book; they needed to Ieam Hebrew as a modern living language.
Katzoff (1 949) explains:

This negative attitude toward the Siddur was inﬂuenced moreover
by the nationalistic ideology inherent in the rising secular Hebraic
culture of the time. The Siddur, oriented upon religious frame of
thought, was looked upon with condescension, and was considered
a drag upon the curriculum. Knowledge of Hebrew language was

felt to be extremely important, but a meaningless mechanical
reading of the Siddur was regarded as worthless. (p. 77)

Under Benderiy’s inﬂuence, students were taught to identify with Jews
worldwide and to become comfortable with some Hebrew. The communal
educational system focused on Jewish nationalism, with Hebrew as a central
curricular component. The main purpose of Jewish education was to preserve
the Jewish people as a distinct group. The central ingredients of a good Jewish
education included:

sufﬁcient knowledge of Hebrew, which should enable the children
to understand the [prayer book, Bible, and other texts], Jewish

history, ancient and modern, and an acquaintance with religious
observance. (Friedland cited in Aron, 1995, p. 59)

While the history of the Jewish people and the Hebrew language were
considered essential, students were only expected to be acquainted with
religious practices. Rather than focus on practice, the Talmud Torah aimed to
foster close relationships to the entire Jewish people through the study of history
and literature. Curriculum was geared to an appreciation of the totality of the
Jewish cultural heritage, including religion and modern Hebrew literature.

Describing the growth of the Talmud Torah schools, Aron (1995) writes:

82

Firsthand accounts from the period have a breathless quality, as
though a cadre of wundarkr'nds had swooped down and waved a
set of magic wands. Within a decade communal Talmud Torahs
modeled after those in New York existed in most major cities. (p.
58)

Structural differences—stemming from the curricular differences—also
distinguished Central European Jews’ Sunday school from Eastern European
Jews’ Talmud Torah. Because students who attended the Talmud Torah were
expected to be ﬂuent in Hebrew language, the Talmud Torah held classes four
afternoons a week after school and also on Sunday for three or four hours per

day. In contrast, the Central European Sunday schools—where Hebrew was not

taught—met only once a week for a couple of hours.

Congregational Schools: Providing a Jewish Milieu Outside the Home
By the early 19003, the Central European immigrants became identiﬁed with

the Reform movement and the Eastern European immigrants with Conservative
Judaism. Before discussing how prayer was taught in these different
supplementary schools, we need to consider a decisive development in the
American Jewish educational scene: the shift in the Eastern European
community from the community-sponsored Talmud Torah to the congregational
school. While the Central European Jews relied upon individual congregations to
support their own supplementary school, the Eastern European Jews organized
their schools communally. The schools were not a part of their synagogues; they
were neighborhood institutions. Only later—when Eastern European Jews began
their move to suburbia—did they begin to organize their schools through

synagogues.

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Talmud Torah schools were extremely successful and could be found in most
major cities but were not embraced by all American Jews. The focus on
peoplehood was extremely problematic for the Reform Jews, who no longer
viewed Hebrew as the Jewish people's sacred language, and who were not
committed to a return to a Jewish homeland. Having already abandoned the
teaching of Hebrew, they did not send their children to the Talmud Torah but
rather to Sunday schools (Schultz, 1982).

The heavily concentrated Jewish neighborhoods described eariier began to
shrink as early as the 19203, when ﬁnancially successful immigrants began
migrating to second settlements, adjacent to more spacious neighborhoods, and
ﬁnally to the suburbs (Blumenﬁeld, 1949; Sklare, 1955). ”In suburbia or in the
new sections of the large cities, the new synagogue became the religio-cultural
center for large segments of the Jewish population“ (Pilch, 1969, p. 128).

Whereas the Eastern European immigrants could count on the culture of the
streets to share in the transmission of Jewish traditions and to support a
communally sponsored Talmud Torah, this was impossible in the suburbs where
the streets were not so crowded, and where there were fewer kosher markets, no
merchants, no Hebrew or Yiddish spoken on the comer, no deish theater. In
the new neighborhoods, Jews replaced the community and culture of the old
neighborhood with the synagogue (Aron, 1995; Pilch, 1969; Sklar, 1955). The
desire to raise children in a Jewish milieu motivated many parents to join
synagogues:

The quest for Jewish surroundings for the children, the socio-
psychological need for belonging to one’s own group, enhanced by

34

a vague kind of Jewish consciousness, on the one hand, and the
threat of anti-Semitism on the other (the shock received from the
enormity of the Nazi Holocaust), and the general conditions of life in
suburbia where each individual had to be identiﬁed as a member of
some group—all of these were major causes of the rapid growth of
the new American synagogue. Temples and synagogues provided
facilities for the entire family: clubs for the men, sisterhoods for the
women, clubs for the young adults and adolescents, and religious
schools for the children. (Pilch, 1969, p. 124)

The synagogue became the central focus for Jewish life in suburbia. Parents
expected the synagogue, speciﬁcally the synagogue’s supplementary school, to
provide a Jewish milieu for their children. A close look at enrollment in
congregational supplementary schools supports this claim.

Enrollment in congregational schools in the New York area increased 150% in
the years between 1917 and 1927 (Ben-Horin, 1969, p. 83). In 1928, only 23.6%
of students in US. Jewish schools were enrolled in a congregational school; by
1948 the percentage had grown to 82.7% (Pilch, 1969, p. 123). The trend from
the community-sponsored Talmud Torah to the synagogue-based supplementary
school had become the norm. Eisenstein (1982) suggests several reasons why
individual congregations were willing to take on the burden of Jewish education:

First, families joined the synagogue mainly for the education of
their children; to be more accurate, for the preparation of their
children for bar mitzvah (and later bat mitzvah). Second, the
Rabbis and lay leaders hoped that by keeping the children within
their jurisdiction they would devel0p in the growing generation a
loyalty which would carry over into their adult years Third,

congregations represent a particular philosophy of Judaism,
which they are obligated to convey to the next generation. (p. 9)

Thus, as the milieu changed, so did the demands and expectations placed on

schools. As schools became associated with synagogues, their goals became

85

intertwined with the needs, values, and goals of the supporting synagogue and
its denominational afﬁliation.

On the one hand, this shift was advantageous: children began to acquire their
Jewish education in the synagogue, bridging any gap that may have existed
between the Jewish school and the synagogue. But the shift was somewhat
problematic (Blumenfield 1949; Eisenstein 1982). With the rise of the
congregational school, many more schools were created. Classes were
sometimes too small, and it became more difﬁcult to ﬁnd competent and
professional teachers and educational leaders. The Depression further
weakened the Jewish school. Indeed, the individual congregations fared worse
than the Talmud Torah schools because their ﬁnancial situation was vulnerable
to economic crisis. When individual congregations were under serious ﬁnancial
pressures, the school was the ﬁrst to be affected with severe budget cuts. By
assuming responsibility for schools, the congregations undertook the virtually
impossible task of supporting a private school, which rarely pays for itself
(Eisenstein, 1982).

Another disadvantage under this new arrangement was that synagogues
were competing with one another, both for adult membership and for students
(Blumenﬁeld, 1949; Eisenstein, 1982; Pilch, 1969). Concerns for survival
competed with concerns for tradition, as schools and synagogues were forced to
modernize their language and practices in order to attract members:

In order to gain popular support for the school, synagogue
authorities conveyed to the public the goals of Jewish education in

a language consistent with new practices and with the emerging
pattern of American Jewish life, which tended to resist the laborious

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task of becoming rooted in Jewish culture. The idea that religious
afﬁliation alone can enrich Jewish life became a weapon that
affected action. The school designed its program to ﬁt the new age.
(Pilch, 1969, p. 125)

According to Aron (1995), parents of that generation (1920s and 1930s) were
somewhat indifferent to formal education. However, parents were keenly
interested in Bar Mitzvah preparation. Thus, the synagogue supplementary
schools—responding to the market—became a means to becoming Bar Mitzvah.
”By banding together and changing their rhetoric, the edumtors of that era were
able to capitalize on this interest and double the enrollments in Jewish schools”
(p. 61 ).

By the late 1930s, it became customary for synagogue supplementary
schools to require boys wishing to become Bar Mitzvah to complete a minimum
number of years of supplementary education. Schoenfeld (1988) explained that
the Bar Mitzvah was critical to the Jewish folk religion. While the Jewish
educators and rabbis (Schoenfeld calls them the elite) did not view the Bar
Mitzvah as the goal of Jewish education, they seized the opportunity to assure
that formal education would remain essential by connecting preparation to
become Bar Mitzvah with formal Jewish education. Congregational
supplementary schools would provide students with the necessary skills to
become Bar Mitzvah.

Thus, by end of World War II, we observe that the Talmud Torah’s original
focus on the Zionist movement and the Hebrew language shifted in the

congregational supplementary school to Bar Mitzvah preparation. Katzoff (1949)

explains:

87

The aim of such teaching is to develop the facility of reading and
writing Hebrew mechanically, so that the child might be enabled to
read the prayer book—again mechanically—to follow the religious
service or participate in it. When the mechanics of reading are
acquired, the pupil goes on to the reading of the Siddur (the prayer
book) or to some preliminary text containing selected prayers.
The purposes of this new phase are to familiarize the pupil with the
important selections of the Siddur and to increase ﬂuency in
mechanical reading. Practice for ﬂuency continues through the
years of attendance, with a gradual tapering off of the time allotted
to it. Familiarity with the geography of the Siddur as well as some
understanding of its religious concepts takes on increasing
importance in the later years of schooling. (p. 45)

While this new arrangement assured the future of formal Jewish education, it
also obscured the goals of the school (Aron, 1995). The new congregational
supplementary schools all shared the desire to provide students with a Jewish
environment that they did not encounter in public school, in meir new
neighborhoods, or increasingly in their homes (Katzoff, 1949; Rappoport, 1936).
Indeed, the shift in Jewish homes had serious implications for the content of the

supplementary school curriculum.

Waning Jewish Practice in the Home

The profound effect that waning Observances had on Jewish education
seems predictable in light of assumptions made by Jews through the ages about
the home as an educative agent. The Bible demands that parents teach their
children as it states:

And be it that these laws which I command unto you today, you
shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of

them, as you sit in your home and as you walk on your way outside,
when you lie down and when you awaken. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

The ideas found in these verses appear throughout the Bible. Both parents

were responsible for educating their children. The Book of Proverbs reiterates

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this point: "Listen, my son to the ethics of your father, and do not forsake the
Torah of your mother" (Proverbs 1:8). In general, it was assumed that parents
are each responsible for teaching those commandments that they are personally
obligated to fulﬁll (Matzner-Bekerman, 1984). Children were expected to Ieam to
observe the commandments and study Jewish texts and history. The ultimate
goal of education was to teach children to love and revere God (Matzner-
Bekerrnan, 1984). Modern circumstances in which some homes no longer
contribute to a child’s Jewish education represents a major break from Jewish
history—one that has had a profound impact on the Jewish school (Pilch, 1969).
Much of the literature from the ﬁrst half of the 20th century bemoans the
decline of religiously observant homes (Arzt 1949; Davis, 1937; Heschel, 1954;
Kaplan 1956):
The very home which identiﬁed itself with the synagogue no longer
fulﬁlled its historic functions qua Jewish home. While through the
centuries the home was the matrix of many religio-cultural
interests—folklore, reading, religious music, Observances and
ceremonials, biblical and midrashic stories—these were no longer
cultivated in the average American Jewish home. The home,
acculturated to the mores of the American majority groups, no
longer perpetuated Jewish traditions The child did not have

opportunities to experience Jewish life in the home as a matter of
course. (Pilch, 1969, p. 125)

Arzt (1949) explicitly writes: "I am not at all oblivious to the fact that religious

observance in the home is on the wane, that attendance at synagogue service

(except on High Holy Days) is far from satisfactory."35

 

35 I should note here that while I believe these claims, they are not based on careful research on
home practices, but rather on agreed upon assumptions in the Jewish community. Ethnographies
or larger scale surveys of practices in Jewish homes might help complexify these - probably -
overly simpliﬁed assumptions about what happens in many American Jewish homes.

89

Democracy in America came with no roadmap for preserving Judaism. Nor
could any of the immigrant groups anticipate the challenges confronted by the
new American Jews who understandably needed and wanted to assimilate into
their new home, while maintaining their Jewish traditions and identities. Yet the
challenges were immense, and various solutions - Sunday school, synagogues,
Talmud Torah — all came with costs and beneﬁts, the extent and depth of which
could not be understood ahead of time.

In their zeal to create American homes, for example. some Jews were eager
to banish Jewish ritual objects, such as the kiddush cup or the menorah, to a
closet or hidden comer of the house. Joselit notes:

A 1931 survey of the contents of Jewish homes in over ten cities
(including New York, Cleveland, and Los Angeles) revealed that,
with the exception of a menorah and a pair of candlesticks,
manifestations of Jewishness were rarely visible. Fewer than 20
percent of those surveyed owned a kiddush cup, while only 40
percent posted a mezuzah on their front door. In other instances,
Jewish ritual objects were dismissed as curiosities. Old-fashioned
or poorly designed, Jewish markers clashed harshly with the
conventions of modern home decor and the cultural aspirations of
its residents. The son of upwardly mobile parents recalls that a gilt-
framed picture of his Zayda (grandfather) hung prominently in their
home for many years until the family concluded that it didn’t look
nice with the new furniture, and so Zayda was relegated to the
bedroom. A Van Gogh print was put in his place. (Joslit, 1994, p.
148)

The marginalization of Judaism in the home—a trend which accelerated in
America—had its roots in the latter part of the 18th century, as the Enlightenment
and Emancipation drew Jews into ever-increasing contact with non-Jews, with
profound effect on Jewish cultural and home life.

Another indication that Jewish religious values became increasingly more

marginalized is that immigrants sought Jewish fellowship outside the synagogue

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by creating lodges, clubs, and benevolent societies intended to strengthen
Jewish communal life. These clubs or organizations reﬂect the growing
secularization and acculturation of American Jews. B’nai Brith is a good example
of the new way in which Jews were organizing themselves. Founded in 1843,
B’nai Brith introduced the idea of Jewishness as an ethnic entity as opposed to a
religious one. Ultimately, these new institutions allowed Jews to seek out the
company of other Jews outside of the synagogue. They also ﬁt comfortably in the
larger American trend of such social clubs.

At ﬁrst, providing a sound Jewish education for their children was not the
highest priority for many immigrant Jewish parents who were, of necessity, more
concerned with the problems of physical survival, ﬁnding jobs, feeding and
clothing their children, and overcoming anti-Semitism. Having addressed these
basic issues, immigrants focused on assimilation. Why so arduously? Perhaps
because they realized that, for the ﬁrst time in generations, prosperity and
acceptance was within their reach, even if meant relinquishing certain rituals,
prayers, and observances. But hindsight skews our vision, for we can see cleariy
how these traditions and rituals began to disappear. We do not know to what
extent this trend was clear to the immigrants, as they lived in the moment.

We do know that some educational leaders recognized these trends and
wanted to insure that religious practices were not ignored. Soon, supplementary
schools began taking on the responsibility of transmitting Judaism to the next
generation.

Today, rabbis urge their congregants to set aside Friday to worship
in the temple, but I am certain that all of us recognize that at one

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time Jews did not need to come to synagogue. [their] homes
were ﬁlled [with Jewish traditions and practices]. (Weissberg, 1959,
p. 15)

As we have already seen, however, the problem was not simply one of
changes in Jewish home life. Homes cannot be wrenched from their cultural
contexts and, while previous generations of Jewish families created and lived
within particular kinds of homes, they did so —in large part — because they lived
within certain kinds of communities. Rappoport, (1936), Supervisor of the Board
of Jewish Education in Chicago, wrote about the challenge of developing a
curriculum for the Jewish schools in the United States: ”A sense of Jewish
kinship will not develop in the Jewish child itself as was the mse in former
generations. Today it must be actively fostered and nurtured by the Jewish
school" (p. 144).

Rappoport argued that the Jewish school needed to create Jewish
experiences for its students. These experiences were intended to cultivate a
strong attachment to Judaism. The implication of Rappoport’s directive was that
Jewish homes were not practicing Judaism and were thus not providing children
with many experiences essential to the development of a Jewish identity. For
example, parents were unsure of how to make a Passover seder. They were
uncertain about aspects of the tradition, and did not know many of the ritual
prayers. As a result, it became customary for schools to sponsor model seders.

Therein does the life of the Jewish child in America differ from that
of his forbear in the European community. Whereas the latter, as a
child lived and functioned normally in a distinctly Jewish milieu, so
that his school subjects may have had deﬁnite relevancy to his

experiential background, the former has normally hardly anything of
a Jewish background against which subject-matter might possibly

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be interpreted. The ﬁrst task then is to create experiential
apperception among our children. (p. 143)

The literature of the time reiterates this sentiment. American Jewish
neighborhoods and homes were no longer the primary place for children to
receive their Jewish education. Schools would need to ﬁll the void.

Among the practices disappearing in the home was prayer. American Jews
were fast becoming both unknowledgeable and uncomfortable with traditional
Jewish prayer. Heschel (1954), a philosopher trying to understand American
Jewry, claimed that a major problem with American Jewry was that Jews were
not comfortable praying. Addressing the spiritual lives of American Jews,
Heschel argued that, while American Jews could be found in the pews, he did not
believe they were spiritually present. He used as evidence for this claim his belief
that the intonation of their recitations reﬂected a lack of spiritual engagement:

They recite the prayer book as if it were last week's newspaper.
They utter shells of syllables, but put nothing of themselves into the
shells. [They say,] Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all Thy
heart—in lofty detachment, in complete anonymity as if giving an
impartial opinion about an irrelevant question. In our daily
speech, our words have a tonal quality. There is no communication
without intonation. It is the intonation that lends grace to what we
say. But when we pray the words faint on our lips. Our words have

no tone, no strength, no personal dimension—as if reading
paragraphs in Roget’s Thesaurus. (pp. 50-51)

Howard Bruce Zyskind (1966), a Jewish educator, was also despondent
about the art of praying. The Jews of earlier generations were able to praise God
with their entire being, Zyskind claimed. He feared that modern Jews were
unable to see God’s glory in their lives:

The reverent beauty of the Psalms bespeaks a tragic truth of our

modern age, for our world becomes increasingly incapable and
unwilling to sing unto the Lord. Our world is a secular one, our

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minds are bent upon science and technology, our orientation is one
of independence and self-reliance—our prayers faint and fade into
abuse or rote repetition. We no longer extol Thee, O God and King,
neither do we bless Thy name for ever and ever. Every day we fail
to bless Thee, and we have forgotten to praise Thy name for ever
and ever.

Of course, there are those few who stand out as exceptions, but
certainly the great majority in our movement is writing such an
epitaph for this generation. And in time, the children of today will
perpetuate our dilemma so that mankind ceases to pray, having
lost the art of praying. (p. 24)

Zyskind and Heschel were concerned that American Jews were losing the
ability to pray. While we sometimes have a tendency to wistfully wish for the
good old days, their concerns are important ones to consider nonetheless. Both
scholars worried that American Jews were no longer spiritually present. They
feared that God was becoming irrelevant to modern American Jews. Or, that they
were losing the ability to believe in God.

Dorff (1992) claims that prayer is ”inextricably bound to belief in God. To
whom, after all, does one pray if not to God?“ (p. 150). If prayer commits one to
belief in God, it is easy to understand why American Jewish leaders would be
concerned that a new generation of Jews was no longer comfortable believing
and, hence, no longer comfortable praying.

Once an intrinsic part of Jewish life, today prayer has lost its
currency. Many homes are prayerless. In many there is no He-

Motzr36 before the meals, how much the more so no Modeh-Anr37or
Kriat Shema.38 Therefore, we also recognize the need not only to

 

36 HaMotzi is the blessing recited before eating bread.

37 Modeh Ani is a prayer traditionally recited upon waking up in the morning. It is usually recited
before getting out of bed, and it expresses thanks to God for another day of life.

Kriat Shema literally means the reading of the Shame. Traditionally the Shema is recited in
bed before going to sleep.

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teach our children what to pray but also when to pray and how to
pray. (Weissberg, 1959, p. 15)

Curricular Responses to Waning Home Practices and Declining School
Hours

We must, of course, be cautious about making sweeping generalizations
about generations of Jews, in part, because these concerns were as much based
on personal opinion and experience and not on systematic study of change.
However, it does appear that there was a growing concern among a critical mass
of Jewish leaders and educators that many American Jews were no longer able
to pray. This led some communal leaders and educators to look to schools to for
solutions, with even greater pressure for changes in the supplementary school
curriculum, and the prayer curriculum was the focus of much discussion. Many
practitioners writing about their curricular goals concerned themselves with
preparing children for participation in public worship. Let us begin by considering
how most practitioners thought about the prayer curriculum, before turning to an
exceptional case, that of Rabbi Simon Greenberg. Rabbi Max Arzt (1949), a
highly regarded Conservative Jewish educator, believed that the congregational
school curriculum should focus on the necessary skills for Jewish living. He held
this to be tme because Jewish homes were no longer able to provide children
with the minimum skills needed to observe Judaism in the home or participate in
synagogue services. Arzt argued that if congregational schools did not teach
skills, all other educational endeavors would be for naught:

Courses in the theology of the prayer book and in the origin and
poetic appeal of the Mitzvot Ma ’asiyot [commandments that require

an action] are supremely important. But one might as well endeavor
to teach swimming through a correspondence course. There is no

95

substitute for the process of Ieaming through doing. (Arzt, 1949, p.
5)

Arzt was certain that children were not acquiring the skills of Jewish living at
home. So he vigorously argued that the schools needed to be creating
opportunities for children to be Ieaming Judaism by doing Judaism. Arzt was in
favor of classes that taught students how to recite prayers and how to participate
in both private and public rituals.

Like Arzt, Freehof (1946), a prominent Reform pulpit rabbi, worried that
American Jews were not Ieaming to pray at home. Schools needed to teach
them to how to pray:

If the habit of regular prayer were maintained in the average home
it might be possible to say that the family altar is as sacred as the
altar in the sanctuary. But home worship has, to an appalling

extent, faded away Should not public worship now be made
the chief content of religious instruction? (p. 231)

Concerned that prayer was no longer an organic part of the American Jewish
home, Freehof argued that schools should shoulder the responsibility of teaching
children how to pray. Freehof did not concern himself with individual or private
prayer, nor did he focus on helping students understand the meaning of the
liturgy. Rather, he argued that students needed to know how to participate in the
public worship. In particular, he wanted to ensure that the students attending the
supplementary school in his congregation acquire the skills necessary to allow
them to participate in the public aspects of synagogue life.

As Kaplan (1956), director of the Bureau of Jewish Education in Baltimore,
explained: "The generally accepted aims for teaching Siddur place the emphasis

on the communal aspects of Jewish prayers, to enable the child to participate in

96

synagogue services” (p. 3). Educators were concerned with skills acquisition and
reading ﬂuency. The meaning of the prayers seems to be irrelevant. Studying the
afternoon Hebrew schools in the Los Angeles area, Leibman (1949-50) found
that, while students were expected to Ieam how to read prayers ﬂuently, they
were not expected to learn the underiying values of the prayers. The focus of the
school curriculum was on participation in public worship. Hence, reading Hebrew
ﬂuently was considered critical, while understanding core concepts was less
important. Feinstein (1951) was a practitioner who echoed Leibman’s concerns:

For the past three years we have been developing in our school a

method of teaching to read ﬂuently the prayers in the Siddur. Our

aim was reading ability, even if accompanied by very little
comprehension. (p. 47)

Schwartz (1951) concurred: "In many of our congregations, the primary
motivation for the Junior Congregation has been the teaching of synagogue skills
as part of the preparation for Bat Mitzvah” (p. 3). Katzoff (1949) conducted a
study of Conservative afternoon schools and determined that "it is evident from
the replies that the cardinal aim of Siddur instruction is the preparation for
participation in synagogue services and religious home ceremonies" (p. 78). He
also claimed:

Another result of the spiritual impoverishment in the home is the
shift of emphasis from private observance to collective religious
expression. the synagogue has become the solitary bulwark of
Judaism. If the schools do not stress periodic prayer at home, they
do center much of their attention upon public worship in the
synagogue. One of the unique contributions of the Conservative

synagogues to American Jewish life has been the introduction of
weekly children’s Sabbath services. (p. 110)

Thus, among these practitioners there appeared to be a general agreement

that the purpose of the teaching of prayer was to prepare students to participate

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in public worship and in certain home ceremonies. Educators regularly argued
that their prayer curriculum is a Hebrew reading curriculum, suggesting that the
only really important part of the curriculum is Ieaming to read Hebrew.

In addition to the waning practices of the home, there may also have been an
historical component to this emphasis on mechanical Hebrew reading. Ben-Horin
(1969) and Katzoff (1949) note that, in Europe, the child Ieamed to read using a
prayer book. Hebrew reading proﬁciency was the purpose of certain European
Jewish schools as it enabled full participation in communal religious life. As a
result, the congregational supplementary schools were returning to the way
schools taught Hebrew historically. The school used the prayer book as a text for
developing reading skills, rather than as a textbook for imparting ideas about
Jewish thought or theology.

Rabbi Simon Greenberg provides one notable exception to the focus on
Hebrew reading skills and preparation for participation in public worship.
Greenberg (1938), one of the leading luminaries of the Conservative movement,
offers an unusual vision of what the prayer curriculum should look like. He
argued that the curriculum must address itself to all Jews, whether or not they
attend synagogue regulariy. The purpose of the curriculum was to enable the
learner to develop a personal relationship with the prayer book. Greenberg
suggested that the goals of the prayer curriculum should be to mold the character
and strengthen the individual Jew’s inner self. In addition, the curriculum should

develop and deepen the individual’s relationship with God.

98

For Greenberg (1938), the goal was for prayer to be one of the basic habits of
his students. He recognized that public worship was not for everyone. Some
Jews might prefer (or need) to pray at home, rather than in the synagogue.
Greenberg argued that a Jew must be able to make the prayer book a ”personal
companion...the book he should take with him no matter where he goes” (p. 32).
Notice that, unlike other practitioners of his time, Greenberg did not claim that the
purpose of the prayer curriculum was to learn how to participate in public
worship. Rather, he argued that the purpose of the prayer curriculum was to
develop ”personal character and Jewish loyalty“ (p. 32).

One cannot help but wonder why most educators focused exclusively on
ﬂuent Hebrew reading skills. One possibility is that the schools were catering to
parents who judged the supplementary school by how well their child could
participate in synagogue services, a critical skill for becoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah, a
life-cycle event which was fast becoming a very important part of American
Jewish life. Greenberg (1938) explains:

The whole approach seems to be determined by the desire to train
the child how to participate properly in a communal ritual exercise
[prayer], primarily because the parents of the children judge the

effectiveness of the school by the ability of the children to
participate in the communal exercise. (p. 34)

Given the competition among synagogues (in large part due to the economic
strains placed on schools), it is easy to understand the appeal of preparing
students for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah. This was a clear and demonstrable product of
Jewish education, much easier to see and judge than one's spirituality or identity.

In addition to these rather practical reasons, Jacob Neusner (1987) offers a

thoughtful analysis of the popular Bar Mitzvah:

99

Where in olden times it was not particularly important, today it is a
magniﬁcent occasion, celebrated with vigor and enthusiasm by
Jews who othenivise do not often ﬁnd their way to the synagogue
on Sabbath mornings, by Jews married to gentiles, by Jews
themselves not "barmitzvahed" (as they say), by Jews remote from
any and all connection with Jewish organizations, institutions,
activities, observances. (p. 145)

Neusner points out that the Bar/Bat Mitzvah calls for dinners, dances, and
lavish expenditures and that many Jews ﬁnd the occasion to be intensely
meaningful and profoundly important. Wondering why that is, Neusner claims
that all Jews have a deep desire, perhaps an even primal drive to transmit their
Judaism to the next generation. He attributes this to the impact of the Holocaust
on the psyche of the Jewish people. The Bar/Bat Mitzvah became a symbol of
continuity and strength of the chain of tradition. Jews in America, he writes, have
no past, since the Jews murdered in Europe included most of the families of
Jews now alive in the West:

Jews in America, these Jews without a past and without a well-
planned future, fear that the Jews are dying out, and do not want
that to happen. They do not want to be the last Jews on earth - and
that fear, and the hope it represents, comes to full and complete

statement in the bar or the bat mitzvah. Then we know that we, the
parents, are not the last Jews on earth. (p. 145)

Another way to understand the signiﬁcance of Bar/Bat Mitzvah is to consider
Jonathan Woocher’s (1986) analysis of the American Jewish community.
Woocher introduces the term ”civil religion” to describe American Jews of the
sixties, seventies and eighties. Woocher deﬁnes ”civil religion" on some of the
following assumptions: (1) one can be a good American and a good Jew; (2)

while theology is somewhat irrelevant, ensuring Jewish survival is central; (3)

100

Jewish rituals are valuable but the individuals are free to observe them as they
chose.

The Bar/Bat Mitzvah offered the perfect vehicle for "civil religion". It allows a
child to demonstrate his/her skills to the Jewish community, offering concrete
evidence that the parents have transmitted at least some facet of Jewish identity
to their child. And, by including family speeches and personalized rituals (such as
candle lighting and passing of the Torah), it provides an opportunity for
individuals to freely express religious or moral sentiments. All topped off by an
American-style party, the event offers an attractive bridge between the traditional
past and the new hybrid of a sacred and secular present.

Ultimately, as Neusner and Woocher's analysis suggests, we may regard the
Bar/Bat Mitzvah phenomenon as a symptom and outgrowth of the challenges of
Jewish education in the 20th century: (1) many Jewish homes were contributing
less to Jewish education; (2) there were fewer hours of school; and (3) curricula
were designed to enable students to participate in public worship without
consistent attention to spiritual or even literal meaning. The curricula examined in
the next chapter illustrate these challenges as reﬂected in the teaching of prayer
in liberal supplementary schools and the impact of how Jewish prayer has thus

been taught for the past 30 years on the vast majority of Jews in America today.

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CHAPTER 4
ANALYSIS OF CURRICULAR MATERIALS

Nearly everyone, at some point in his life, speaks to God. We give thanks. We
ask why. We request help. If praying is so natural, why is teaching prayer so
challenging? We have addressed this question from a historical perspective. An
alternative approach entails considering curricular materials that were designed
to help teachers confront this struggle.

Analysis of these materials requires understanding two factors that have
strongly inﬂuenced curriculum writing and the teaching of prayer: the needs and
desires of families attending supplementary schools as well as the backgrounds
and abilities of teachers working in these schools. We begin with these
contextual factors, followed by an examination of selected prepared curricular

materials.

Families Attending Supplementary Schools: Ambivalent Needs and Desires

For the most part, the structure of supplementary schools has not changed
drastically since the transition to the congregational school in the 19503 (Aron,
1994). They are modeled after public schools, complete with age-graded classes,
teachers, standardized curricula, and report cards. The past century has
witnessed a steady decline in the number of hours supplementary schools are in
session (Aron, 1995; Pilch, 1969). Pilch suggests a reasonable explanation for
the dwindling number of hours of Jewish study:

Better economic conditions, more leisure and higher level of
education acquired by the majority of parents made it possible
for them to desire and to afford for themselves and their children,

music, dancing, frequent vacations, various sport activities, and
other forms of recreation. This in turn, called for a weekday

102

afternoon school with limited hours of instruction and with
schedules adjusted to approximately three-day—a-week attendance.

To the student of education it is a commonplace that the more time
is available for Ieaming of any subject, the greater is the opportunity
for mastering skills, developing attitudes and Ieaming subject
matter. Curtailed hours of instruction of necessity curtailed the
possibilities for a sound Jewish education. (p. 124)

As discussed in Chapter 3, commitment to Jewish life and traditions in the
United States were often in a tug—of-war with competing interests in the larger
society. These tensions continue to characterize the contemporary American
Jewish experience. For example, some parents pressure principals to reduce the
number of hours that students are in school as they themselves attempt to
negotiate what it means to assimilate into US. society and retain a Jewish
identity. For this reason and, no doubt, others, supplementary schools have
steadily lost an important resource—time—since the beginning of the century
(Pilch, 1969). The community supplementary school of the 1920s or 1930s
maintained a schedule that provided students with approximately 400
instructional hours during the year. Schools were typically in session for 48
weeks a year, ﬁve days a week, for about 8 to 10 hours a week. The typical
congregational supplementary school in the 1950s conducted classes for
approximately 150 instructional hours yearly. Students were given longer
vacations and classes met for fewer hours during the week (36 weeks, 5 or 6
hours of instruction weekly). Students went to supplementary school twice a
week after school and once over the weekend, either on Saturday or Sunday,
depending upon the congregation. Over the next several decades, hours

continued to decline, so that now the average supplementary school student

103

attends class for approximately 120-150 hours a year (28-30 weeks, 4 or 5 hours
of instruction weekly).

Today, there is, what many would consider, an important difference between
typical Reform and typical Conservative supplementary schools. Children who
attend a Reform supplementary school attend for approximately 4 hours per
week—one weekday afternoon and Sunday morning. Students in Conservative
congregations generally attend supplementary schools for approximately 5 or 6
hours-per-week—two weekday afternoons and Sunday morning as well.

Education scholars have often noted that schools are the stage upon which
larger social trends play out. As Cohen and Neufeld note: "T he schools are a
great theater in which we play out these conﬂicts in the culture; they are the
stage for the long war over the character of [American] adult life.” Just as this is
so in general education, the same can be said about supplemental schools. By
examining the supplementary school, we can Ieam a great deal about the nature
of American Jewish life. For example, we easily detect that Jewish parents are
ambivalent. They want to transmit to their children a solid grounding in their
Jewish heritage. But they also wish for their children the opportunity to participate
in programs that conﬂict with supplementary school hours and with traditional
Judaism: Saturday soccer games, Friday night slumber parties, ballet classes
which meet on the same afternoon that the supplementary school is in session.
Parental ambivalence, argues Aron (1995), leads them to pressure synagogues

to limit hours of weekly instruction.

104

Paradoxically, as hours of the supplementary school began to dwindle, the
mandate of the supplementary school grew..As explained in Chapter 3, as
Jewish observance in the home declined, community leaders detected increasing
discomfort with traditional prayer. Thus, just as the burden of what to teach
increased, the time that supplemental schools had to accomplish their many
goals decreased. In addition, there was growing concern about the education
and expertise of supplementary school teachers, an issue that deserves some

attention here.

Supplementary School Teachers: Committed but Unprepared
In the early 20th century, Jewish educators searched for ways of organizing

schools that would meet the needs of families who were embracing the American
public schools and the many other opportunities afforded U. S. citizens. Jewish
educators struggled to create a place for Jewish education. The last chapter
described the similarities and differences between the approaches of Eastern
and Central European immigrants to Jewish education. By the 19305 and 40s,
the oveniding concerns of the architects of the supplementary schools included
(1) the drive to create meaningful, modern educational systems; (2) the need to
secure communal funds for Jewish education; and (3) the development of a
professional literature, training programs, and organizations for teachers
(Shevitz, 1988).

By the 1950s and 603, the concerns of Jewish educators shifted from creating
an infrastructure for Jewish schools to a serious teacher shortage (Shevitz 1988).

Janowsky (1967) summarized the ”crucial problem of the teacher“ by describing

105

the range of problems, including uneven qualiﬁcations, part-time status, and poor
salary and beneﬁts. Janowsky also described the high expectations for
pedagogical and curricular sophistication and the time handicap. Kaunfer (cited
in Strassfeld, 1976) despondently asserted:

Jewish education is an unrewarding profession ﬁnancially and in

terms of status. It is also part-time work. The result of all this is that

only the very dedicated or the very incompetent would choose to
enter the ﬁeld. (p. 208)

Kaunfer's assertion that many Jewish educators were probably incompetent
is, of course, problematic, for proclaiming competence would mean achiean
consensus on the knowledge and skills, commitments and capacities that a good
Jewish educator would need to possess. No such consensus existed then, or
now. Nonetheless, while we might disagree on what teachers need to know,
many would agree that the quality of education in any school rests, in large
measure, upon the knowledge, skills and commitments of its teachers. Of course
other features of the school—such as its leadership, curriculum, and
philosophy—have important roles to play. But clearly, a signiﬁcant factor
inﬂuencing what students Ieam in school is me teachers. In the 1980s, attention
turned to the credentials and experiences of supplementary school teachers.

David Schoem’s (1989) ethnographic study of a supplementary school in one
suburban community paints a vivid picture of the supplementary school teachers.
Schoem illuminates three important points about most supplementary school
teachers. First, he notes that, for many teachers, there is a large discrepancy
between what is being taught and how teachers live their lives:

One teacher, for instance, who told the researcher that in her
personal life she did not use “Torah, Bible, or prayer," declared that

106

that was precisely what she wanted to teach at the school: Torah,
Bible and prayer—l would not know how else to teach Hebrew
school,” she said. Another teacher reported that her goal in school
was to ”teach them enough Hebrew and prayer so that they can
take part in prayers, holidays, and synagogue activities." However,
this same teacher had the following to say about her own
Observances: "I feel uncomfortable in the synagogue and my
husband is not interested—so we go very rarely.” A third teacher,
who in the classroom stressed the importance of adherence to
ritual observance of Jewish holidays, said of her personal life, ”My
Jewishness is not that important to me. I won’t close myself off to it,
but I’m just not into it now." (pp. 63-64)

Schoem observes that, in general, the supplementary school teachers are not
personally connected to the Judaism they are teaching. For them, Judaism was a
subject to be taught, not necessarily a way of life. His research also suggests
that many teachers, in their own lives, were not committed to the core principles
of the school curriculum. For example, he described a 7th grade discussion of
the Sabbath. First, the teacher asked in what ways the Sabbath was different
from the other days of the week. In response to a student’s answer that on ”the
Sabbath we pray,” the teacher said, ”But we pray every day.” Both the teacher
and student were speaking in theoretical terms. The teacher did not pray every
day and the student, according to Schoem, had not been to synagogue in more
than half a year. Schoem wrote that later in the lesson, the teacher, who was the
manager of a restaurant and worked on Friday evenings, asked “Why don’t we
work on the Sabbath?" the students started to giggle, because the question was
so ridiculous. He concluded:

Clearly, this lesson that was being discussed in ﬁrst person terms,

was in the students minds, about a people that was far removed
from their own reality. (p. 64)

107

In addition, Schoem’s research illuminated how the part-time nature of the
supplementary school teacher's work had a negative impact on the teacher’s
commitment:

One teacher, who had two other part-time teaching jobs, a week-
end youth group position, and attended college full-time remarked,
”I sleep in my spare time." Another teacher, who was resentful that
she "had no time for myself,” ranked her teaching position after her
half-time sales position, and her full-time studies. Another teacher
worked part-time as a construction worker; a fourth as a full-time
donut shop clerk; a ﬁfth bought and opened a restaurant during the
course of the school year. One teacher explained that she took the
teaching position at Shalom School only "because I didn't have
another job. I like to teach but I would prefer an all-day school or
public school,” she said. (p. 69)

The part-time issue is critical. Busy schedules and demands of more full-time
concerns (work, family) make it very difﬁcult for teachers to adequately prepare
for lessons, invest themselves in their teaching, or ﬁnd the time to participate in
professional development.

Finally, Schoem claims that supplementary school teachers are often at a
loss when it comes to creating engaging lessons. Teachers do not have the time
to prepare adequately and they know little about pedagogy:

One teacher, who desired group discussions in his class, didn’t
realize that he consistently cut off discussion by his method of
”answering" student opinions and thoughts. He also didn’t
understand that students in the back of the room could not read his
small blackboard writing nor did he recognize that ten year old
students might lose interest while Ieaming about one prayer for an
entire session.

Another inexperienced teacher plodded through centuries of Jewish
history with names, facts and ﬁgures. Although she realized that
her lectures were dull - it often seemed that even she was bored —
she bemoaned the fact that she didn’t know any other way to teach
the subject.

108

A third teacher tried to use individualized study to teach the Torah
Study Units developed by the rabbi. In doing so, however, he gave
no instmctions or explanations to the students except to tell them to
read a short passage. The students, in turn, were lost without
directions, and so they read out loud, talked to one another, rolled
on the ﬂoor, and fooled around. Instead of spending the day on the
Torah Units, the teacher ended up acting as a disciplinarian the
entire session. In another example, two other teachers, one with
considerable experience, brought their classes together to perform
a play for the school on the Passover holiday. There was never any
discussion of the play or its meaning, or of Passover. The students
were merely given scripts (there was an insufﬁcient number), told to
choose parts, and only later were told that they would perform
before others. On the day of the performance only a handful of
students were costumes, several students laughed through their
parts, and neither teacher was present because they had made
travel plans to be with family for the holiday. (pp. 90-91)

The sense one gets of the supplementary school teachers in this ethnography
is that they were unaware of how to create a meaningful lesson plan and did not
know different kinds of educational techniques which might make their teaching
more effective. More recent research (Aron 8 Bank, 1985; Aron & Phillips, 1990;
Council for Initiatives in Jewish Education [CIJE], 1994; Federation of Jewish
Agencies of Greater Philadelphia, 1989; Sheskin, 1988) corroborates Schoem’s
study, suggesting that teachers in supplementary schools have an extremely
limited understanding of Judaism and how to teach Judaism. Thus, while it is
always dangerous to generalize from ethnographies and other small sample
studies, it may be that the teachers and circumstances in Schoem’s study are
typical of other supplementary school settings.

Let us consider the CIJE study (1994), conducted in collaboration with the
Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Baltimore Jewish communities. Data sources included
surveys of nearly 1,000 teachers and interviews with 125 Jewish teachers,

principals, and other educational leaders. CIJE found that teachers in

109

supplementary schools have relatively little formal preparation to be Jewish
educators. Although 18% of supplementary school teachers have a certiﬁcate in
Jewish education and 12% have a degree in Jewish studies, the CIJE study
concluded that roughly two-thirds of supplementary school teachers had little or
no formal Jewish training after Bar/Bat Mitzvah.

In contrast to formal Jewish training, the CIJE study did ﬁnd that 41% of
supplementary school teachers do have university degrees in education and an
additional 5% have education degrees from teacher institutes. Almost half have
worked in general education. One of the most interesting ﬁndings of the CIJE
research has to do with teachers’ classroom experiences: Most supplementary
school teachers have considerable classroom experience.

Also noteworthy is the teachers’ perseverance. CIJE ﬁndings indicate that
14% of supplementary school teachers have been in the ﬁeld for more than 20
years; 24% for 10 and 20 years; and 29% for 6 to 10 years. Another 27% have
worked in Jewish education for 2 to 5 years, and only 6% were in their ﬁrst year
at the time of the survey. Once a person decides to enter the ﬁeld of Jewish
education, it appears that they tend to stick with it for a while, perhaps switching
schools, but not leaving the ﬁeld completely. Combined with Schoem’s ﬁnding
that very busy people committed themselves to teaching in supplementary
schools, it appears that Jewish educators - no matter their knowledge of

Judaism or their pedagogical education - are seriously committed to the ﬁeld.

110

The Critical Role of Curricular Materials

Given the uneven preparation and knowledge of teachers, it is not surprising
that most supplementary school principals rely on prepared curricular materials
(Aron & Phillips, 1990). Well-prepared curricular materials are invaluable to
school principals because they hold the potential for extending teachers' subject
matter knowledge, giving them new ideas about how to teach in meaningful and
appropriate ways, supporting some teachers’ weak understanding of Hebrew,
and offering teachers a sensible organization of the material.

Each liberal movement publishes prepared curricula. In addition, Behrrnan
House, a nondenominational publisher, began publishing curricula in the middle
of the last century. More recently, Torah Aura, another nondenominational
publisher, began to publish materials for the supplementary school. The analysis
I offer here is based on widely-used supplementary school prayer curricula used
in third through seventh grades. The goal of my inquiry into these materials is to
further our understanding of why the teaching of prayer in supplementary schools
is so challenging. Before describing and commenting on the curricula, I brieﬂy

note the methods I used in this analysis.

Method of Analysis

The curricula I examined were published by each of the liberal movements—
Reconstruction, Reform and Conservative—as well as by two large non-
denomination publishers in Jewish education, Torah Aura and Behrrnan House. I
ﬁrst asked publishers’ representatives which of their curricula they thought were

being most widely used. Since their estimates were impressionistic and non-

111

scientiﬁc estimates, l pursued several other sources: (1) I contacted the
education departments of the Union of American Hebrew Congregation (Reform),
United Synagogue of America (Conservative) and the Federation of Jewish
Reconstructionist Congregations (Reconstructionist); (2) I spoke with
representatives from the central agencies for Jewish Education in Los Angeles,
Chicago, New York and Atlanta; (3) I contacted colleagues involved in Jewish
education asking which materials they thought were most widely used, and (4) I
called the two major nondenominational publishing houses. In total, I examined

seven texts, described in Table 1.

112

Table 1

Comparison of Curricular Materials

 

Conservative
Melton Research Center

Dorph 8 Kelman, 1982

Melton Curriculum

This curriculum, developed for a ﬁve-year supplementary
school program, is a comprehensive, integrated program
covering mitzvot, holidays, and prayer. The Melton cur-
riculum was written by an international team and devel-
ops from year to year in a spiral fashion. Ideas intro-
duced in the early grades re-emerge in later years offer-
ing a broader, more expansive view of the subject mat-
ter.

 

Reform

Union of American Hebrew
Congregations

Moskowitz, 1 989

A Bridge to Prayer

This curriculum is intended for pre-BarlBat Mitzvah stu-
dents who already decode Hebrew well. It includes a
two-volume textbook and a teacher’s guide. The ﬁrst ﬁve
chapters in Volume 1 introduce students to general con-
cepts of Jewish prayer including the "whys" of prayer,
the history of Jewish worship, ways in which Jews dis-
cuss God, blessings as the building blocks of prayers
and the structure of the worship service. The concluding
chapters of Volume 1 and all of Volume 2 focus on spe-
ciﬁc prayers.

 

Reconstructionist
Reconstructionist Press

Schein, 1996

Connecting Prayer and Spirituality: Kol Haneshamah as
a Creative Teaching and Learning Text

This curriculum is an eclectic mix of essays and lesson
plans intended for supplementary school teachers, rab-
bis, cantors, or educators working with either adults or
children. The purpose of this resource is to enable
teachers or those leading services to help their students
ﬁnd personal meaningin the litugy.

 

Nondenominational

Behrrnan House

The New Siddur Program and Hebrew through Prayer
Two multiyear Hebrew curricula that rely on the liturgy as
a vehicle for teaching Hebrew. Recognizing that most
religious schools do not have time to teach Hebrew and

 

 

Kaye,1992 prayer separately, these curricula combine the two sub-
jects. It is intended for elementary school-age children.
Nondenominational The All New Shema is For Real Curriculum and
The Introduction to the Siddur
Torah Aura These multiyear curricula assume that students can de-

Grishaver, 1 988
Rowe, 1990

 

code Hebrew and that the majority of their Hebrew
studies revolve around the liturgy. The curriculum also
addresses important aspects of Jewish thought

 

After closely reading the curricula, I examined comparable lessons (when

possible), looking for similarities and differences in the approaches to teaching

113

 

prayer. Bogdan and Biklen (1992) provide a useful metaphor for understanding

my analysis of the prepared curricular materials:
Imagine a large gymnasium in which thousands of toys are spread
out on the ﬂoor. You are given the task of sorting them into piles
according to a scheme that you are to develop. You walk around
the gym looking at the toys, picking them up, and examining them.
There are many ways to form piles. They could be sorted according
to size, color, country of origin, date manufactured, manufacturer,
material they are made from, the type of play they encourage, the
age group they suit, or whether they represent living things or
inanimate objects. (p. 165)

This activity resembles my analysis. There were many ways I could organize
my impressions of the materials I examined. I looked for themes, patterns in the
lessons, or explanations about purpose. I took note of how much attention was
devoted to particular pedagogical issues. By looking for coding categories, I tried
to sort the curricula so that I could compare and contrast the materials and better
understand how the challenges of teaching prayer in a supplementary school
setting were reﬂected in the curricula.

Bogdan and Biklen (1992) explain that, when sorting data, the purpose of the
analysis determines how the data will be categorized:

If you were in the gym and you were told what the purpose of
sorting the toys was - let us say, for example, that you were told
they wanted piles so they could be sent back to the manufacturer -
the task of developing codes would be considerably easier.
Developing coding systems in qualitative research faces similar

parameters. Particular research questions and concerns generate
certain categories. (p. 166)

From my research about the supplementary schools, I knew that educators in
the 1950s considered public performance or skill acquisition to be central to the
teaching of prayer. As I explained in the last chapter, Greenberg (1938) was

alone in his argument that the purpose of teaching prayer is to develop ”personal

114

character and Jewish loyalty“ (p. 32). As I examined the curricular materials, I
then wondered how the teaching of prayer would be conceptualized for future
generations of Jewish educators. Because of the historical analysis I had
conducted, I was predisposed to consider how Hebrew reading skills would be
addressed by the curricula.

In addition, as a Conservative rabbi, I am committed to prayer in Hebrew. So
my personal commitments also inﬂuenced my decision to examine how Hebrew
was integrated into the curricular materials that I examined. Also, as a rabbi, I
encountered many Jews who were eager to ﬁnd meaning in the traditional liturgy
and wanted services to be spiritually uplifting. But often times these individuals
found that Hebrew was a stumbling block.

For all these reasons, I could not help but wonder how Hebrew would ﬁgure
into the prepared curricular materials. Would the purpose of the curriculum be to
prepare students for public worship by enabling them to acquire necessary
Hebrew skills? Or would the purpose of the curriculum be to help students think
about important Jewish ideas?

To answer these questions, I systematically examined the curricular materials
by dividing them according to the age of the learner and examining their
similarities and differences. Then I read lessons from each of the curricula on
particular prayers. I was looking for clues about how the curriculum writers
addressed particular age groups and particular prayers. I hoped that, by
comparing and contrasting the curricula in two different ways, I would get a

clearer understanding of the materials.

115

Clearly, mine was not a comprehensive analysis, for an entire inquiry could
be devoted to the analysis of curricular texts. Instead, my analysis is focused on
the theme of this inquiry: How have generations of Jewish educators grappled
with issues related to the teaching of prayer and praying. Across the texts I
examined from this perspective, certain challenges, both implicit and explicit,
became apparent. In this section, I begin by explaining this tension in general

terms. Then I examine how each curriculum addresses the tension.

The Tension between Teaching Hebrew and Teachlng Prayers

The Hebrew language is essential to teaching prayer, for prayers are
traditionally recited in Hebrew. As a result, curriculum writers have to decide
about how the Hebrew language will ﬁgure into the curriculum. Questions the
curriculum writers grapple with include: Should there be an emphasis on Hebrew
reading? If Hebrew is incorporated into the curriculum, is the purpose to enable
students to become competent readers? Or is the goal to teach them enough
Hebrew to help them understand the general meaning of the prayers? Is the
curriculum designed to teach important concepts found in each of the prayers?
Yet prayer can easily be understood as an intensely personal experience. While
participating in community worship is an important aspect of the experience,
there is more to Jewish prayer than reciting the Hebrew liturgy.

Prayer is also inextricably bound to belief in God (Dorff, 1992; Wolpe, 1990).
To whom, after all, does one pray, if not to God? It would seem then that a prayer
curriculum must help learners understand Jewish ideas and concepts about God,

while also helping them develop a personal relationship with God. Thus,

116

curriculum writers grapple with other questions, such as: Should the curriculum
aim to help students connect personally to the ancient prayers? Are students
encouraged to explore their own feelings and ideas about liturgy or are they led
to believe that all of the liturgy should be completely accepted as truth? ls
Ieaming Jewish prayer an opportunity to Ieam traditional Jewish thought? Is the
classroom a place for students to ﬁnd personal meaning in the prayer book?
Let us now consider how various curricula attempted to resolve the often

times conﬂicting objectives bound up in the teaching of prayer.

Reconstructionist: Personal Meaning Paramount, Hebrew Minimal
This one-volume notebook is an eclectic collection of materials intended to
help teachers address the spiritual aspects of Jewish prayer. Connecting Prayer
and Spirituality: Kol Haneshamah as a Creative Teaching and Learning Text
(Schein, 1996) includes about 50 pieces written by liberal educators, rabbis and
cantors. The materials span a broad spectrum, including lesson plans, plays,
games, curricula and thoughtful essays about issues to consider when teaching
prayer to either children or adults. The entries are organized into the following
categories: “Preface and Introductory Materials,” “Approaching the Siddun”
“Teaching and Learning the Siddur,” “Using the Siddur,” “Making the Siddur your
Friend: Your Siddur Safari.”
In the introduction to Connecting Prayer and Spirituality: Kol Haneshama as a
Creative Teaching and Leaming Text (Schein, 1996), Teutsch argues:
Studying Jewish prayer is a complex task. The siddur has rightly
been described as containing a history of the Jewish heart. One

key aspect of study in Jewish prayer is understanding the history,
structure, and themes of the Jewish prayer book. Given its complex

117

history and many layers, this is by itself no small task. But studying
the siddur in this fashion alone is a bit like examining the literature
of an ancient civilization. Understanding it does not guarantee
empathy or active engagement. Jewish liturgy is to be studied by us
not merely for the purpose of understanding its ancient roots and
gradual development. We study it in order to be able to participate
in it as a part of our lives. (p. 5)

The purpose of this Reconstructionist guide is to launch the study of prayer in
a way that enables pray-ers to make a personal connection to the liturgy. Schein
wanted to produce a resource that did not focus primarily on skills acquisition or
the history of prayer, but rather one that brought another perspective to the
teaching and Ieaming of Jewish prayer. The guide's premise is that, by studying
and Ieaming the ideas of the prayer book, Jewish prayer can become meaningful
to individuals and communities. For example, in Aviva Batya Bass’s essay, ”A
Prayer Service for Ages Four to Seven," the following goals are articulated:

The children should come away with a knowledge of some of the
basic prayers and key words of the Jewish morning liturgy and a
passive knowledge of the structure. More importantly [italics
added] however, the students should feel that they have a forum for
personal spiritual expression within a Jewish religious context.
(Schein, 1996, p. 187)

The most important goal in this curriculum is creating a forum for personal
expression. The focus of most Ieaming activities is on learners growing spiritually
by connecting personally to the liturgy. In an essay entitled “Nurturing Students’
Spirituality and Prayerfulness,” Roberta Louis Goodman suggests that:

a major role of Jewish education involves deepening, enriching,
and perhaps uncovering the spirituality and prayerfulness that is
already found in our students. Our tradition’s prayers address
human emotions and longings. Our students do not come to prayer
as empty vessels. At any age, they come ﬁlled with experiences,
feelings, ideas, hopes, and aspirations that can be enriched by our

tradition’s prayers as well as enrich our understanding of those
prayers. The task becomes one of interweaving the prayers and

118

modes of praying from our tradition with the person’s spiritual
orientation and life experiences. (Schein, 1996, pp. 67-68)

Goodman's assumption is that Jewish educators should be nurturing
children’s spirituality and prayerfulness. Her essay is an attempt to help teachers
integrate James Fowler’s theory on faith development into their work with
children.

Not only are many of the entries in the Reconstructionist collection concerned
with enabling students to connect with the words of the liturgy, there are also
several lesson plans intended to help students grasp the meaning of the prayers.
For example, Deborah Waxman’s lesson plan ”Shema Uvirhoteha” [Shema and
its accompanying blessings] for ages Twelve to Seventeen,“ is intended to
enable students to know the ideas of the traditional prayers and to understand
the structure of the morning service. The lesson plan includes ﬁve rhyming
paragraphs that correspond to the traditional liturgy:

Of this chain of blessings, I do start

That’s one of the ways I play my part

Here I call all to prayer if there are 10 women and men

But I'm sung to a different tune when to the Torah someone comes
to stand

God in nature, I do explore

Creator, maker, fashioner and more

The many names of God I do praise

Like maker of peace and creator of days

Ofﬁcially I’m the ﬁrst berahah of this group when we say the
morning prayer

Though I come in second when the call to worship 10 people share

God loves us and loves us, without cease

Is the main theme of the third piece

Because of this love a great gift did God give
Teaching and laws by which we can live

119

The core

The point

I am the central thought

The prayer that from a young age Jews are taught

I follow love and precede redemption

And of the mitzvot of tallit, teﬁllin and mezuzah I make mention

Last but not least, I wrap up the chain

God is our champion and redeemer is what I claim

I quote from great moments in our history

Like when the people, Moses and Miriam stood at the Red Sea
(Schein, 1996, p. 140)

Each of these paragraphs was to be on a note card. Students were to work in
small groups, place the note cards in a proper order and match each note card
with the appropriate traditional text. The purpose of Waxman’s lessons was for
students to Ieam the ideas of the liturgy and to understand the structure of the
service.

Hebrew skills acquisition is not a curricular focus for Waxman. This minimalist
approach to Hebrew is seen in the Reconstructionist curricular guide (Schein,
1996). According to its editor, it was a response to a situation in which too many
supplementary schools were relying exclusively on Hebrew curricula for the
teaching of prayer (phone interview with Schein, July 1998). Believing that
Hebrew skills acquisition was the focus in too many classrooms, Schein
produced a resource which was intended to enable teachers to go beyond mere
Hebrew skills. This guide is intended to launch the study of prayer in a way that
enables pray-ers to make a spiritual connection to prayer. There are no articles
or lesson plans devoted to Hebrew; Schein’s goal was to create a resource to

enable teachers to make prayers and praying meaningful to students.

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Conservative: Conceptual Ideas Primary, Hebrew an Adjunct

The Melton curriculum devotes much attention to the signiﬁcant ideas of the
liturgy. Very little attention is devoted to Hebrew. The curriculum writers wanted
students to be comfortable talking about the prayers and the core concepts. The
teacher’s guide to the prayer curriculum begins:

lnevitably, a unit on prayer should begin with some reﬂection about
God. Our goal in the ﬁrst lessons of the unit is to raise this issue in
a discussion, to open up the possibility of talking about God in the
religious school. If we are not going to talk about God in our

religious schools, where then will we? And yet, it is often true that
teachers avoid this important topic. (Dorph 8 Kelman, 1979, p. 145)

The curriculum writers assert that students in a supplementary school should
be talking about God, especially when studying Jewish prayer. Students are to
be encouraged to share their ideas and ask questions about God. The curriculum
assumes that people have asked questions about God throughout human
history. It also assumes that within Judaism, questioning, doubting, and reﬂecting
are acceptable and even commendable enterprises.

In addition to encouraging students to question, wonder, and doubt, the
curriculum teaches basic Jewish ideas about God. For example, children are
taught that God created the world, and Torah is God’s gift of love to the Jewish
people. Most lessons are devoted to enabling students to understand the
meaning or ideas of the liturgy. For example, the lesson for third or fourth graders
introduces study of the Shema. The purpose of the lesson is to help students
understand how the Shema is a “Jewish pledge of allegiance." Students are

asked to restate the pledge of allegiance in their own words. After students

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rephrase the pledge in their own words, the teacher is told to either use one of
the students’ versions or write the following on the board.
I promise my loyalty to the government of the United States of
America. I promise to live by the ideas for which that government

stands. Some of those ideas are liberty ad justice for everyone.
(Dorph 8 Kelman, 1982, p. 50)

In the script for the teacher, the curriculum continues:
When we recite the Shema and Ve’ahavta we are reciting our
Jewish pledge of allegiance. We are saying: I promise my loyalty to
the one God. I promise my loyalty to the ideas for which our God
stands as expressed in the Torah. One of the ways by which I show

this loyalty is by putting a mezuzah on the doorpost of my house.
(Dorph 8 Kelman, 1982, p. 51)

The lesson plan continues with the analogy by explaining that just as there is
a way to stand when reciting the pledge, there are people who close their eyes
when they say the ﬁrst line of the Shema. The lesson plan suggests that the
teacher then demonstrate how this is done. Clearly, the purpose of this lesson is
to enable students to understand what the Shema is saying, aiming to represent
it to students in a meaningful way. While the curriculum writers explicitly state
that Hebrew is important, the bulk of each lesson is devoted to enabling students’
understanding of important concepts about God, as expressed in the liturgy. The
instructions for practicing the Hebrew text are vague. For example, at the end of
the second lesson on the Shema after the ﬁnal activity there is a note to the
teacher:

Hebrew drill and practice should begin with focus on those lines

that have already been pointed out in the course of discussion.
(Dorph 8 Kelman, 1982, p. 67)

The Hebrew exercises are not considered a core activity of the lesson; they

are in addition to the other ﬁve activities. It is noteworthy that the Hebrew prayer

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book intended for children included Hebrew texts that were not age-appropriate.
The size of the print is small, much too small for children in the elementary
grades. Also, although the developers reiterate that practicing the Hebrew
prayers is essential, the primary emphasis of each lesson is on the meaning of
the prayers. Hebrew exercises are always the ﬁnal activity of the lesson, almost
an afterthought. A curriculum that is generally very directive leaves it for teachers
to ﬁgure out for themselves how to do effective Hebrew drill exercises. However,
the Melton curriculum writers are committed rhetorically to the acquisition of solid
Hebrew skills.

We cannot emphasize strongly enough the need for practice of the

Hebrew ﬂuency component of this prayer curriculum. It is what will

enable students to participate in the synagogue services (Dorph 8
Kelman, 1982, p. 4)

In reality, the curriculum writers focus on key concepts, leaving Hebrew to be
taught in another place in the curriculum. The Melton curriculum is very detailed
and speciﬁc, including comprehensive background materials for teachers,
scripted lesson, and prepared age-appropriate worksheets.

In conclusion, the Melton curriculum exempliﬁes the major challenge in
teaching prayer. The curriculum writers recognize the need for students to learn
Hebrew skills and signiﬁcant concepts. They explicitly argue that both Hebrew
skills and key concepts are equally critical. But in practice, the curricular
materials emphasize key concepts, theological issues, and personal meaning,

leaving Hebrew for another place in the curriculum.

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Reform: Personal Meaning Stressed, Hebrew Is Integrated Into Each
Lesson

Bridge to Prayer (Moskowitz, 1989a, 1989b, 19890) focuses on both the ideas
of the prayer book and enabling students to acquire the Hebrew skills necessary
to be comfortable with the prayer book. In the introduction to the Teacher’s
Guide, Moskowitz (19890) explains that most lessons include:

explanatory texts with student exercises interspersed. This format
allows students to interact with discreet bits of information—to read
a few paragraphs and then immediately process the ideas with
exercises that are designed to highlight general prayer concepts,

teach key words in Hebrew, create a bridge between the student’s
personal life and the words of the prayer book. (p. 1)

While the purpose of this curriculum is to help students understand,
appreciate and relate to the words of the prayer book, it also assumes
responsibility for skill acquisition. It provides teachers with several tools for
teaching Hebrew reading. In the Teacher’s Guide, Moskowitz (19890) explains:

To feel comfortable students must not only be able to connect

personally with the individual prayers of our Siddur, but must also
be able to read the Hebrew ﬂuently. (p. 1)

To support teachers working towards this objective, each lesson that
introduces a new prayer includes drills to improve reading skills. The top of each
page includes almost all of the Hebrew words found in the prayer being studied.
Words are grouped either by phonic or grammatical principles.39 The bottom of
the page contains the actual text of the prayer taken from Gates of Prayer, the

Reform prayer book. The text is not translated, but it is enlarged and "broken into

 

39 The phonetic groups are intended to "build visual discrimination skills, and often provide a
useful rhythm for reading words that, at ﬁrst glance, look alike" (Moskowitz, 19890, p. 3). The
grammatical groupings are intended to teach and challenge students of higher abilities, including
those in full [time Hebrew] day schools (Moskowitz, 1989, p. 3).

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meaningful phrases [so that students will Ieam] where to take a breath and where
to pause for the sake of meaning“ (Moskowitz, 19890, p. 3). According to the
curriculum’s author, Hebrew reading skills are essential if students are to become
comfortable in the synagogue. Each page of each lesson has Hebrew on it.
Prayers are referred to by their Hebrew names and are written in Hebrew letters.
The conclusion of each lesson includes several lines of Hebrew reading drills and
also versions of the entire blessing that are in a large font and easy to read. The
Reform curriculum also strives to help students understand the meaning of the
liturgy and the context of individual prayers within services. The curriculum then
asks students to evaluate the text, based upon their own beliefs about God. It
goes beyond the rote reciting of liturgy and the pat answering of factual
questions, to the development of a personal approach to prayer. For example,

students are given sentences that prayers use to describe God’s powers:

Adonai” is our God.

Adonai is our Ruler.

Adonai saves us from those who want to harm us.

Adonai performs miracles.

Adonai gives us our life.

Adonai performed miracles in Egypt for our ancestors.

Adonai led the Jews out of Egypt.

Adonai helps us live as free people. (Moskowitz, 1989a, p. 50)

Students are asked which statements they believe to be true. By doing this,
the curriculum does more than tell students what Jews have traditionally believed
about God. It encourages students to reject, question, and challenge aspects of
the liturgy. Students are being taught that it is acceptable to think critically about

Jewish liturgy.

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Torah Aura: Hebrew and Personal Meaning: Equal Time

Torah Aura originally published versions of The All New Shema is for Real
Cuniculum (Grishaver, 1988, revised in 1991) in the mid 19803. The curriculum
was well received by teachers and principals. Educators embraced the idea of
teaching the meaning of the prayers, while also teaching students how to pray.
Their major concern was that the curriculum was too complex for most
supplementary school teachers. Because there was so much material in the
curriculum, teachers were not sure how to edit the lessons effectively. The
Introduction to the Siddur (Rowe, 1990) curriculum was created as a response to
those concerns. Its attempt to balance Jewish thought, personal meaning, and
Hebrew is comparable to The All New Shema is for Real Curriculum. The major
difference is that the lessons are shorter and the teacher is given fewer options.
Also The Introduction to the Siddur includes both the traditional and the Reform
and Conservative liturgy. The universal complaint about this curriculum was that
it was too complex.

While the Torah Aura curriculum incorporates Hebrew in the entire lesson, the
focus of its materials goes well beyond skills acquisition. The cuniculum
developer, Joel Grishaver, believes a good curriculum on Jewish prayer is also a
course in Jewish thought. In addition, he wanted students to Ieam about God. He
wrote (1991a):

If you only teach students to pronounce prayers in the prayer book,
then, with a little luck, you may never need to talk about God. Even

if you avoid the questions in class, once they realize that what they
are sounding out loud are prayers, your students will still be

 

40 Adonai is a Hebrew name for God. It means “my Lord“.

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wondering about those questions. The longer you avoid them, the
more they will suspect that God is not listening, that She may not
exist, and that praying to Him makes no differences (except for
social status concerns). If you are going to get students to deal with
prayer as a real life process then you must talk about God. (pp. 13-

14)

Grishaver claims that any serious course on Jewish prayer must address

questions about God. For a course on Jewish prayer to be meaningful and

worthwhile, students must come away knowing more than how to recite Hebrew

prayers. Students must understand how Jewish thought is articulated through the

prayer book.

At the same time, both of the Torah Aura curricula devote a great deal of

attention to Hebrew skills. For example, in the student text the ﬁrst page after the

table of contents (Rowe 1991a) include the following “Mastery Chart“:

Table 2
Mastery Chart

 

I know the
theme

I can read

I know when to
say

I can
understand

Prayer

 

Evening
Barchu

 

Maariv Aravim

 

Ahavat Olam

 

Shema

 

Geula

 

Hashlreveinu

 

Morning
Yotzer Or

 

Ahavah
Rabbah

 

Shema

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geulah

 

Here Hebrew is neither an addition to the lesson, nor tacked onto the end.

Rather, Hebrew skills are an integral part of each lesson. Each time a prayer is

127

 

introduced, the lesson begins with a vocabulary chart intended to help students
become more familiar with the meaning of the Hebrew words.

Many, if not most, lessons begin with Hebrew exercises. An effort is made to
help students learn basic mles about the Hebrew language such as common
preﬁxes and sufﬁxes. Also, the curricula teaches students that most Hebrew
words have a three letter root and that understanding the Hebrew helps one
appreciate subtle points about the prayers. For example, in Shema 8 Company
(Grishaver, 1991 b), there is a lesson about the ﬁrst blessing before the Shema
recited in the evening. Students are asked to translate ﬁve verbs and ﬁgure out
the tense of each verb. They are then asked the following questions:

What pattern do you ﬁnd?
What does the tense of these verbs teach you about creation?
Why is this important? (p. 86)

By studying these Hebrew words and taking notices of the tense of the verbs,
the student learns that for Jews, God continues to create and renew the world
every day. Creation is not something that happened once long ago. Rather, God
is constantly remaking the worid.

Exercises in each lesson also require students to examine the Hebrew text of
a blessing. For example, in part two of Lesson 30 (Rowe, 1991 a), the top of the
page has three Hebrew sentences. At the bottom of the page, students are
asked to complete the following three questions:

What root is most common in this section?

What does it mean?
What theme does it give this prayer? (p. 114)

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Each prayer that is taught includes and depends upon exercises designed to
enable students to develop their reading skills and to make sense of Hebrew
words in the prayers.

At the core of this Hebrew approach is a concentration on the
estimation of meaning. Much like a math student who is taught to
estimate rather than calculate certain kinds of problems, we train
students to use their extant knowledge of roots and patterns to

approximate the meanings of passages, reﬁning their skills through
practice. (Grishaver, 1991a, p. 12)

Behrman House: Hebrew Paramount, Personal Meaning Minimal

Of all the curricula l examined, the Behnnan House curricula focus the most
attention on the Hebrew language. This becomes clear by examining the
publisher’s catalogue. The two curricula devoted to prayer and Hebrew—Hebrew
through Prayer (Kaye, Trager 8 Mason, 1994, 1995, 1996) and The New Siddur
Program (Tamor 8 Tamor, 1990, 1991, 1992)—are listed under Hebrew, as
opposed to being listed under prayer. The curricula focus almost exclusively on
ﬂuent Hebrew reading and public performance of the prayers. Taking into
account that most religious schools do not have time to teach Hebrew and prayer
separately, Behrrnan House combines the two subjects. The following
explanation is offered in the educational director's guide to Hebrew through
Prayer (1998):

Many religious schools have limited time for Hebrew instruction. A
prayer curriculum provides a structure and a clearly deﬁned amount
of material to cover. Progress and achievement in a prayer program
can be quantiﬁed and assessed. Can the students read the prayer
ﬂuently? Do they understand the key words in the prayer? Can they
verbalize its theme? Do they know where it ﬁts in the prayer

service? Can they present the prayer ﬂuently and with ease in
public? (p. M)

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Notice the skills that are considered critical for students to acquire: ﬂuent
reading of prayers in public, recognition of key Hebrew prayer words, and
general knowledge of certain prayers.

In the educational director's guide to The New Siddur Program (1994), Teny
Kaye, explains the goals to the curriculum as follows:

Learn to decode (Primer)
Understand words, prayer and stories (Book 1)
Recognize grammatical concepts; understand that Hebrew is root-

based (Book 2)
Discuss the main ideas of key prayers (Book 3) [pp. I-5]

The focus is on enabling students to read Hebrew prayers. As explained in
Kaye’s explanation of the curriculum, it is not until Book 3 that students begin
discussing the main ideas of the key prayers.

In both Behnnan House Hebrew curricula, prayers are presented as texts for
a Hebrew lesson. Though conceptual ideas are discussed, the primary purpose
of the curriculum is to promote prayer-reading with some minimal
comprehension, as well as public prayer performance. The rationale is that
Hebrew is the Iynchpin of Jewish identity. It provides bonds among Jews around
the world, connecting Jews to Israel as well. Knowledge of Hebrew allows
students access to sacred texts and it allows them to participate in any
synagogue in the world. Hebrew skills, at the expense of personal meaning or

conceptual thinking, are the focus of the Behnnan House curriculum.

The Curricular Landscape

In summary, the Reconstructionist guide does not include any formal Hebrew

exercises and focuses almost exclusively on personal issues related to prayer.

130

The Conservative movement’s Melton curriculum includes some Hebrew at the
end of each prayer unit but essentially addresses only key concepts in prayer.
The Reform curriculum, Bridge to Prayer, incorporates some Hebrew reading
exercises at the end of each lesson and all key words are written in Hebrew. Still,
this curriculum devotes the majority of each lesson to encouraging students to
understand, analyze and evaluate the liturgy. The Torah Aura materials integrate
Hebrew and Jewish thought so that each lesson devotes almost an equal amount
of time to both lessons. And ﬁnally, the Behrman House curricula focus almost
exclusively on Hebrew skills.

All of the curricula writers believed that a worthwhile prayer curriculum has to
include Hebrew. They all agreed that the supplementary school is responsible for
enabling students to become ﬂuent with the Hebrew prayer book. The various
curricular approaches suggest that determining how Hebrew is to be integrated
into the supplementary school prayer curriculum is one of the most signiﬁcant
challenges in the teaching of prayer, especially given the limited number of hours
schools are in session.

A close examination of the curricula reveals that the curriculum writers had
contrasting formulas for determining how much time to devote to these critical
issues and how much time to devote to skills acquisition. Those curricula that
emphasized Hebrew had less time to devote to enabling students to explore
some of the important conceptual issues related to prayer. And those curricula
that focused on theology and/or concepts had less time to devote to Hebrew.

Close analysis of the prepared curricula is instructive because it demonstrates

131

just how complicated it is to teach prayer in the supplementary school. These
materials were created by some of the ﬁnest Jewish educators in the country. Yet
no consensus emerged from this analysis that shed light on how practitioners
should go about teaching prayer in a supplementary school. Consider the Reform
and Conservative curricula. One might have expected that the Reform cuniculum
would include less Hebrew than the Conservative one, given that worship in
English is more commonly accepted in the Reform movement. Yet, examination
of Conservative and Reform curricula reveals that Reform curricula integrate

Hebrew into nearly every lesson.

What Accounts for the Changing Ideas about Teaching Prayer?

What caused the shift in curricular materials from memorizing prayers to
addressing the ideas expressed in the prayers? Historically there had always
been an emphasis on children Ieaming how to pray. Greenberg (1938) clearly
describes the situation:

The curriculum was based on the doctrine that reverence of the
Lord is not only the beginning but the goal of all wisdom. That
reverence was to be expressed in every act a Jew performed. But
among these acts, daily recitation of traditional prayers was to
occupy a pre-eminent position. the prayer book was and remains
to this day the dominant, almost the exclusive, subject of study for
the pupil until he acquires a high proﬁciency in the ability to read its
contents ﬂuently. Skill in the use of the prayer book was the
indispensable ﬁrst step that the Jewish child had to make on his
path towards proper participation in Jewish life. (p. 28)

Describing what American Jews understood about the prayer book,
Greenberg claimed that most Jews only knew how to read Hebrew and follow the
order of the service. He was certain that it was the unusual American Jew who

had any knowledge of the contents of the prayers. In the late 19308 and eariy

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405, as discussed in Chapter 3, he urged American Jewish educators to teach
the ideas of the prayer book so that they could help develop Jewish character.
He argued that the purpose of teaching prayer should be to mold character,
strengthen the child’s inner life, and deepen Jewish loyalties. Greenberg
articulated a need for a paradigm shift in the teaching of prayer.

In 1964, one of Greenberg’s articles was the lead article in an anthology
devoted to the teaching of prayer in the Jewish school. Apparently, the situation
was still essentially unchanged from the 1930s. Prayer was still being taught by
rote, and the teaching of prayer was not being used as a vehicle for developing
character or Jewish loyalty. "The pupil remembered his prayer book period as a
time when he read some meaningless passages with the teacher being obviously
more bored than the pupil himself" (Greenberg, 1938, p. 29).

What happened in American Jewish life such that, by the 1980s and 903,
curricula writers were hard at work trying to incorporate the ideas of the liturgy
into the teaching of prayer? Why, rather suddenly, did so many Jewish educators
focus on meaning of the prayers?

In many ways, 1971 was a watershed year for the teaching of prayer. Dr. Saul
Wachs completed his dissertation entitled, An Application of Inquiry Teaching to
the Seedur (sic). In addition, Burt Jacobson published Teaching the Traditional
Liturgy. Both of these publications assume there is much more to the teaching of
prayer than memorizing Hebrew prayers and rote recitation of the liturgy. Wachs
introduced the inquiry method to the study of the prayer book. He asserts that,

"knowledge of the ideas in a prayer make possible a deeper and more sustained

133

emotional response to the prayer than where such knowledge is lacking” (p. 69).
Wachs believes that it is possible for students to grasp prayer concepts through
class discussions. His dissertation describes an approach to the teaching of
prayer that involves students actively uncovering the meaning of the prayers.

Like Wachs, Jacobson recognized there was more to the teaching of prayer
than rote memorization. He argues that, “the rote method may habituate the
student to traditional worship modes, but by itself it does not touch the intellectual
and emotional needs of most youngsters“ (p. 4).

Jacobson believes the ideas of the prayer book are important and should
ﬁgure into the teaching of prayer. He describes two additional approaches to the
teaching of prayer: the historical approach and the value and idea approach.

The historical approach ”attempts to give the student knowledge about the
origins of a prayer and the prayer book“ (p. 3). If students understand the history
of the prayer book, they can grasp the human developmental dimension. The
historical approach may show the student the history of the prayer or the prayer
book but, according to Jacobson, ”but this does not mean that the prayer is going
to take on life within the child’s own soul” (p. 4).

The idea-value approach that Jacobson describes is an attempt to expose the
student to the rabbinic understanding of the relationship between God and the
Jewish people and to bring the student a sense of commitment through the
student’s intellect. This approach deals with the cognitive elements in worship
but, according to Jacobson:

as it is practiced in many schools it does not give the child room for
genuine personal reaction; it presents to him a ready-made mode

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of worship and theological system which he should or must accept
as the Jewish religious framework. (p. 4)

In describing these two approaches to the teaching of prayer, Jacobson
argues that both the rote verbal memorization, the historical approach and the
value and idea approach to teaching prayer are all limiting in their own ways. His
approach to the teaching of prayer builds on these approaches, but it considers
”the development of a child’s inner life” (p. 4). He explains:

I believe therefore, that a program of worship for children in this age
range, while certainly utilizing elements from all the above
mentioned approaches, should concentrate on an open poetic
exploration of the root experiences that become liturgy. This can
give our students a sense of how Jews and the family of man have

reacted to the wondrous, the mysterious, the momentous—perhaps
even the tragic. (p. 5)

Notice both Jacobson and Wachs are suggesting that there is much more to
the teaching of prayer than Hebrew reading skills. Both believe that an important
part of the teaching of prayer is conceptual. Students need an opportunity to
Ieam the big ideas of Jewish prayer. Rather than just reiterating Greenberg’s
point, both Jacobson and Wachs further the discussion of the teaching of prayer
by creating curricular materials intended to teach key concepts of Jewish liturgy.

Wachs' dissertation describes an approach to the teaching of prayer that
involves students actively uncovering the meaning of the prayers. The teacher's
role is "as a kind of orchestra conductor leading the class to discover what he
has put before them" (p. 76).

While students are actively involved in the Ieaming process, the teacher is the
leader, directing the discussion and making strategic decisions about the nature

of the discussion. Wachs does acknowledge that there are novel situations when

135

the student will offer an interpretation or an insight that is unknown to the
teacher. "In this novel situation the conductor lays down his baton and becomes
a player, joining his fellow students in search for truth” (Wachs, 1971, p. 77).
Notice how similar Wachs’ conceptualization of the teacher is to Schwab’s
(1969).
The role of the instructor in such operations is both dominant and
demanding. It is demanding in three respects. First, he must know
the work under analysis through and through. Second, he must be
equally familiar with the varieties of questions and attacks which
can be made on such a work, know what sorts of treatment they
constitute, and be willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of each
such attack within the limits of what it can do. Third, he must be
alertly and sensitively mindful of what each student is saying and
doing, not only in the moment but in the whole course of the
discussion. (pp. 66-67)

The role of the teacher is to raise issues and ask questions for students to
consider and discuss. The teacher directs the lesson and enables students to
“sample the ideas in the Seedur" (p. 85). In rare moments, the teacher joins the
class and allows the student to become the teacher.

Jacobson also intends to teach the ideas of the prayers through classroom
inquiry. The purpose of the teaching of prayer is to heighten ”the student’s ability
to concretize and validate or correct his intuitive grasp of the prayer, and to allow
him to Ieam the poetic tools that give depth to the meaning. Such a grasp, won
by discovery, may give the student a deep sense of identity with the concerns of
the traditional prayers. Jacobson says that the goals of teaching prayer are:

1. To uncover the common experiences that underlie the author's
prayer in the interests of the students, and to thereby broaden the
student’s sensitivities so that he realizes there are common
experiences that all men undergo; to understand the particularly

Jewish symbolic framework within which this can be carried out.
2. To develop an understanding of an empathetic appreciation for

136

the experiences and language of Jewish religious poets of the past.
3. To give the students the tools for literary analysis which they will
be able to use in connection with any prayer or with poetry.

4. To show that the faith encountered with God is a genuine
possible way of grappling with ultimate questions.

Finally there is the question of relevance which will have been touched n
throughout the preceding modes of analysis, but not yet dealt with directly. (p.
1 5)

To achieve these goals, he assumes that the teacher will create a classroom
environment that encourages students to be open and honest about their feelings
and ideas. Teachers are expected to guide the classroom discussions,
encourage students to think, and also be knowledgeable about the ideas of the
prayer.

It is worth noting that both Jacobson and Wachs were working with the Melton
Research Center of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Jacobson’s
work was published by the Center and Wachs acknowledges the staff of the
Melton Research Center in the introduction to his dissertation.

What was the Melton Research Center and how did it contribute to the
curricula scene? The Melton Research Center, a department of The Teachers
Institute Seminary College of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, was
established in September 1960, by a grant from Samuel Melton of Columbus,
Ohio. Its purpose was to investigate ways of improving Jewish education in the
supplementary school. The educators from the Melton Center worked closely
with two eminent scholars in the ﬁeld of curriculum, Professors Joseph Schwab

and Ralph Tyler. Both had a profound inﬂuence on the direction and work of the

Melton Center.

137

Tyler cautioned the educators that it was critical to deliberate carefully before
commissioning curricular projects. Schwab focused on the practical aspects of
curriculum writing. He argued that the curriculum had to take into account what
already existed in Jewish schools, being mindful of constraints and possibilities.
In a newsletter of the Melton Research Center for Jewish Education (1977) we
Ieam that both Tyler and Schwab

warned that the products of the new curricular movement (the new
math, the new physics, the new biology, etc.) had often been
distorted in the classroom because materials being produced

considered only one of the important aspects of curriculum, the
subject matter. (p. 2)

They believed that it was important to consider four commonplaces when

doing curriculum development. To this end Schwab (1978) argued that
defensible educational thought must take account of four
commonplaces of equal rank: the Ieamer, the teacher, the milieu,
and the subject matter. None of these can be omitted without
omitting a vital factor in educational thought and practice. (p. 371)
Coordination, not superordination or subordination, is the proper
relation of these four commonplaces representatives of all four
commonplaces must be included in the deliberating group from the
start. Almost as obvious is the need that these representatives be
men who are not overawed by the scholar. (p. 372)

In addition to the subject matter, curriculum writers must consider the child,
the teacher, and the society in the curriculum writing process. Notice Schwab is
arguing that the curriculum writing process must be conducted by capable
individuals who are able to think critically about all of the commonplaces.

If not, Schwab feared educators would identify subjects as important and

perhaps even ﬁnd new and exciting ways to develop the material only to have

their efforts negated by later ﬁndings that the subject was not appropriate for

138

children or the teachers are not able or willing to teach that particular subject. As
a result of Tyler and Schwab’s recommendations, the Melton curricula asked the
following questions:

In light of the limitations of time and money and considering the

nature of our teachers, students, parents and the community, what

is it that our children should Ieam? How should our teachers teach

so that the ideas presented might be internalized and affect the

thinking, feeling and behavior of our children? (Melton newsletter,

1977, p. 2)

It seems reasonable to argue that the intellectual milieu of the Melton
Research Center inﬂuenced the work of both Jacobson and Wachs. While many
educators had once assumed that the teaching of prayer should prepare children
to recite Hebrew words clearly and quickly, Jacobson and Wachs—having
encountered the ideas of educational luminaries like Schwab and Tyler—had to
ask themselves questions like:

How can we strike a balance between teaching understanding of
the prayers and developing the skills to recite them properly? How

can we prepare a child to become a member of a tzibbur, a praying
community? (Melton newsletter, 1977, p. 1)

The insights and answers provided by Schwab and Tyler, and more recently
Jacobson and Wachs, have paved the way for today’s Jewish educators to think
much differently about the teaching of prayer and its relationship to the teaching
of Hebrew. To further understand the challenges of teaching prayer in the
supplementary school, I turn in the next chapter to my own teaching experiences.
Like Jacobson and Wachs, I tried to strike a balance that would enable students
concurrently to think critically, relate to the liturgy, and develop the skills

necessary to become competent at praying.

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CHAPTER 5
"WHY WOULD YOU SAY A PRAYER
IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE WHAT IT SAYS?":
EXAMINING MY TEACHING OF PRAYER

Up to this point, I have examined the teaching of prayer through documents
such as curricula, histories, and the like. My observations and analyses have
resonated with me, for as a rabbi, I teach prayer and praying. In this chapter, I
examine my own practice. There are many reasons why the research in this
chapter appeals to me. First and foremost, I am a practitioner. l have devoted my
professional career to teaching. As a Jewish educator, i believe I can make the
biggest impact on the Jewish community by continuing to teach. It is my hope
that, through research in and on my own practice, I will develop further as a
thoughtful, innovative and effective Jewish educator. Finally, I presume that the
struggles other educators and rabbis have encountered play themselves out in
my own teaching as well. I offer this analysis as an insider’s view of how difﬁcult
it is to teach prayer.

I weave autobiography throughout this analysis, for my own story and values
shaped what I did, what i saw, and how I made sense of my teaching. By the
time I was 30 years old, I had a reputation as a gifted teacher. Colleagues in
Jewish education invited me to share my ideas about the teaching of prayer.
They said this was my ”gift." I received very little critical feedback from
colleagues, parents, or supervisors. I worried about becoming complacent. I
include this information as part of my story not to brag, but to provide further

support for the point I wish to make about teaching prayer in a liberal

supplementary school setting. I knew my subject matter very well, had taught

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prayer for 11 years and was considered successful. As I describe the challenges
I encountered when teaching prayer, they should not be easily dismissed
because I was inexperienced or incompetent. Moreover, if I encountered such
serious problems, what about these teachers who are less experienced?

While my setting was similar to many smaller supplementary schools, I taught
prayer very differently than the curricular materials investigated in the last
chapter. I chose to teach both praying and prayer simultaneously by creating
school prayer services in which we prayed and discussed the liturgy. In what

follows, I describe both the context and my rationale.

The Lansing Jewish Community

The Jewish community of Lansing, Michigan, counts about 425 families who
are afﬁliated with one of the two local liberal congregations. In 1992, I moved to
Lansing so that I could launch my doctoral studies in education while serving as
the educational director of Congregation Kehillat Israel (affectionately known by
its initials Kl), the smaller of the two synagogues in Lansing, with approximately
125 member families. The congregation was unafﬁliated in order to be as
inclusive as possible. I was the educational director from 1992-1995. My job
description focused on the school. I was not ofﬁcially responsible for the ritual
aspects of the congregation.

Kl was founded about 30 years ago by academics, most of whom were
knowledgeable about Judaism and Iiturgically sophisticated. The founders
believed they did not need a rabbi or cantor for religious and ritual guidance.

Rather, they wanted their religious leaders to challenge them intellectually. The

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founders had a strong commitment to education. One of the main reasons they
established the congregation was to maintain a supplementary school that would
be engaging and stimulating for children of all ages. From its inception, Kl was an
egalitarian congregation, granting equal rights and obligations to men and
women. (In 1970, this was not a mainstream idea; in fact, the ﬁrst woman rabbi
had not yet been ordained.) At the time of my arrival, the congregation was
supporting a regularly scheduled Sabbath morning service, typically with
between 20 and 25 adults in attendance. The school had 77 K-7th grade
students. Rarely were children present for Saturday morning services. Students
could be found in the building when classes were in session on Wednesday
afternoon and Sunday morning from September through May.

in the 19705, when the congregation was established, interrnarried couples
were rare, and many of the congregants were steeped in Hebrew and Jewish
tradition. By 1992 when I moved to Lansing, close to a third of the children in the
school were living in homes with one non-Jewish parent. As was the case
nationally, growing numbers of congregants were not particularly knowledgeable
about Judaism. Few families observed the Jewish dietary laws, or regularly
celebrated the Sabbath or any but the major Jewish festivals. Many families were
relying on the school to teach children about almost all aspects of Judaism.

At the time that I began working at Kl, the parents in the school were

frustrated with the kind of Jewish education that their children were receiving.

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Rather than just complain, many parents volunteered to teach in the school.41
While these 15 parent teachers were not trained teachers, they were willing to
devote some of their spare time to the school and to Jewish Ieaming more

broadly.

How Prayer Was Taught Before I Arrived

Once I settled into my position as educational director, I quickly became
dissatisﬁed with the way prayer was being taught in the school. This is not
surprising. As an actively practicing Conservative Jew, I wished for the children
of this congregation more opportunities to be deeply immersed in Jewish activity
and tradition. Whenever possible, an effort was made to hold a prayer service
during school time, but this was dependent upon a parent volunteer being
available to teach during school hours. There was no regular opportunity for
students to pray either as a class or as a school community.

At the time, The New Siddur Program (1992) was being used for teaching
both prayer and Hebrew. As discussed in the last chapter, while this curriculum
attempts to teach both Hebrew and prayer simultaneously, the strong emphasis
is on Hebrew skills. I observed that Kl students were not being introduced to the
important ideas of the liturgy, nor were they being taught to think or struggle with
the liturgy. God was not a part of the curriculum. Rather, the prayer curriculum

focused strictly on skills acquisition. The teachers enacting this curriculum

 

41 The Avocational Teacher Project began six months before I arrived in Lansing. This project
was generously funded by the Covenant Foundation and allowed the congregation to work with
professional teacher educators to help parents learn about what it means to teach Judaism to
their children. In addition, the school tried to create Ieaming opportunities for parents who were

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understood that their mandate was to help students learn to decode Hebrew. The
liturgy was the means to an end. And the end was ﬂuent Hebrew decoding.

Despite this emphasis, I observed that most students could barely decode
Hebrew; only one or two could read Hebrew with some ﬂuency. No one was able
to translate more than a handful of words. During the ﬁrst week of school in 1992,
I visited the 7th grade classroom to see what prayers the students could recite. I
selected a few core prayers, and was disturbed to see that the students could
barely read them. Nor did they have any idea what they were about.

I do not offer these observations as a judgment on the teachers. The KI
teachers were well-intentioned. They were working as supplementary school
teachers because Judaism mattered a great deal to them and because they
wanted to make a difference in children’s lives. Like the teachers described in
Shoem’s (1989) ethnography, the Kl instructors led very busy lives outside of Kl;
they lacked an in-depth subject matter knowledge, and were not necessarily
observant Jews themselves. None of the teachers was committed to any kind of
regular worship, none of the teachers observed the Sabbath or the dietary laws.
Being Jewish was important to these teachers. And they did their best to
encourage their students to love being Jewish. I felt it was unreasonable to ask
them to be responsible for teaching prayer along with their other curricular
responsibilities, for they had neither personal experiences nor educational

background to teach prayer in the way I envisioned.

 

often on a religious quest. While these experiences would have served as interesting sites for
inquiry, they were not included in my analysis of my own teaching.

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One option would have entailed creating and offering extensive professional
development for the teachers. But I did not have the time to do the kind of
teacher education necessary to enable the teachers to teach as I envisioned. I
would have needed to meet with the teachers weekly for several hours to help
them acquire the subject matter knowledge and the Hebrew skills necessary to
develop ways of transmitting this knowledge to their students. The teachers, as
noted above, were all part-time and had many different commitments. They could
not devote time for these sessions and, even if they could, there was no money
in the school budget to pay the teachers for any kind of ongoing in-service
commitment. At most, I could have worked with the faculty once or twice at the
beginning of each school year. That would not have enabled them to teach
prayer in the way I envisioned. Complicating matters further is the fact that,
although i had many opinions about what they needed to know, I was not an
expert on professional development and adult learning, and this would have
seriously compromised what I could offer them by way of a Jewish teacher
education.

Another option might have involved increasing the time students spent in the
school. However I also knew that we could not extend the school day or add an
additional day of class. The children were immersed in a lively, busy environment
with many other things they wanted and needed to do. There is no way the
school families would have agreed to an additional school hours. Given these
limitations, I decided that introducing a prayer service would allow me over time

to transform the teaching of prayer in the school.

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My Vision of What It Means to Study the Liturgy and Learn How to Pray

As a Conservative rabbi, I believe that the Hebrew text, the traditional
melodies and choreography, and the ﬁxed nature of prayer are critical. I also
believe that praying ought to be more than a series of robotic behaviors. Learning
prayer means being trained in the mechanics and exposed to the intellectual
material. But prayer also involves a personal expression or connection with God.
As in many things, I draw my inspiration for Ieaming from holy texts. Consider the
ﬁrst paragraph of the Shema:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and
with all your might. And these words which i command you this day
you shall take to heart. You shall diligently teach them to your
children. You shall recite them at home and away, morning and
evening. You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, they shall
be a reminder above your eyes, and you shall inscribe them upon
the doorposts of your homes and upon your gates. (Deuteronomy
6:4-9).

In this text, we Ieam about the value of emotion (Love the Lord), intellect (You
shall diligently teach them), and ritual (You shall bind them as a sign upon your
hand). As a teacher, these three approaches guide me, for praying is at once
intellectual and emotional, ritualistic and joyful. I rely on these assumptions when
thinking about the teaching and Ieaming of prayer. As I prepare for my teaching, I
distinguish between Ieaming prayers and Ieaming how to pray. Both tasks are
necessary and interdependent. In what follows I explain why this is so.

For Jews, part of Ieaming how to pray means Ieaming when to sit, stand, or
bow. Generally, this is referred to as ”synagogue etiquette” or "choreography."

There is nothing particulariy interesting or meaningful about knowing when or

how to bow, when to stand or sit, when to close your eyes, or when you recite the

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Shema. These actions are important to know because they allow one to feel like
an insider when praying, and may allow the pray-er to feel more comfortable at
services. By participating unthinkingly, one can get swept away in the moment.
Most often, someone who is comfortable in synagogue knows when to perform
these mechanical behaviors governed by rigid rules.

Furthermore, Ieaming to pray also means becoming familiar with the Hebrew
text and the proper melodies. Like the multiplication tables, these aspects of
prayer can only be intemalized through regular repetition. There is much, of
course, to understand within those sacred texts, but an equally important part of
knowing prayers involves being able to automatically recite them. Thus, Ieaming
how to pray requires repeated experience, practice and some rote memorization.

But Ieaming how to pray also means becoming familiar with the differences
among various kinds of services, understanding the basic structure of Jewish
prayer. I believe my students need to know what the morning, afternoon, and
evening services have in common and how they differ. They need to know, for
example, which service includes the Shema and how the Sabbath Amidah
compares to the weekday Amidah. This knowledge is often referred to as the
”geography“ of the prayer book. I believe that understanding the structure of
Jewish worship is one of many keys for grasping how the formal liturgy works.

The mechanical or technical aspects of how to pray are extremely important,
similar to why some mathematics educators want their students to memorize
some basic procedures and facts. Without these important skills, further

education can be difﬁcult. If students do not know the mechanics of how to pray,

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further exposure to prayer services can be problematic. That said, it is also
important to note that we do not know—as Jewish educators—how much
knowledge of these aspects of prayer must be mastered in order for Jews to
engage in prayer in satisfying and meaningful ways.

In our efforts to help students feel comfortable during synagogue services, we
encounter a dilemma. On the one hand, routines, acquired skills, or a memorized
body of knowledge give one power, and their absence can just as easily be an
obstacle for further Ieaming. On the other hand, while the mechanical or
technical aspects of how to pray are important, they can be devoid of any
intellectual or spiritual content. It is unfortunate when skills become the goal,
instead of the means, to becoming comfortable in synagogue. If we never go
beyond the mechanical training, praying can be boring and meaningless.
Potentially, praying can connect one to one’s history and culture. However, if one
only leams the routines and has no sense of what they represent, historically and
culturally, then those routines—meant to link us to our past and help us form a
Jewish identity—become random acts rather than purposeful actions.

Given my goal of using prayer to motivate spirituality and connectedness, this
threat of ennui or tedium factored into how I taught at Kl. I was committed to
helping my students learn the meaning of the prayers that they were Ieaming to
recite by rote. Understanding the literary structure, historical origins, linguistic
nuances, or theological rationale for a prayer allows students to think critically.
Such topics make it possible to present learners with intellectually challenging

ideas. Ultimately, praying involves being able to think intelligently through the

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creative application of skills one has been trained to perform and concepts one
has been taught.

For example, when teaching the Shema, I wanted students to know that, for
centuries, Jews would close their eyes so that they could concentrate as they
recited the watchword of their faith. I also thought this would allow them to be
more comfortable in synagogue services if they automatically knew what to do. In
addition, I wanted students to know that this prayer is so central to Jewish
teaching that it is recited twice daily, once in the morning and again in the
evening. Finally, I wanted students to know what central ideas could be found in
the Shema. For example, i wanted students to know that the Shema articulates
the Jews’ commitment to one God; and that this commitment is binding all of the
time, in and outside of the home, day and night. It was not enough for them to
know how to recite the prayer and what to do. They also needed to know what it
was about and when it became a part of daily worship.

Yet another assumption I make about prayer is that an intellectual discussion
about the meaning of a prayer will not necessarily foster a spiritual experience.
Rationality does not necessarily lead to faith. Thus, another dimension of
Ieaming prayer is ﬁnding personal meaning in the texts or in the experience of
praying. In some ways, this is the most difﬁcult aspect of Ieaming prayer:
Personal meaning is not under the control of educators or rabbis. It is very
difﬁcult to sense when someone has had a meaningful experience. Different

variables affect different individuals in different ways at different times. For some,

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being familiar with the mechanics and being engaged intellectually may lead one
to personal connection with the text. For others, it will not.

As a teacher, my job is to make it possible for students to ﬁnd personal
connections with the text and to have meaningful communal prayer experiences.
This means creating an environment where they might be able to have a
meaningful moment of prayer, or where they might feel as though they had just
spoken to God. As a result, i tried to create an atmosphere in the sanctuary that
would be different from a formal classroom. I did not take attendance, nor were
students reminded to get a prayer book or to follow along on me right page. I
never insisted that they participate in services and I also never disciplined
students because of their behavior. I was trying to create an experience that was
signiﬁcantly different from their formal classroom experience. I used as my guide
the norms of a service. Congregants are not told to be quiet, nor are they
disciplined due to their behavior. They are free to do as they want, reading the
prayer book or not, reciting the prayers or not.

This focus on the teaching of prayer through praying was based on my own
experiences with liturgy and praying. In what follows, I explain my own
experiences with Ieaming how to pray, for they cleariy affected my work in

Lansing.

My Experiences with Prayer and Liturgy

The prayer book is my favorite text. I pray daily and seek opportunities to
study its myriad levels. This was not always the case. Until 1984, I knew little

about the prayer book. Though raised in a Conservative home, a product of a

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Jewish day-school education, and a regular synagogue attendee, I was
unfamiliar with the central ideas embodied in the prayer book. No one had ever
taught me the meaning of the prayers or the rationale for the set liturgy. I knew
nothing of its ideas or history and I was unfamiliar with basic synagogue
etiquette. Despite 12 years spent in Jewish schools, I was totally dependent on
the rabbi leading services to tell me when and how to pray. I was never taught
how to pray or how to navigate my way through a prayer book. I never studied
the liturgy and I did not understand the stmcture of a service or basic purposes of
worship. i stopped going to synagogue because I hated feeling so inadequate
and my dependence on the rabbi was frustrating. The English responsive
readings failed to move me, and while I often wanted to pray at home, I did not
know how to do so. Dewey (1938) might argue that I had had many "mis-
educative” experiences, for ”any experience that has the effect of arresting or
distorting the growth of further experience" is ”mis-educative” (p. 25). I had been
to synagogue all my life, attended Jewish schools, and still I felt inept and
uncomfortable in the synagogue even though I wanted to be there.

In my mid-20s, I was caught in a spiritual tug of war. I wanted to be in
synagogue but I was frustrated with my ignorance. During the Rosh Hashanah“2
services of 1984, I experienced a calling. I watched the young associate rabbi
lead services. As he carefully explained the service, I realized he was answering

questions I had never thought to ask. Envious, I wanted to know everything he

 

‘2 Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, celebrated in the fall.

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knew. I wanted to know about the liturgy and about synagogue etiquette. I
wanted to feel as if I belonged.

For the next couple of years I began studying prayer seriously. I mastered the
Hebrew texts, Ieamed about the history and meaning of some important prayers,
and began to pray on a more regular basis. I studied with the rabbi of my
synagogue. I traveled to Israel, and I committed myself to daily prayer, eventually
Ieaming to love communal worship. I felt more at ease and was even able to pray
by myself at home. I also realized how much more I wanted to Ieam about
Judaism. Knowing that my questions were too important to set aside, I applied to
rabbinical school hoping to receive an in-depth and thorough education. It was
there that I fell in love with the prayer book. Whether studying the texts through
historical, literary, or philosophical lenses, l was always engaged. The more I
studied, the more i needed to pray. Prayer became an important part of my daily
routine.

My story is an unusual one. I was fortunate enough to encounter a
Conservative rabbi interested in teaching traditional Jewish prayer. His lessons
about prayer launched me on a spiritual and intellectual journey to rabbinical
school. However, I know that many American Jews struggle with the traditional
prayers, feel alienated, and never ﬁnd their way to a comfortable spot for
themselves. They crave spirituality and feel that Judaism offers them nothing
(Schwartz, 2000). As a young and idealistic Jewish educator, I wanted my
students to have an appreciation for Jewish prayer and for the traditional liturgy. I

had lofty goals for the teaching of prayer grounded in my personal experience of

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experiencing my religious awakening through my own deepening understanding
of prayer and ease with praying. I wanted to insure that students in the Kl school

did not have the same ”mis—educative” experiences I had.

A Typical Sunday Morning Service at Kehillat Israel

My vision for teaching prayer was ambitious. In just 45 minutes per week, I
wanted to teach students how to pray and what the liturgy means. Given what I
knew about the teachers’ religious orientation and educational background, I
believed that it would be unfair of me to ask the teachers to teach prayer the way
I thought it needed to be taught. The teachers themselves did not know the
liturgy well enough to teach students how to pray, and most had never studied
the liturgy, so they knew very little about its history or meaning.

I also recognized that it would be impossible for me as the educational
director of the school to teach weekly in all seven classes, so I decided to teach
prayer during the school day within a short service for students in the second
through seventh grades. It was important to me that students pray regularly. I
assumed that regular recitation of the Hebrew prayers would enable students to
learn how to pray. So, on both Wednesday afternoon and Sunday morning,
approximately 20-25 minutes were devoted to communal worship for students.

There are several reasons why I held one service. As a member of the
congregation, I knew that most of the students in the school never had an
opportunity to experience Jewish prayer. They did not come to the synagogue on
a routine basis and their parents did not pray regularly at home. Intuitively, I felt

that I needed to create prayer experiences for the students, especially if the

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prayers students were Ieaming in Hebrew class were to be at all meaningful.
Dewey (1 938) explains:
What he has Ieamed in the way of knowledge and skill in one
situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing

effectively with the situations which follow. The process goes on as
long as life and Ieaming continue. (p. 44)

Dewey’s point is that good experiences allow students to take what they Ieam
in one context and apply it to another. Knowing that students were studying
certain prayers in their Hebrew classes, I wanted to give them an opportunity to
practice reciting the prayers in an authentic service. I also wanted to give
students an opportunity to Ieam more about what the liturgy was saying. My
intuition was that this would have an impact on how they experienced prayer in
other settings.

In addition to providing experiences that would interact with the students’
academic classes, I also wanted to create an ongoing school activity that would
develop over time. Again, Dewey (1938) helps articulate my motives and
reasoning:

Different situations succeed one another, but because of the
principle of continuity something is carried over from the earlier to
the later ones. As an individual passes from one situation to
another, his worid, his environment, expands or contracts. He does

not ﬁnd himself living in another world but in a different part or
aspect of one and the same world. (p. 44)

As I set out to develop meaningful continuous experiences, I decided that I
wanted opportunities for meaningful prayer to be a continuous part of students'
Kl experience. Dewey (1938), in describing continuity, explains ”that every
experience both takes up something from those which have gone before and

modiﬁes in some way the quality of those which come after" (p. 35). Thus, we

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would have regular services, and I would see to it that, while the core of the
service would be the same, the service would be modiﬁed as students Ieamed
important ideas and acquired important synagogue skills. In this way, I could
situate the students’ praying both in the contemporary activities in the
synagogue, as well as in the history of Jewish prayer recounted in Chapter 2.

On a more practical level, I knew that I would be too busy to lead two or three
different services each time school was in session. In addition, I wanted students
in the second to seventh graders to pray together so that we would have a critical
mass, something I believed would shape our capacity to pray together.43 My
previous experience, both as a leader and a participant, was that there is power
in numbers. I was certain that having services with 10 or 12 students would not

have worked. Even though Jewish tradition suggests that 10 is the minimum

number required for a public service,“l felt that if our singing of the Hebrew
prayers was to sound strong and powerful, we needed many grades to pray
together. I also believed that it was important for the younger and older students
to join together to feel connected to a larger community. Having all the students
in the school praying together would hopefully enable me to create such an

atmosphere.

 

43 Students in the kindergarten and ﬁrst grades were only in school once a week. They were not
included in this service because they did not know Hebrew and they would have only participated
in Sunday morning services.

44A minyan is composed of ten individuals over the age of Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Jewish tradition
requires a minyan for public worship. Although it is permissible to pray alone, it is not permitted to
recite certain prayers without a minyan. Liberal Jews almost always include women as part of a
minyan. Orthodox tradition requires ten men to be present.

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I decided that the best way for me to teach both prayers and praying was to
introduce one regular service into the school routine. Communal prayer is an
integral part of Jewish life. It made sense to me for students to dedicate time
each day to prayer, and I was certain that I would be able to teach students,
teachers, and any interested parents both about the prayers and how to pray.

In addition to the students and teachers, neariy all of the parents who
happened to be present in the building joined us in the sanctuary. Parents were
not required to participate, but they seemed curious about our service. Some
wanted to see their children Ieaming to pray. Several parents told me that they
enjoyed coming to services because they liked to Ieam about the prayers. Others
were pleased to have an opportunity to acquire prayer skills. Many of the parents
participating in the Avocational Teacher Project also chose to join their students
for services.

Our discussions of the prayers, interspersed throughout the service, were
usually not longer than ﬁve or seven minutes. Because our services were held in
a sanctuary, there was no chalkboard, desks, or other classroom paraphernalia. I
did not want students to think about services as another subject to be Ieamed.
Rather, I wanted them to be able to set aside time each day that they came to
religious school just for prayer. I also wanted them to think about their time in the
sanctuary as sacred time in a sacred space. There they could sing Hebrew
prayers or listen to others singing Hebrew prayers. They could participate in a
discussion about the liturgy, or they could sit quietly and listen to others discuss

the liturgy. They could sit next to their friends and even whisper to someone

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during the service. They could, in effect, act like adults do in services. As a result,
I never cancelled services. I did not want to even suggest that prayer was
optional. I wanted students to think of stmctured prayer as a regular and integral
part of the religious school day.
Dewey (1902) offers an important insight for me as I try and understanding

the challenges I encountered teaching prayer at Kl. He writes:

The child lives in a somewhat narrow world of personal contacts.

Things hardly come within his experience unless they touch,

intimately and obviously, his own well-being, or that of his family

and friends. His world is a world of persons with their personal

interests, rather than a realm of facts and laws. Not truth, in the

sense of confonnlty to external fact, but affection and sympathy, is

its keynote. As against this, the course of study in the school

presents material stretching back indeﬁnitely in time, and extending

outward indeﬁnitely into space. The child is taken out of his familiar

physical environment, hardly more than a square mile or so in area,

into the wide world—yes, and even to the bounds of the solar

system. His little span of personal memory and tradition is overlaid
with the long centuries of the history of all peoples. (p. 183)

Dewey’s point is that there are often signiﬁcant differences between the
child’s world and the school’s world. The child’s world is limited or narrow in
some ways and the school offers the student access to the entire universe.
Dewey frames the relationship between the school curriculum and the child’s life
in a very useful way. I am, and continue to be tempted, to think that the gap
between the subject matter (traditional Judaism) and my students’ lives is
extensive and unique to Jewish education. In fact, I argued in Chapter 3 that the
waning practices of Jewish families contributed to the challenges of teaching
prayer in a liberal supplementary school. While I still believe that this gap is a

signiﬁcant challenge to Jewish educators, a close reading of Dewey suggests

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that this gap allows for new opportunities or ways of thinking about teaching.
Dewey explains:
Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something ﬁxed and
ready-made in itself, outside the child’s experience; cease thinking
of the child’s experience as also something hard and fast; see it as
something ﬂuent, embryonic, vital; and we realize that the child and
the curriculum are simply two limits which deﬁne a single process.
Just as two points deﬁne a straight line, so the present standpoint
of the child and the facts and truths of studies deﬁne instruction. It
is continuous reconstruction, moving form the child’s present

experience out into that represented by the organized bodies of
truth that we call studies. (p. 189)

Dewey is suggesting that the educator needs to recognize the educational
opportunities that await the student whose life will interact with the school
curriculum. The purpose of schooling is to expand the student’s worldview and
extant experience, not to write on the tabula rasa of the naive learner.

I would be misrepresenting myself if I wrote that I always felt that the gap
between the home and school was an opportunity for new and exciting Ieaming.
When working at Kl, I thought a lot about the challenges, problems, and
concerns as opposed to the opportunities, advantageous circumstances or
possible portals. I sometimes assumed that the problem was one of a deﬁcit:
These students lacked important experience and knowledge. But I also believed
that the purpose of the school was to provide Jewish experiences and Ieaming
opportunities that the students would not encounter anywhere else.

I suggested to school families that my job was to expose students to new
rituals and to prepare them for their future encounters with Judaism. I explained
my philosophy of education at school board meetings, in the monthly synagogue

bulletin, and in a weekly school newsletter for parents. I explained that in my

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opinion if students were to become comfortable praying, they needed to have
experiences praying. While a few parents were at ﬁrst concerned about devoting
too much time to prayer, most were supportive of my efforts.

Each week the services were the same. I always led the service, wearing the

traditional garments worn during services. I covered my head with a knitted head-

covering known as a kippah45, wore a tallit"6 (prayer shawl), and teﬁllin.” I were
these garments because they were integral to my daily worship. I wanted our
experience to be authentic. I also wanted the students to become familiar with
the tallit and teﬁllin. Even though they were not requirements for participation in
the adult services at Ki, 1 still believed it was important for students to know about
these garments, for that is part of becoming well-informed literate Jews.

Upon entering the sanctuary, students began chanting a Hebrew song or

48

nigun and sat with their teacher(s), classmates, and parents. After some

introductory prayers, I asked students to recall some information we had already

 

‘5 The kippah is a universally recognized symbol of Jewish identity. Kippot (plural of kippah) can
be made of cloth, or crocheted wool, or leather. In the Conservative synagogue Jewish men are
required to wear kippot at all times. Many Conservative women wear kippot to indicate their
religious equality, as well as their reverence for God. Although the early Reform Movement
frowned upon the wearing of kippot, some Reform men and women now wear them in synagogue
and at religious ceremonies. This is an optional practice within the movement.

The tallit is the traditional prayer shawl worn after the age of 13. Ritual fringes, called tzitzit,
are attached to each of the four comers of the tallit in accordance with biblical law, so that the
wearer will look at the fringes and recall all the commandments of the Lord and observe them.
Traditional Jewish men wear a tallit at all morning services. Although the early Reform Movement
frowned upon the wearing of tallit, some Reform men and women now wear them in synagogue.
All Jewish men are required to wear a tallit in a Conservative congregation. Many Conservative
women wear a tallit.

47 Teﬁllin (phylacteries) are two black leather boxes containing four biblical passages that are
bound by black leather straps to the forehead and left arm. The commandment to wear teﬁllin
dates back to the Bible: 'It shall be a sign upon your hand and as a symbol on your forehead that
with a mighty hand the Lord freed us from Egypt.” Traditionally, teﬁllin have been worn only by
men in the weekday morning service. In modern times, many Conservative women have begun to
wear teﬁllin. It is most unusual to see men or women in a Reform congregation wearing teﬁllin.

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Ieamed, sometimes introducing new topics for discussion. My questions varied. I
wanted my students to Ieam the ”geography“ of the prayer book, which prayers
required a minyan, and how certain Hebrew words might be translated into
English. So I asked questions that, according to my interpretation of Jewish
tradition, had correct and incorrect answers. According to Jewish tradition, how
many people do you need for a minyan? How old do you have to be to be
counted in a minyan? Are you allowed to recite the Shema without a minyan?
Each time I paused to ask such questions there was a break in our service.

On a practical level, students had been singing aloud for about 10 minutes
and I wanted to give them a chance to catch their breath and rest for a few
minutes. In addition, teaching was an important part of the service. I felt it was
important to interrupt and ask students questions about Jewish prayer. The ﬁrst
time I interrupted our service, I asked questions that were entirely factual; that is,
in my opinion, there were always correct or incorrect answers. Most of the time,
the younger students answered these questions, I was sometimes touched to
see how older students often prompted the younger students. While we never
said it explicitly, I think the older students understood that the questions I asked
at this point in the service were ”too easy or juvenile” for them. It seemed to me
that the older students understood that the younger children were Ieaming and
needed these kinds of questions to participate in our service. Meanwhile, the

older students sat attentively, offered encouraging facial expressions, and never

 

48A nigun is a melody with no words.

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laughed or ridiculed the younger children. They also never exhibited signs of
boredom or annoyance for going over the same material week after week.49

After about 3 to 5 minutes devoted to these kinds of questions and answers,
we continued with the service. We continued reciting the prayers aloud for about
10 minutes or so. I tried to interrupt the service in a timely fashion, when students
would most likely need a break from reciting the prayers aloud and also when
there was a natural break in the liturgy. At the same time, I wanted to maintain
the natural momentum of the service, and so I often found myself walking a ﬁne
line between creating a spiritual environment as the rabbi and responding to
pedagogical urges I felt as a teacher.

With a second set of questions, I tried not to focus on just the factual aspects
of Jewish prayer, for while I value factual knowledge and skill, I also wanted my
students to begin thinking critically. So I introduced serious prayer-related issues:
Is it better to pray in English or Hebrew? How do we know whether prayer is
effective? What is effective prayer? Should we include the matriarchs in the
Amidah?50 These are very challenging questions with which many adults
grapple. None of these questions has a correct answer. Typically, we spent
about seven or eight minutes on this second set of questions. Often we
discussed the same topic for several weeks at a time. I would remind students

what we had been discussing and then I would try and further our discussion.

 

49 It is important to note that this inquiry relied solely on the data I could collect as teacher and
participant, thus I do not have data on the students' or other participants' experiences during
these services.

50 The traditional liturgy addresses God as the God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob.
In certain Reform and Conservative communities, prayers have changed the liturgy to address

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Then we would recite the concluding prayers, following those with brief
announcements. At the conclusion of the service, students were dismissed by
grade.

Over time, the students’ chanting became stronger. The Hebrew words were
more discemable and it was evident that many were more at ease with the
prayer book and with the routine. The feedback I received from parents,
teachers, and students was always encouraging. We were all pleased with how
easily students seemed to be acquiring prayer skills. Students were well-behaved
and I never heard complaints about having to come to services on Wednesday
and Sunday. Our Wednesday afternoon service was at the end of the day.
Parents rarely picked their children up early from school on Wednesdays.
Instead, they parked their cars and they often came inside the building so that
they too could participate in the school service. Another positive outcome of our
service was the sense of community that developed as the younger children
looked up to the older children and they in turn looked after the younger children
in the school. I always enjoyed watching the 6th and 7th graders interact with the
younger students.

There was a growing sense among congregants (even those who had no
connection with the school) that children were, for the ﬁrst time in recent KI
history, more comfortable with prayer and praying. Such things are hard to
measure, for they appear in subtle ways. It appeared that students were

becoming more comfortable in synagogue services. They knew how to ﬁnd their

 

God as the God of Abraham, God of Sarah, God of Isaac, God of Rebecca, God of Jacob, God of
Rachel and God of Leah.

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place in the school prayer book and were able to participate in the adult services
with more ease. At Kehillat Israel, most of the students’ Bnai Mitzvah (plural of
Bar or Bat Mitzvah) ceremonies are in the spring, after the long Michigan winter
has ended. That ﬁrst year, it was evident by the students’ performance at their
Bar/Bat Mitzvah that they were more comfortable with the prayers. Students led
parts of the service that in the past they had never done before. Many of us
believed that the students acquired good prayer skills because they were having
an opportunity to pray together regularly.

From the outset, my goal was to teach both prayers and praying. At the time, I
was convinced that I had found a way to do both. I felt very successful and would
have gladly gone to professional conferences to share my success story with
others. I still believe that I was effective. And, if I were to return to Kl, I would still
establish a school service. But I now understand that there were some trade-offs.
And I would do some things differently, in part, because I understand these
services better having inquired into my own practice.

After having taught for 2 1/2 years at Kl, I decided to videotape my Sunday
morning teaching. I wanted to study and understand the challenges of teaching
prayer in a liberal supplementary school. In the remainder of this chapter, I
describe and discuss particular challenges associated with my teaching of prayer
that surfaced when l analyzed those tapes. The tapes were made between
January and May 1995. In 2001 and 2002, I look at them in a new light, with

many questions and concerns that I did not have then.

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Method of Analysis

I began examining the videotapes just a few months after they were made.
Initially, I was not exactly sure what to look for as I watched the them. Russell
Baker (1987) keenly described the problem of having too much information when
trying to write about your own experiences. "The biographer’s problem is that he
never knows enough. The autobiographer’s problem is that he knows too much”
(p. 49). I decided that my ﬁrst challenge was to determine which instances would
be worthy of close examination. I did not have any formal criteria. I watched
tapes, not knowing what to look for. Frustrated, I put the tapes away and came
back to them more than a year later.

As I watched the videotapes for the second time in 1996, I took notes on the
structure of each service, looked for patterns of behavior, and tracked the topics
that were covered. It is typical in qualitative research to search for themes or
categories. In this second viewing of the videotapes, I made verbatim transcripts
of ﬁve lessons. I made them myself because I thought it would allow me to
become even more familiar with my data, and I wanted to re-immerse myself in
the experiences, but this time from the back of the room. i chose particular
lessons to transcribe because they were typical of my teaching. Also, they could
be examined as individual pieces or as a unit; they were, in a way, detachable
from that which went before and after. This allowed me to share the tapes with
others, and ask for commentary and reﬂection.

In 1996 as I examined the videotapes three categories emerged (Bogdan 8
Bilken, 1982). One had to do with the kinds of questions that were entertained

during the service. Were they factual or interpretive? Did the students ever ask

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questions of me? I thought it was important to think about when and how often
students were driving the direction of our discussion. The second category had to
do with the age-range of the Ieamers. Watching the videotapes made me aware
of a tension that existed as I tried to teach 2nd and 7th graders simultaneously.
Finally, the third category had to do with time constraints. I noticed that I was
always rushing. It seemed to me that I was always in a huny.

Initially I thought my analysis could be organized around these three
categories: student questions, age-range of Ieamers. and time constraints. But
the more I thought about the issues, I was persuaded there were other lenses
through which to examine my teaching.

In the summer of 2001, six years after the videotapes were ﬁrst made, I came
back to them for a third time. This time, I examined the notes and observations I
had already made. I invited a colleague to watch a few of the tapes with me,
because I thought her questions might allow me to see the tapes in a new light.

The previous two times I had examined the videotapes, I felt as though I was
watching myself. I was close to the teaching moments. I remembered a lot of
what had happened and felt as though I needed to defend or perhaps further
explain the teaching in the tapes. This third time was different. I was a researcher
examining data. The tapes were an artifact, in many ways, no different than the
curricula I investigated. The situation was simultaneously familiar and distant. At
ﬁrst, I feared that this would compromise my research. But ultimately, I believe it

freed me to ask questions and think about my teaching in new ways.

165

On a personal note, there were some major differences in my life that
probably informed my analysis of the data. When I moved from Lansing, I
stopped working in a supplementary school. My work in Kansas City is with
adults. So I rarely have the opportunity to be around supplementary schools. At
the same time, I have become a day school parent. My oldest daughter has been
attending the local Jewish day school for three years. I am amazed at how
comfortable she is with the formal liturgy. She knows the prayer book quite well
and has acquired excellent prayer skills. I am convinced that she would never
have acquired such excellent prayer skills were she to be a student in a
supplementary school. I explain this here because I think it is possible that my
experiences as a mother may have informed how I analyzed my teaching
experiences at the KI. We cannot escape our own values and beliefs as scholars.
Nonetheless, it is important for us to make those public so that readers may
judge the validity of our assertions.

It was in the summer of 2001, when I revisited the data that I created new
lenses for analyzing my teaching experiences. One had to do with my struggling
to understand my role as rabbi. There were instances in the videotapes that
alerted me to a tension between the congregation’s and my ideological
orientation. I had made many notes to myself on this issue over the years that I
worked at KI and these notes provided an important additional data source.

The other lens concerned teaching prayers in the midst of a traditional

service. The limitations of the synagogue service led to pedagogical

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compromises. In what follows, I describe how teaching prayers in the midst of our
praying together led—I will argue—to a compromised pedagogy.

After closely examining my practice, I became aware that I brought many
competing aims to my work at Kl. The resolution of their dissonance was neither
neat nor simple. I was at once committed to creating an authentic prayer service
and to teaching students in the school some of the signiﬁcant and interesting
ideas found in the liturgy.

Teaching Prayer and Praying Simultaneously Leads to Compromised
Pedagogy

As I explained earlier in the chapter, when l organized the service, I felt we
needed a critical mass for an authentic experience of communal worship. Yet
having the critical mass for the service made it nearly impossible for me to attend
to all 60 students and present the subject matter in an age-appropriate manner.
Because we were not in a conventional classroom, I did not have the opportunity
to vary my pedagogy. I asked questions, offered explanations, and directed our
discussions, but we did not have the time for small group work nor did students
do any kind of written assignment. (There are, of course, other instructional
strategies more adaptable to the service setting that I did not use, for example,
giving students an opportunity to speak with their neighbors before participating
in the large group discussion.)

Another issue that became evident to me had to do with my deep
commitment to a regular ﬁxed service. I wanted students to have authentic
prayer experiences. So I felt unable to respond to students’ questions in ways I

might have were I teaching in classroom. This meant that sometimes i

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marginalized my desire for things to be meaningful, in order for the service to be
authentic. If time was short, for instance, the need to ﬁnish the service overruled
my commitment to responding to student questions and comments. In what
follows I describe the pedagogical limitations that were a direct result of my
teaching in the midst of a school service. I structure the analysis around two
topics that I noticed as I reviewed the video: a mixed-age student population, and
student-generated questions. As I examine each of these, I reﬂect on underiying
issues that might have shaped my teaching. At the end of the chapter, I bring
those underiying, cross-cutting problems to centerstage and reﬂect on what I

have Ieamed about them through reﬂecting on my own teaching.

60 Students between 2nd and 7th Grades Creates Pedagogical Problems

In the middle of my third year teaching prayer at Kl, I decided to try teaching
the second blessing of the Amidah, known as g'vurot (God’s might) or m’chaye
mateem (gives life to the dead).

Your might, O Lord is boundless. You give life to the dead; great is
Your saving power. Your loving kindness sustains the living, Your
great mercies give life to the dead. You support the falling, heal the
ailing, free the fettered. You keep Your faith with those who sleep in
the dust. Whose power can compare with Yours? You are the
master of life and death and deliverance. Faithful are You in giving

life to the dead. Praise are You, Lord, Master of life and death.
(Harlow, 1985, p. 106)

Among the many powers attributed to God, the traditional text of this blessing
clearly states that God gives life to the dead. There were many reasons why I
decided to teach the g’vurot blessing. First, the blessing is central to the
traditional liturgy. Every time students are in services, they recite it. In almost all

synagogues, it is a text that is traditionally sung aloud (as opposed to a text that

168

is said silently or often skipped). At Kehillat Israel, my students sang this blessing
aloud each time we prayed together in school and every time they came to
synagogue services. As a result, they encountered the text regularly and became
familiar with the Hebrew words. For this reason, I felt it was necessary to teach
the meaning of the blessing. Also, almost all of the teaching I had done was
about the geography of the service, the meaning of certain key Hebrew words,
and the choreography of worship. I had not taught a prayer that I considered to
be theologically challenging. I thought it would be good to try something new.

What I did not consider was how difﬁcult the ideas of this prayer would be to
grasp. I taught the blessing on ﬁve consecutive Sunday mornings. Students
easily Ieamed “facts”: when the blessing was recited and how one is to stand
while reciting the blessing. They also Ieamed the Hebrew phrase m’chaye
mateem literally means God gives life to the dead.

In reviewing the ﬁve videotapes, I noticed a pattern. On each of the Sunday
mornings that we discussed this lesson, I explained that some Jews interpret the
text literally, meaning that God literally resurrects the dead. I noticed that during
discussions of this blessing I never explained what I meant by the phrase ”God
gives life to the dead.” Each time we began a discussion of the blessing, I always
began with an explanation that now seems very vague:

So the words m’chaye mateem are very hard words for us. Literally,
they mean, God gives life to the dead. That is what those words
mean. M’chaye is gives life. Mateem is dead. That’s what the
paragraph is saying. (Transcript February 26, 1995)

That’s what it literally means. God gives life to the dead. And I said
to you last time, that we were going to work hard to try and ﬁgure

out what does that mean. So there are some people who believe
that literally God some how gives life to people who aren’t alive

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anymore. That in some way or another at some time something
happens. (Transcript, March 5. 1995)

Gives life to the dead, a kind of funny thing we have to begin to
understand. (T ranscript, March 19, 1995)

God gives life to the dead. Which is kind of a tough idea for us to
think about. (Transcript, March 26, 1995)

Given how hazy my explanations were, it is hard to imagine that any child of
any age understood what I was saying. I suspect that the younger students were
clueless. Piaget helps us think about how children perceive the worid around
them at different ages; why they ask questions and interpret information in ways
that they do. Describing children between the ages of 7 to 11, Piaget (1960,
1964) claims that children rely on concrete objects or representations to guide
them in their thinking. They can serialize, extend, subdivide, differentiate, or
combine existing structures into new relationships or groupings. According to
Piaget, children’s thoughts are still limited to their concrete experiences.
According to Piagetian theory, then, children are not yet capable of dealing with
abstractions such as billions of years that are logically possible but cannot be
conceived in concrete realistic terms. If the younger children could not
understand abstractions such as billions of years, I suspect that they could not
truly grasp the meaning of the phrase ”gives life to the dead."51

As I taught in the service, I explained that some people say the blessing in
Hebrew but do some mental editing. Holtz (1993) calls the process by which

individuals simply tune out the noise of those phrases that do not touch them or

 

51 There has, as the reader no doubt knows, been lively debate about the validity of Piaget’s
assertions concerning the children’s capacities to reason abstractly at young ages. While I do not

170

that they disagree with “mental editing.” In this way, pray-ers create a kind of
'countertext” to the liturgy by mentally adjusting the literal content of what is
being recited to conform to their own beliefs and values.

Over the ﬁve weeks, I taught various ways the traditional blessing has been
mentally edited. For example, some claim that the phrase is not referring to
bodily resurrection but to how the living keep the memory of the dead alive. I
said:

When somebody has actually died, we have memories, pictures,
and we talk about that person. That is another way we keep
somebody who is not with us alive. (Transcript, March 26, 1995)

Meanwhile, I also introduced another very different interpretation:

Another interpretation is actually from the Talmud. (Michael and
Raﬁ were misbehaving and the tape shows my looking at them and
asking them to sit quietly and not disrupt the service.) That
interpretation said that this bracha used to be said when you didn’t
see someone who you knew for 30 days. people would say this
bracha—Baruch Atah Adonai M’chaye HaMateem when they hadn’t
seen somebody for at least 30 days. Because it was as if that
person wasn’t alive. Because the idea was that [when a person
was] out of sight it is as if the person wasn’t alive anymore.
(Transcript, March 5, 1995)

Still another way to interpret the phrase is to recite the blessing after a person
has recovered from a serious illness. "If somebody is really really sick. And then
all of the sudden they get better, it is as if God gives life to the dead” (Transcript,
March 26, 1995). Finally, I taught that some Jews are so bothered by the
traditional liturgy that they change the text to praise God who creates everything:

There are other people who do something different with the text. Do

you remember the change we talked about? (Nancy, a second
grader, raised her hand and answered some people say m’chaye

 

go into those debates here, i recognize that my questions about the students’ capacities to think
about these abstractions have the status of conjectures here, not substantiated claims.

171

hakol) I continued saying God gives life to everything. Some people
change the text and say God gives life to everything. (Transcript
April 9, 1995)
In reviewing the lessons about m’chaye mateem, I noticed things I was
unaware of while teaching. For example, no student ever asked what I meant by
the phrase “gives life to the dead.” In contrast, at least four of the parents and/or

teachers asked me questions in the hallway, or e-mailed me asking for more
information about what I meant by the phrase "gives life to the dead.” In my
notes, I wrote about Steve”, who explained that he thought “resurrection was a
Christian idea, since Jesus was supposed to have been resurrected. I never
heard resurrection in a Jewish context, he said" (Journal, March 6, 1995). The
adults’ follow-up questions suggest that the material I was teaching was of
interest to them. The stark difference—high levels of interest on the part of
parents, and unusual silence on the part of students—makes me wonder about
what sense students were making of my lessons.

When I examined the tapes, I noticed that younger students who were usually
eager to participate in our discussions were noticeably quiet when speaking
about this blessing. For example, Rebecca always had her hand in the air. She
sat perched on the edge of her seat, always with a big grin, always interested in
Ieaming more about the prayers. When I examined the m’chaye mateem
lessons, however, I saw her sitting with a glazed look on her face. She did not
participate in any of the discussions about this blessing. Furthermore, she looks

bored or confused. Similariy, Greg was usually the kind of boy who always asked

 

52 All student names are pseudonyms.

172

questions, and tried to be involved in any discussion that I led. In the m’chaye
mateem discussions, Greg too was uncharacteristically silent. In some instances,
he talks to another boy in the class, at other moments, he appears to be
daydreaming.

While older students were willing to answer my questions, I noted they never
initiated questions about the blessing. Their behavior in these lessons was
different than their behavior in other lessons, for the older students often initiated
questions and challenged me to clarify what I was presenting. For example,
when talking about changing the traditional liturgy, Natalie, a 7th grade girl,
asked if it was controversial to change the prayers. Similarly, David often asked
hard but important questions like, ”Why would you say a prayer if you don’t
believe what it says?”

Another clue that the way I presented this blessing was not effective involves
changes in student behavior. In the three years I taught prayer during services at
KI, students were almost always well-behaved. Rarely, did I have to ask students
to stop talking or to listen more closely. I noticed, however, that during a m’chaye
mateem lesson, I asked Michael and Raﬁ to pay closer attention to our
discussion. That was very unusual, especially for those boys, who usually sat
quietly and often participated in our discussions.

Further, as l reviewed the tapes, I noticed that students were able to
regurgitate facts about the blessing, such as when it appears, how many times
the words m’chaye mateem appear in the blessing, when the blessing is recited,

or how others might interpret the blessing. Interestingly, nobody ever asked,

173

"What does it mean to “give life to the dead?" Since I emphasized the fact that
some might interpret the blessing literally, I would have expected someone to ask
me what that means. But not one student asked me to clarify my explanation or
reﬁne the ideas I was presenting. Nobody questioned how we know this, or what
it means to believe that God gives life to the dead. I think this blessing, as I
presented it, was so difﬁcult to understand that neither the older nor the younger
students were able to grasp the ideas. Alternatively, my pedagogical content
knowledge of how to connect students to this idea was limited. In retrospect, I
cannot determine why this shift occurred in our pray-ing community. All I know is
that they asked no questions of me. As a result, the younger students were
uncharacteristically quiet, and the older students redirected the discussion.

The older students suggested new or different ways of interpreting the
blessing. For example, during our third lesson about this blessing, Arianna, a 7th
grader suggested: "Well, I have this idea that when someone dies maybe that
their memories still live. So, that in a way you can remember them" (Transcript,
March 5, 1995). Michael, another 7th grader, also struggled with the blessing’s
meaning. He thought that perhaps "God maybe makes people who aren’t
religious become more religious" (Transcript, March 5, 1995). Both Arianna and
Michael understood the blessing to be about God giving individuals something
they do not have. In Arianna’s case, she was thinking about what happens after
you die. As she explained that morning, the main idea of the blessing could be
that death is not the end. Through our memories, the dead are revived, living on

in the hearts and minds of the living. Michael understood the blessing differently.

174

I think he was suggesting that God was powerful enough to make an irreligious
person become more religious; God is so omnipotent that God has the ability to
control the individual’s religious orientation. While neither student discussed the
interpretations I had already taught, both Arianna and Michael were trying to
make meaning for themselves.

Trying to teach the g’vurot blessing is difﬁcult in the best of circumstances. My
problems were exacerbated because I was teaching students between 2nd and
7th grades. As I examined my journal, it became clear to me that I was imprecise
about my goals for this discussion. In general, when I prepare to teach, I try to be
very speciﬁc, taking into account whom the learner is and what I want them to
Ieam and be able to do at the conclusion of a lesson. The notes that I made to
myself after teaching on Sunday February 26, 1995 are rather vague:

At this point, I had a hard time. I think I couldn’t ﬁgure out which
ideas, I had Ieamed about the blessing were important to teach.
The students didn’t get it and I had a really hard time explaining
myself. I am not going to go back to this point. The origins of this
blessing are fascinating, but not for my educational aims. We
have been working on the idea of multiple voices within the
tradition, I think that this is the way to understand the blessing. We
need to talk about how different people might interpret the words in
the blessing. I think I can present these ideas so that the students

can relate to some ideas, if not others. (Journal entry February 26,
1995)

Notice I never speciﬁed which group of students I was intending to teach. It is
almost as if I was throwing darts with no sense of where the board was located.
Was my lesson for the younger children or the older students? Had I considered
alternative ways to approach teaching the blessing? How did I come up with my
ideas of how to teach this? Were there alternatives I could have considered? It is

hard to know from my journal entry.

175

In addition to being unfocussed about who I was teaching, the sanctuary as
the background to the lesson was problematic. I taught g’vurot on ﬁve Sunday
mornings, spending between 7 and 12 minutes teaching the blessing each time. I
began each discussion by reviewing what the words m’chaye mateem mean,
how many times they appear in the blessing, and any information about the
blessing that we had previously covered. Next I introduced some new
information, for example, another way of interpreting the blessing. I always felt
that I could not devote more time to the material because I wanted to make sure
that we chanted a complete service. It was very important to me that students
experience an authentic service. While I abbreviated the service somewhat, I did
not want to change the service format. I thought that part of their prayer
experiences should be chanting the same prayers each time we gathered. But I
understand now how my commitment to services was at odds with my desire to

teach some rather complicated liturgy.

Student-Generated Questions Not Addressed

Students often raised questions about the liturgy or about Jewish traditions
and practices. Many of their questions were interesting and worth pursuing. But
students did not get the attention they might have received had I been teaching a
smaller group of students or had I not felt so pressured to get through the
service. Addressing the needs of 60 Ieamers while being the person responsible
for leading services led me to dismiss individual questions in ways I never would
have done were I in a classroom with fewer students and without the

commitment to leading a service. Furthermore, in addition to the constraints of

176

the setting, as principal of the school, I did not have time to follow-up with
students individually after services. Parents, teachers, and the synagogue
administrator needed my attention. And I was never able to focus my attention on
the students’ questions about prayer once services were over. If I did not
respond to individual questions during services, no other opportunities for
responding were available. This press to attend to multiple actors and events is
typical of the work of school principals. For instance, many school principals
often worry that they do not have the time or the space to be intellectual leaders
in their schools.

Noteworthy was the fact that most of our discussions were teacher-directed: I
developed a set of questions on topics that I deemed signiﬁcant. Students tended
to be responsive to my questions. However, there were several instances when
students did initiate questions that I consistently dismissed. In my journal, I
explained that I did this not because I thought that the questions were irrelevant
or unimportant, but rather because I was always concerning myself with
completing the services. If I wanted to teach prayers within the context of a
service, I did not have a lot of time for discussion. And many of the students’
questions necessitated lengthy responses. Let us consider several instances.

One question that several students continually asked was: "But why don’t we
do p. 20?" Page 20 was the second paragraph of the Shema. We regularly
recited the ﬁrst paragraph, page 19, and the third paragraph, page 21, aloud. We
always skipped page 20:

If you will earnestly heed the commandments that I give you this
day, to love the Lord your God and to serve Him with all your heart

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and all your soul, then I will favor your land with rain at the proper
season — rain in the autumn and rain in the spring — and you will
have an ample harvest of grain and wine and oil. I will assure
abundance in the ﬁelds for your cattle. You will eat to contentment.
Take care lest you be tempted to forsake God and turn to false
gods in worship. For then the wrath of the Lord will be directed
against you. He will close the heavens and hold back the rain; the
earth will not yield is produce. You will soon disappear from the
good land which the Lord is giving you. Therefore, impress these
words of Mine upon your heart. Bind them as a sign upon your
hand, and let them be a reminder above your eyes. Teach them to
your children. Repeat them at home and away, morning and night.
lnscribe them upon the doorposts of your homes and upon the
gates. Then your days and days of your children on the land which
the Lord swore to give to your ancestors will endure as the days of
the heavens over the earth. (Deuteronomy 11:13-21)

This text describes a God who offers reward for obedience and threatens
punishment if the people stray from God’s ways. Many ﬁnd it troubling to think of
God responding to our actions by rewarding or punishing us, either communally
or individually. Complicating things further is the fact that we all know righteous
people who suffer and evil people who prosper. And yet this text is part of the
Shema, a core element of traditional liturgy.

When asked about why we skip this page, I regularly responded by explaining
that page 20 was a long paragraph with a lot of difﬁcult Hebrew and we didn't
have time to recite it all aloud. I then added that there were some tough ideas
too, and that some time we might have time to discuss them:

There are a couple of reasons why we don’t do the second
paragraph of the Shema. The ﬁrst is that it is just long, and we
haven’t had a chance to Ieam the Hebrew in the second paragraph.
The second is that there are some ideas n the second paragraph of
the Shema that are hard for me to ﬁgure out how to teach you. So, I

am working very hard to ﬁgure out how we can talk about it. But we
will, I promise. (Transcript, March 5. 1995)

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Many students who asked about page 20 were in the older grades. They were
sophisticated thinkers who could have easily engaged ina discussion about this
rather difﬁcult but signiﬁcant text. Had we been in a classroom with just the older
students, I am certain that I could have found a way to study and discuss the
text. In addition, even for students in the middle school, I could have used this as
an opportunity to explore how different movements respond and interpret the
very difﬁcult text. Instead given the constraints of the setting, I glossed over the
students’ questions, proceeded with our service and did not return to the matter.
Of course, I am aware of the fact that teachers often offer some other excuse for
skipping over students’ questions. Often conceptualized as a curriculum
coverage problem, I cannot be sure that—had I been in a classroom—there
would not have been times when I would have acted in ways similar to leading
the service.

On another occasion, Vered, a fifth grader, asked why we always recite a
certain line of the Shemasasilently. She explained that at her summer camp that
line was said aloud. I answered:

One of the things we have Ieamed is that different synagogues do
different things. the way we do things here at Kl is one way of
doing things. But in the Jewish tradition, especially related to things
in the liturgy, different shuls [synagogues] do things differently. We
will talk a little bit more about that later on.

We never discussed this point. I never answered Vered’s question. The

students never Ieamed why some congregations recite the line aloud and why

 

53 After reciting “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One" it is traditional to recite
“Praised be His glorious sovereignty throughout all time.“ silently, before continuing on with the
verses from Deuteronomy. Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all
your might...

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others recite the line silently. I think that if we were in a classroom I could have

explained why this line is traditionally recited silently. There are various

explanations that have been offered over the years“. I might have presented
these explanations to the students and asked them if they ﬁnd any of the
explanations compelling.

Following a discussion about changing the liturgy, Natalie, a seventh grader,
asked whether changing the liturgy is controversial (Transcript, March 26, 1995).
Were we in a classroom setting, I might have had the students suggest their
ideas about changing the liturgy. I could have divided the students in two groups
and had each group discuss the pros or cons of initiating such changes. I do not
think I would have just answered her question, without ﬁrst exploring what the
students were thinking. But given the constraints of the services as a teaching
setting, I answered Natalie’s question by explaining that “there is a lot of
controversy about changing the words of the prayer book” (Transcript, March 26,
1995). While I allowed for a little bit of discussion, I worried that if we spent too
much time discussing Natalie’s question we would not have enough time to
complete services. Finally, some students asked some very crucial questions.

Toward the end of services one Sunday, Rachel asked:

 

54 There is a tradition that when Jacob was dying in Egypt, he gathered his sons about him and
made them promise to continue following the One True God, the God of his father and
grandfather. The tradition explains that Jacob’s sons said the ﬁrst line of the Shema Hear O
Israel, our God is One. And Jacob softly whispered “Blessed is God’s name forever and ever.“
Since then many Jews have kept the custom of reciting the ﬁrst verse from Deuteronomy aloud,
and the next line silently. There is another explanation for why this line is recited silently as well. It
is said that when Moses went to heaven, heard the ministering angels praising God. They were
saying “Blessed is God’s name forever and ever.“ Moses brought these words of praise back to
the people of Israel. They recited these words aloud only on Yom Kippur, because on that day
they are as pure as angels. But the rest of the year they whisper the verse.

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If you asked God to bring rain to your crops and he doesn’t and you
know that God is up there how could he not [answer your
prayers] (Transcript, April 9, 1995).

Rachel was asking a critically important question. I am not sure exactly what
was on her mind, understanding what she was after would have taken more
probing on my part. Perhaps she was asking how does one pray if their prayers
are not answered? Or how is it possible that God does not answer our prayers? I
commended Rachel for asking such an important question. Two girls responded
to Rachel’s question. Rebecca said: "Well, the way I think of it is that sometimes
people will say it [the prayers] but they won’t really say it [them] like they actually
mean it. Vered, a 4th grader, responded a bit differently.

It reminds me of a book I read Heidi, she is praying to God that
something will happen, but it doesn’t happen so she gets all
frustrated. But then later on it happens and she realizes that it was

good that it happened later on a while after she had prayed,
because it made it even better (Transcript, April 9, 1995).

I knew that these comments were important. That is why I validated them. But
I also wanted to be sure that we had time for our service. Without inviting any
more discussion from Vered, Rebecca, or other students in the sanctuary, I
abmptly said, "You know, I want to continue this discussion, but I want us to go
on davening [praying]. Let’s continue with Michamocha [the next prayer] and then
we will come back to this later on (Transcript, April 9, 1995).

As I studied the videotapes, the pattern became all too apparent. l was never
fully responsive to student-generated questions. In retrospect, I presume this was
because I was focusing on completing our service in a timely fashion. Were l in a
classroom, I am certain I would have been more responsive, even to the point of

altering an entire lesson plan in order to follow students’ questions or concerns. I,

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of course, have no ”proof" for this claim, given the fact that this inquiry did not
involve contrasting my behavior in and out of the synagogue. That said, I believe
that my classroom behavior is not as constrained by fears of covering the
material. Maintaining the integrity of the service was my top priority. I did not
want to allow my students to entertain the notion that we could skip services in
order to have more time for discussion. Devoting time to regularly praying
together was essential, even if that meant sacriﬁcing other aspects of my
teaching. In the midst of the experience, I did not recognize these tensions. It
was only in retrospective analysis of my teaching that l was able to see that the
goal praying together could—ultimately did—sometimes clash with my goal of

discussing the content and meaning of those prayers.

A Rabbi, Preacher and Teacher in Israel

My diploma from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America confers upon
me authority to exercise the functions of rabbi, preacher and teacher in Israel.
One of the hardest challenges I encountered at Kl was knowing what role to play
and when. Being a rabbi came naturally to me, I was the ordained spiritual leader
of the KI school.55 The other two roles were harder for me to ﬁgure out.

In the American Heritage dictionary it says a preacher is one who “expounds
upon in writing or in speech; especially, to urge acceptance of or compliance with
speciﬁed religious or moral principles.” In contrast the American Heritage

dictionary says a teacher “imparts knowledge or skills.” Synonyms for the word

 

55 This becomes a bit complicated because I was not appointed rabbi of the congregation. I was
hired to be the school director. But I was a rabbi and I could not compartrnentalize that role. In

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teach include instruct, educate, tutor, train, discipline or drill. Notice that there is a
deﬁnite difference between the role of preacher and teacher. And at KI, I had to
Ieam to negotiate the differences between these roles. While at Kl, I did not
understand some of my struggles clearly. Now, six years later, I believe that I
experienced certain tensions when l was unsure of my role. Was I to respond as
a preacher with certain answers whose function was to urge compliance or
acceptance of particular behaviors? Or was I a teacher whose function was to
guide Kl members on a religious journey, helping them to Ieam more about
Judaism? In what follows I describe and analyze some signiﬁcant moments that
demonstrate the tension I experienced.
My being a Conservative rabbi complicated my experiences at KI. I am
committed to Jewish law, while most of the KI congregants were committed to
different aspects of Jewish life. Some were eager to be involved in social action,
others committed themselves to volunteer work at the synagogue. Valid and
worthwhile commitments, the commitments of the congregants were nonetheless
different from my own. I needed to Ieam how to negotiate our differences. Often,
I felt that when I raised a question about the religious practices of the school, I
needed to be cautious. In my journal I wrote:

One of my major questions is to ﬁgure out how to represent the

tradition in a way that is both true to [Jewish] tradition, and

respectful of my students’ homes. (Journal Entry, January 16,
1995)

On the one hand, i did not want parents to feel as though I were condemning

their choices or judging their lifestyles. On the other hand, I wanted students to

 

addition, the school and the congregation are intertwined. Often I was speaking to a school

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know about religious practices their families chose not to observe. For example,
even though no one from the Kl community felt obligated to pray daily, I thought it
was important for students to know that some Jews choose to pray daily.
Similarly, I wanted students to know that many Jews observe the Sabbath by
refraining from certain activities, by enjoying a festive meal, and by attending
synagogue. The tension I experienced is not unique. Rabbi Michael Gold (1995)
wrote:

The essence of the problem is, am I as a rabbi responsible to

Judaism or to Jews? Am I responsible to teach the wisdom of

tradition, even if that tradition is sometimes inﬂexible and possibly

cruel? Or do I embrace Jews in their multitudes of ...lifestyles, even

if those lifestyles are far from Jewish tradition or perhaps, most

difﬁcult of all, is it possible to be a bridge between Judaism and

Jews, and somehow, through counseling and classes, bring them
closer together? (p. 55)

The questions that Gold asks are critical. In my work, I too worried that I
would either misrepresent Judaism in my efforts to be inclusive or I might offend
members of the Kl community in my efforts to be faithful to the traditions I
deemed important.

As I reviewed my journal and videotapes, I became convinced that my
teaching of prayer was affected by my not being sure of my role. As a teacher, I
was able to accept the notion that the child and the subject matter “are simply
two limits which deﬁne a single process” (Dewey, 1902, p. 189). I understood my
role was to expose students to aspects of Judaism that were new and different. I
wasn’t discouraged, that was my role as an educator. My job was to bring the

Jewish universe into the KI students’ world.

 

parent or thinking about how congregants' actions affected the school environment.

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But the preacher in me did not know how to follow Dewey’s warning to
“abandon the notion of subject matter as something ﬁxed and ready-made in
itself, outside the child’s experience” (Dewey, 1902, p. 189). The preacher in me
wanted to show the community ‘religious Truth.” This perspective is accompanied
by starkly different assumptions about the child. As Dewey (1902) notes:

the child is simply the immature being who is to be matured; he is
the superﬁcial being who is to be deepened; his is narrow
experience which is to be widened. It is his to receive, to accept.
His part is fulﬁlled when he is ductile and docile. (p. 186)

While this was not my approach to the Kl school families, there were
instances where I wondered if this should be my approach. I worried that l was
not representing Judaism authentically.

On one occasion, I was discussing a concept we had addressed many times.
It seemed obvious and non-controversial in a liberal congregation to suggest to
students that there are many ways to practice Judaism. I raised the issue for my
students in the following way:

We were talking about the fact that some people in the room were
saying we daven [pray] because we are commanded to and other
people were saying that’s not really so. We should daven because
we want to because it makes you feel good, because you could feel
God's love, as a way of telling God how much we love God. And
other people said no no, you should daven all the time because you
have to. It shouldn't be because you have to I wanted to make
sure that you understood, that there is not a Jewish answer to
that discussion. One of the things about Judaism, is that there are
lots of different ways of practicing Judaism I wanted us to go
back and make sure that you understood there are a lot of Jewish
people in this world who say we pray because God wants us to. . . .
There are a lot of Jewish people who say we pray because we want
to, because it feels good, because I like it, because I enjoy it,
because I love being with a community, because I love the time to
daven by myself, because it helps me remember things. Does that
make sense to you? This idea that there is a whole range of ways
to think about Jewish prayer.

185

In my journal, I explained that it was important for me to help students
become familiar with a range of different Jewish practices. I was uncomfortable
allowing them to believe that the Kehillat Israel way was the only Jewish way. For
example, most of the members (both men and women) of the congregation did
not wear tallit or teﬁllin regularly. In contrast, tallit and teﬁllin were exceedingly
important for me. I wore them every morning and felt as though they were an
important part of my experience praying. I thought it was important to teach about
tallit or teﬁllin, but was unsure how to do so. My journal reﬂects this internal
debate:

I am now thinking about how to represent teﬁllin to kids who have
probably never ever seen teﬁllin before. Their fathers and mothers
don’t wear them... Sometimes I think I shouldn’t bother teaching
about teﬁllin at Kl. They are not a part of the family’s Jewish life.
And yet, I feel that part of being Jewishly literate is knowing what
teﬁllin are and how to put them on. I feel that kids at Kl will be

missing out if they never Ieam what teﬁllin are and when you wear
them. (Journal 1/16/95)

Notice the tension. I wanted to preach about the obligation of tallit and teﬁllin.
But I believed that at Kl preaching about that particular observance would not be
so fruitful. So instead, I framed the issue as a teaching issue. I could justify
teaching about tallit and teﬁllin at KI, but not preaching about them. I knew that Kl
congregants would support my teaching, but would be made to feel
uncomfortable were I to preach about them instead.

The challenge for me as a preacher and teacher was to serve a community in
a way that allowed me to respect the congregants while also maintain some kind
of professional integrity. As a young rabbi, just out of school, I constantly worried

that l was not fulﬁlling my role as rabbi, preacher, and teacher.

186

Before I continue I should explain a critical point about my work in Lansing.
Then - and now — I respect that no one person has the Jewish answers or
knows exactly what it means to live an authentic Jewish life. I recognize that my
way of practicing Judaism is not the way, but rather one of many ways. But even
as I write these words, I confront a paradox: As a teacher I can understand that
there are myriad ways to be a practicing Jew, but as a Jew, I practice in the ways
that feel right to me. This is an inescapable paradox faced by all teachers.

Many of the families at Kl were committed to instilling in their children a sense
of Jewish identity. Some parents did not express this ritually, but they did have a
strong commitment to Judaism. These families expressed their commitment by
participating in social action projects in the community, or engaging in study, or in
connecting to extended Jewish family members. My orientation to Judaism was
very different than many of the school families I encountered. Most of the families
in the school believed that everything about Judaism is voluntary. These families
practiced Judaism because they wanted to, or because they believed it was a
familial expectation. No one I knew felt as though God had commanded the
Jewish people to observe any particular ritual. While some families wanted their
children to Ieam about these practices, others were openly resistant and
wondered why their children needed to Ieam about practices the parents
themselves did not wish to pursue.

Believing that the purpose of the school curriculum was to offer the students a
view of the full universe of Jewish ideas (Dewey, 1902), I wanted students in the

school to know that, for some Jews, obligation to God was a key to

187

understanding motivation. More generally, I thought it was important for students
to appreciate that, for liberal Jews, there are many legitimate ways to practice
Judaism. Given that l was teaching in the midst of a service and students were
seeing me in my tallit and teﬁllin, it made sense for me to explain why I wore tallit
and teﬁllin and why other adults did not. In addition, knowing that students visited
other synagogues, I wanted to be sure to discuss different religious practices.
Still, there were times that I doubted myself. I worried about the message I

was sending. In my journal I wrote:

I am troubled that the message they [students] Ieam is that some

people in other shuls wear them [teﬁllin]. "But they are not for us.

We don’t have to wear them." With the older students, I feel as

though I am teaching about the Eskimos when I talk about teﬁllin. It

feels removed and distant [from their Jewish lives]. (Journal Entry,
February 1, 1995)

I worried that my efforts to avoid offending anyone bordered on compromising
centuries-old Jewish values. In other words, my rhetoric of “let them know that
there are equally valid ways,“ was not entirely honest, for—on a personal level—l
wore the tallit and teﬁllin because I had no choice. There are no other ”valid”
ways to think about this on that personal level. It is my obligation.

There are Jewish communities in which the rabbi makes the rules. This was
not one of them. I could not make the rules; that was not my job or place. But that
did not make it any easier when my personal desires or commitments as a
practicing Jew conﬂicted with those of the congregants. I still had this nagging
feeling that I needed to be a preacher, even though my role was educational

director.

188

I offer another example: I was talking with a mother who had a younger child
in the KI school and an older child graduating high school. In East Lansing that
year, the spring break coincided with Passover. The mother explained that her
daughter was going to miss the family seder so that she could go on a cruise with
her classmates. I was stunned. How could a parent allow her child to miss one of
the most important Jewish holidays of the year? I distinctly remember being silent
about the matter and feeling disappointed with myself because I could not ﬁnd a
way to convince this mother to reconsider her decision. I thought to myself,
"What kind of a preacher in Israel are you?”

Consider my relationship with Joshua. Joshua was a congregant who
volunteered to teach in the religious school on a steady basis. He enjoyed his
teaching and came to our Sunday morning service most of the time. Sometimes
when he came to services he wore tefillin and tallit. Other times, he chose not to.
I was unsure about how to approach him. I was grateful that he came to services,
but really wanted him to wear his tallit and teﬁllin each time he came. I remember
saying something like, ”Josh, it would be great if you could wear your tallit and
teﬁllin more often." My message was not very clear. I did not say "Josh, I really
think that you should wear your tallit and teﬁllin each time you pray with us."

With both Stephanie’s mother and Joshua I think that l was struggling with my
role as teacher and preacher.

At the time, I did not understand my inner tension in this way. Instead, I was
very critical of myself, believing that I was so sensitive to their feelings—or so

aware of the differences between our religious orientations—that I failed to

189

express my principles and I failed to challenge them to re-think their actions.
Each time I remained silent I berated myself, for being unprincipled or weak. I did
not recognize that I was juggling several roles, and knowing which cap to wear
when was very difﬁcult.

I am describing a complicated situation. A preacher cannot always challenge
her congregants to reconsider their religious practices. There are times when
silence is the best response. People do not want to always feel as though
everything they do is being scrutinized by their rabbi. And as a rabbi, I can’t
always be challenging. I have to let some things go. But when should I look the
other way? When should I remain silent?

And I can’t help but wonder how Dewey's analysis of the relationship between
the curriculum and the child can frame my thinking. Dewey suggests that there is
a way to connect the lives and experiences of the child with the organized bodies
of knowledge. One must not dismiss the child’s experiences nor should one
sacriﬁce the subject matter. Rather he suggests that the ideal is a

continuous reconstruction, moving from the child’s present

experience out into that represented by the organized bodies of
truth. . . (p. 189)

Of course, part of Dewey’s analysis presumes that knowledge grows and
changes. Thus, introducing the child to the subject matter involves both accepted
wisdom and the ability to question that accepted wisdom. Perhaps this is part of
my dilemma: Religious truths are not the same as historical truths or literary
truths. Religious truths are often matters of faith. They may or may not change

over time. They are not rationale nor can they be proven to be correct or

190

incorrect. They reﬂect individual perspectives or approaches to understanding
the world and living life.

I continue to struggle with how to bridge the gap between the Ieamer‘s
present experience and the Jewish tradition. I also struggle because I often do
not know when to challenge, how to challenge, and what to challenge is very
difﬁcult. My principles are personal commitments. As a Conservative Jew, there
are some things I do because I have to: I don’t reason through them, I don’t
consider their pros and cons, I simply accept certain religious traditions as
binding. l was working with a congregation where very few people acted or
thought in those ways. Our worldviews were radically different, and this
presented challenges. I was trying to inspire adults and children to integrate more
Judaism into their lives. But I did not want to press too hard, or appear to be
over-zealous or insensitive. Yet, in respecting the boundaries of those around
me, I constantly worried about honoring my own values and beliefs.

I think this issue was especially complicated for me because I was a young
rabbi, just out of school. I did not have years of experience to draw upon. I
worried that l was allowing those around me to think that in Judaism anything
goes. At the same time, I was not the rabbi of the congregation, l was the
educational director who happened to be a rabbi. While I knew that my job
responsibilities were different, I was also an ordained rabbi, preacher, and
teacher in Israel. I was confused about how to conduct myself.

In addition to being an inexperienced rabbi, I felt isolated in Lansing. There

were no other rabbis, cantors, or Jewish educators for me to work with me. I had

191

no role models to help me ﬁnd my way in this uncharted territory. And there was
not a community of Conservative Jews who could support me in my thinking.

Finally, I was and continue to be on a religious journey. I feel commanded to
observe certain religious practices, yet there are other traditions I do not yet
observe. I was aware of a certain inconsistency and worried about how that
might interfere with my teaching. I did not want to be hypocritical. But I had this
nagging feeling that l was making choices for the congregation or the school. I
worried that it was not for me to make these choices. Yet I knew that someone
had to decide what traditions to teach.

Another interesting and related issue surfaced. Consider how I taught certain
“facts.” I regulariy suggested that some issues we discussed had correct and
incorrect answers. On more than one occasion, I said, 'I’m asking about things
that are true everywhere." The implication was that all Jews agreed about certain
aspects of services. For example, I asked students the following kinds of
questions: ”How many people can be counted in a minyan?“ ”How old does one
have to be to be counted in a minyan?” ”Could one recite the Shema or the
mourner's kaddlsh without a minyan?” I asked these questions because I wanted
KI students to know certain facts about Jewish prayer. I did not want them to
assume that anything was acceptable. I believe that being comfortable in a
service means that students would understand what was happening and why. I
wanted my students to Ieam "the rules of the game" in addition to being

comfortable with the liturgy.

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But my ”correct" answers to the kinds of questions I asked during the
beginning part of our service reﬂect a particular perspective or ideology within
Judaism. For example, I explained that 10 Jewish adults over the age of Bar/Bat
Mitzvah count in a minyan. However, traditional Judaism only counts men,
Conservative Judaism accepts men and women, and Reform Judaism allows for
the possibility of not requiring a minyan for public worship. For many of the "rules
of the game" kinds of questions, I did not explore how other Jews might answer
the questions. I thought it was too complicated to discuss how denominational
afﬁliation might affect the answers being given. I taught rules that reﬂected the
practices of the congregation and that l was comfortable embracing.

On the one hand, I wanted students to know there was more than one way to
practice Judaism. I thought it was important for them to be familiar with a range
of Jewish practices. On the other hand, I wanted students to Ieam the geography
of the prayer book, the practical rules that apply to services. I called this type of
information in my journal ”the facts." Interestingly, these commitments competed
with one another and might have confused students.

In many ways, my messages conﬂicted with one another. While I wanted
students in the school to recognize that some practices were reﬂective of
different ideological perspectives, at the same time I wanted them to be sensitive
to the notion that many Jews outside of KI (including me) practiced Judaism
differently. I wanted to teach the students in the school to be respectful of those
whose practices and ideas varied from their families or our schools. But I also

wanted them to know the ”rules of the game." How was a student in the school to

193

know the difference between respecting a range of practices and knowing the
“rules of the game”? When were they to accept that Jews have varying
approaches to Jewish tradition? How were they to know which, if any, rules held

true all of the time?

Conclusion

In the previous chapters, I described some of the challenges of teaching
prayer in a supplementary school setting. The waning observance of American
Jewish families put an additional burden on the school system, which was
simultaneously being asked to cover more material in fewer hours. In addition,
the subject matter knowledge of supplementary school teachers is uneven. To
address these issues, I decided to create a service for the students in the school.
Like many Jewish educators, l was in a situation where my teachers did not know
enough to teach prayer and my students were living in homes where traditional
Jewish praying was seldom observed. The prepared curriculum being used at the
school was so focused on Hebrew skills that I feared my students would never
have an opportunity to struggle with the ideas of the liturgy or with issues related
to prayer and praying. I also worried they would never Ieam how to pray. At the
time, a regular service with teaching built into the format seemed like the solution
to these challenges. Students would learn how to pray by participating in regular
services. In addition, we would discuss the liturgy so that they would Ieam about
the prayers and practices related to their regular studies. What I did not realize
then is that my attempt to address the constraints in the Kl school setting would

ultimately create an entirely new set of challenges for the educator. l was certain

194

that my subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge were a
great resource. I never considered how being a rabbi might complicate my
teaching experiences.

Examining my own teaching helped me to Ieam more about my practice and
has enabled me to think differently about a school service. If I were to work in a
supplementary school setting again, I would still introduce a school service as a
means for enabling students to Ieam how to pray. However, I would be more
aware of the tension encountered when teaching prayers in the midst of a
traditional prayer service. As a result, I would be much more cautious about what
prayers I would chose to teach, avoiding those prayers that are more
theologically troubling and require more time for discussion. I would make it a
point to ﬁnd a way to follow-up on student generated questions. Finally, I would
strongly encourage parents to participate in the service since I know parents are
often uncomfortable and unknowledgeable about Jewish prayer as well. That
said, these changes would not help me avoid the more fundamental tensions and
challenges that I will continue to face as a Conservative rabbi working with Jews

who do not share my religious orientation.

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CHAPTER 6
NA’ASEH V’NSHMA‘“: WE WILL DO AND WE WILL UNDERSTAND

This inquiry has deepened my understanding of the complexities involved in
the teaching of prayer. Dewey (1938) suggests that the purpose of a curriculum
can be understood by focusing on three important aspects:

(1) observation of surrounding conditions; (2) knowledge of what
has happened in similar situations in the past, a knowledge
obtained partly by recollection and partly from the infonnatlon,
advice, and wamlng of those who have had a wider experience;

and (3) judgment which puts together what is observed and what is
recalled to see what they signify. (p. 69)

This dissertation is organized around just such an inquiry. In Chapter Three, I
investigated the historical circumstances and social realities that inform the
teaching of prayer. I thought it was important to understand how prayer came to
be taught in the school and how the modem liberal lifestyle informed the teaching
of prayer. Chapter Four turns to surrounding conditions. I examine prepared
curricular materials in the hopes of Ieaming how thoughtful Jewish educators
conceptualized the teaching of prayer. I thought I could understand the
challenges better by examining well-regarded curricular materials which are
being used in supplementary schools all over the United States. Finally, Chapter
Five is an examination of my own actions and judgments. l was an experienced
teacher, who knew her subject matter well and was committed to teaching prayer
to children. By examining my practice, I had access to the judgments of a
practitioner trying to put together the needs of the students and the principles of

the subject matter.

 

56 Exodus 24:7

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While these essays do shed light on the historical and social context for the
teaching of prayer, and they reveal how one practitioner attempted to teach
prayer in a liberal supplementary school setting, this dissertation is in no way
complete. There are many kinds of data that are not included in these essays.
For example, I never interviewed the students or parents of KI. I do not know how
they understood their own Jewish experiences, nor do I know how their religious
journeys. The only information I have included are my impressions, perceptions,
and reﬂections. Thus, this dissertation is limited. Similariy, in the curriculum
investigation I did not interview students who use the curricula, teachers who
enact the curricula, educational directors who chose the curricula, or the
curriculum writers. And as a result, my observations about the curricula are
similarly limited.

Despite its many limitations, I hope this study helps educators to be better
equipped in addressing some of the endemic and intractable challenges that
manifest themselves when teaching prayer in a liberal setting. Liberal Jews have
had many difﬁculties with the traditional liturgy. They are often troubled by, or do
not relate to, some of the theological assumptions. Furthermore, praying in
Hebrew poses a major problem to many. Finally, many liberal Jews attend
synagogue not so much to pray but to be with other Jews, to listen to beautiful
music, or to hear an interesting sermon. ”Synagogue for them is not so much the

house of God as another Jewish house, communal rather than private, in which

197

they can be at home and so take refuge ﬁrm the hurly-burly of everyday life”
(Cohen 8 Eisen, 2000, p. 177).

In this ﬁnal chapter, I begin by addressing some of the conceptual
complexities that surface repeatedly over these chapters. I then move on to

some practical implications for practitioners.

Negotiating the Tension Between Teaching Basic Hebrew Skills and
Teaching for Understanding

When schools took on the responsibility for teaching prayer, curricula
writers deliberated about how prayer should be taught. As we saw in the
analyses of curricula, Jewish educators disagreed about whether to emphasize
Hebrew prayer skills or important ideas expressed in the liturgy. Curricula writers
—and educators more broadly —have often chosen one goal over the other. By
understanding the tensions that surfaced in the prepared curricular materials,
educators might better articulate the complexities of teaching prayer. Most
educators working in a liberal setting are torn between teaching prayers—by
which I mean teaching ideas and theology of the liturgy—and teaching praying—
by which I mean teaching students how to recite the Hebrew prayer, when to
stand or sit and how to conduct themselves during services.

In the curricula I examined, there was a tension between focussing on
Hebrew skills that would enable students to participate in public worship or
focusing on ideas that would enable students to understand the substance of the
prayers. It is important for educators to understand that either choice has
consequences. And while the choice does not exclude the teaching of the other

topic, educators have to prioritize their curricular goals.

198

On the one hand, by focussing on the ideas of the liturgy, students can
become acquainted with important ideas central to Judaism. These ideas may
help them remain committed to Judaism and understand why Judaism is
important for them. The ideas in the liturgy, however, will not help them know
what to do in synagogue. Nor will studying the important concepts articulated in
the liturgy help students acquire the Hebrew skills necessary to participate in
public worship.

On the other hand, by choosing the curriculum that equates prayers with
mastery of Hebrew reading skills, students will most likely read Hebrew ﬂuently
and acquire skills necessary to recite the prayers and participate in public
worship. However, other concerns arise: Will students’ experiences at synagogue
services be meaningful because they have the necessary skills? Will there be
other opportunities in the students’ lives for them to Ieam the big ideas of the
liturgy? Of course, as Dewey often cautioned, thinking in dichotomies often
obscures the connectedness of ideas. Teaching prayer and teaching praying
need not be either/or enterprises.

However, there is an inescapable tension between them. The tension is not
limited to the teaching of prayer. More broadly, liberal supplementary school
educators struggle with how to teach traditional ideas and Observances in
modern settings. Consider the Sabbath. How does a teacher represent the
Jewish Sabbath to children who live in homes where the Sabbath is not a holy
day, but rather a day-off from school or work, or a day to take care of errands.

Does a teacher represent the ideas of the Sabbath? Or does a teacher focus on

199

the skills and knowledge necessary for students to know how to observe the
Sabbath? Since it cannot be assumed that students are Ieaming how to observe
the Sabbath at home, educators need to decide what aspects of the subject
matter should be emphasized. While a teacher might try to attend to both the
skills and knovrledge simultaneously, one aspect of the curriculum often gets
more attention. Which will it be is the signiﬁcant question?

On the one hand, the ideas of the Sabbath are profoundly meaningful. One
cannot fully grasp what the Jewish Sabbath is about without connecting it to
creation, the Exodus from Egypt, or the people’s relationship with God. For these
individuals, studying these important ideas inspires them to observe the Sabbath.
On the other hand, Ieaming the ideas—with no opportunity to acquire skills—is

inadequate.

Prayer and Modern Mindset

The book of Exodus tells us that when the Torah was revealed to the
Israelites on Mount Sinai, they responded by proclaiming "All that the Lord has
spoken we will faithfully do!" (Exodus 24:7). Traditional Jewish commentators
have always interpreted that response to mean that the Israelites were willing to
faithfully accept God’s commandments as being obligatory—even if they did not
understand all that God was asking. Committing oneself to fulﬁlling the
commandments before understanding them expresses ultimate and complete
faith in God. In Etz Hayim (2001), the Conservative movement’s commentary on
the Bible, a note on this verse relates to this study:

The Israelites could have responded, as most would today, "We will
seek to understand and, if we are persuaded, we will agree to do

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them.” Instead, having met God in Egypt, at the sea, and at Mount
Sinai, the Israelites trusted that God’s demands would be
reasonable and in their best interest. (p. 478)

This commentary highlights a signiﬁcant difference between the Israelites and
modem liberal Jews. The Israelites, like Jews throughout most of Jewish history,
accepted God’s laws, on faith. They were willing to abide by the commandments,
without proof of God’s existence and without understanding exactly what it is that
God expects of them or why they are being asked to perform these
commandments. Their obedience has been interpreted as an act of faith. The
tradition and its texts are authoritative. The Jew is bound by that authority.

As explained in earlier chapters, faith does not come easily to modern liberal
Jews. They need ﬁrst to understand and study before deciding whether or not to
observe religious traditions. Following the tradition because of its authority is not
part of their mindset. The Etz Hayim commentary clearly recognizes that many
modern liberal Jews need help understanding obedience based on faith. The
commentary continues:

Just as we accept medicine from our physician on trust, without
understanding what it is or how it works, and commit ourselves to
marriage, to parenthood, and to a career as acts of faith before we
fully understand what they entail, so too the Israelites accepted
God’s will. There are many things in life that we cannot appreciate

before we have lived them and come to appreciate their value. We
must do them ﬁrst and only afterward realize why. (p. 478)

Notice the commentator does not assume that Conservative Jews obey the
commandments because of their faith in God. Rather the commentary uses other
examples to help the modern Jew grasp the concept of doing and then
understanding. Recognizing the need for several illustrations, the commentary

gives us many examples. Some of us follow our physician’s instructions, without

201

really understanding how the medicine will work. Others get married, or decide to
have children without fully comprehending how their lives will be changed. Still
others choose a career with only a limited understanding of the implications for
that choice. The commentary tries to demonstrate how in other arenas of our
lives we modern Jews are willing to act ﬁrst—waiting until later to fully
understand the implications of our actions. While in some instances we are
willing to accept that actions lead to a more complete understanding, when it
comes to religion many modern Jews want to understand ﬁrst and will only then
consider acting.

This need to understand before doing complicates the teaching of prayer.

Not only are schools now expected to teach children how to recite prayers
and participate in public worship, they are also expected to teach the meaning of
the prayers. This new reality complicates the educator's job in profound ways.

Many notable Jewish thinkers have recognized how modernity has
challenged religious education and observance. Arthur Green (1994) presented a
paper to the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College in which he discusses
how Judaism should be presented in the post-modem era. Green acknowledges
many of the problems I have discussed in this paper, and he offers image of how
Jewish leaders might create meaningful experiences for the community.
Addressing prayer speciﬁcally, Green claims:

There will continue to be synagogues well into the post-modem
age, where old-fashioned davening will go on. There will also be
egalitarian settings in which such prior-age prayer will continue.
You will often ﬁnd me in one of those places on Shabbat, for which

I make no apology. But I hardly think this is what most of our Jews
need these days. I would also like to see there be a silent Kabbalat

202

Shabbat [Friday afternoon] service in our cities, where the
beginning of the holy day is marked with candle lighting, a period of
wordless chanting, a long time of silent awareness of the change of
light in that mysterious hour (there should be a natural light-source
or view of the outdoors, and no artiﬁcial lighting except Shabbat
candles), and ended with a shared kiddush. This can be a deep
and moving Jewish spiritual experience, one that requires no
Hebrew, demands no prior belief-structure, but also has none of the
passivity and sterility of what usually passes for prayer in liberal
Jewish settings. We should even have a minyan of Jews
somewhere out there in post-sixties land who come together every
day at sunrise and sunset to give their morning and afternoon
offerings in silent awareness, perhaps ending a silent period with a
called out Shema. There are a great many Jews who need such a
service, and who by their presence could lend to it great depth and
emotional resonance. We should be helping to provide it for them,
as well as ourselves. (p. 17)

Notice Green is struggling with many of the issues raised in this paper. Many
modern Jews do not have the Hebrew skills for regular prayer nor do they have
the necessary faith to commit to a regular practice that they do not fully
comprehend. Thus Green suggests creating new experiences that allow
individuals to express themselves religiously, albeit not with the traditional liturgy.

Green’s analysis and the commentary in Etz Hayim, reinforce an important
point. The challenges for the modern liberal Jew to connect with traditional ideas
and experiences are profound. While practitioners cannot resolve the problems,
neither should they ignore them. Rather they must think imaginatively about

different ways of addressing these signiﬁcant issues.

Implications for Practice: In and Out of School

School practitioners have to make some very tough decisions as they
examine prayer curricula. This study can guide them in their deliberations. The

decision of how to direct the supplementary school curriculum is difﬁcult and

203

either direction will—to a certain extent—be unsatisfying. If the curriculum
emphasizes ideas, we will want our students to acquire more skills. If the

curriculum emphasizes skills, we will want our students to understand the
signiﬁcant ideas that make Judaism a meaningful and compelling religion.

At the risk of oversimplifying, the tension focuses on a familiar educational
dilemma: ought we teach the "basics" or ought we teach the ideas and concepts?
There are no easy answers to this question and as educators go about choosing
the appropriate curricula for their school, they need to consider who the students
are, what life experiences they have and how other school activities can
supplement what is being taught. No curriculum can cover all aspects of a
particular subject. The challenge is for educators to be aware of the tension and
to carefully consider the trade-offs of any resolution.

Dewey (1938) provides the educator who is stmggling to prepare students for
adult prayer experiences some interesting insights. He warns that it is important
for the student to get

out of his present experience all that there is in it for him at the time
in which he has it. When preparation is made the controlling end,
then the potentialities of the present are sacriﬁced to a suppositious
future. When this happens, the actual preparation for the future is
missed or distorted. The ideal of using the present simply to get
ready for the future contradicts itself. It omits, and even shuts out,
the very conditions by which a person can be prepared for the
future. We always live at the time we live and not at some other
time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of
each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing

in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run
amounts to anything. (p. 49)

Dewey argues that school experiences are critical and must be worthwhile in

the moment. In terms of this study, in order that students’ future encounters with

204

prayer be meaningful, their experiences must not just prepare them for the future
but must be meaningful for the present. Dewey urges educators to recognize that
the present can inform the future. And it is the responsibility of the educator to
make responsible decisions that take both the present conditions and the future

goals into consideration.

The School Service as a New Practice

This dissertation has illuminated some of the signiﬁcant issues of teaching
prayer. In some ways, my teaching service was an attempt to merge two
curricular traditions. My logic was that if I created a context in which I worked on
the development of understanding, I could also simultaneously create a context
in which children were motivated to acquire basic knowledge. I could, through
strategic pedagogical decisions, serve both masters. I Ieamed a lot from putting
that teaching under a microscope, and my understanding of the attendant
complications of such a service has deepened signiﬁcantly.

Were l to become a supplementary school principal again, I would still
introduce a school service. But my work would be informed by a new set of
principles and questions. For one, I would be extremely cautious about what
prayers to examine with the students. I would still teach some theologically
challenging prayers but because I am more aware of the complexities of teaching
in the midst of service, I would consider some different issues. I would ask how I
could ﬁnd ways to discuss these important and challenging prayers, without
compromising our service. Perhaps I could use some class time to supplement

my teaching so that I could focus on particular prayers with certain students.

205

In addition, I would also ﬁnd ways to insure that I respond to students’
questions in an appropriate and timely fashion. I might have an “Ask the Rabbi"
box in the school and encourage students to put their questions in the box and
than devote time monthly to answering the questions. If these questions could
not be addressed during services, perhaps they could be answered in the weekly
newsletter.

I would wonder what the participants in the service bring to our discussion. I
would try and understand what they know that could help them better grasp
these difﬁcult prayers. And I would also take into consideration the inherent
tensions between traditional and modern assumptions about the worid. Most
important, I would ask questions of myself. I would want to consider how my
religious convictions inﬂuenced my goals for my students.

I do not believe that the school service I introduced was the solution to the
challenges of teaching prayer in a supplementary school. Instead, I am
suggesting that a service with a rabbi, cantor, or educator who is very well
acquainted with the subject matter can make a difference. The service will still
need to be closely monitored. One of the best ways to think about teaching
prayer in the supplementary school is to ﬁnd ways to involve parents and children
in a meaningful prayer experience. Perhaps having a family service every
Sunday morning where parents are asked to worship alongside their children
would be effective. This could be especially worthwhile if the rabbi, cantor, or
educator of the congregation were to commit to attending this regular service.

Such a service could bring parents into the conversations about God and prayer.

206

While the service alone would not "solve” the problems of teaching prayer, it
would be a good ﬁrst step. It might also allow the school community to have
regular contact with the congregation’s rabbi, cantor, or senior educator.

Finally, were I to do this again, I would consider how music ﬁgures into the
service. Cohen 8 Eisen (2000), Schwarz (2000), and Summit (2000) argue that
music is an important element in the synagogue service. Yet, in my experience,
most supplementary school educators do not consider how to incorporate music
into the teaching of prayer. None of the curricula I examined addressed how
music could contribute to the teaching. I myself also did not consider how music
might enhance the service I conducted for the school.

While it is impossible to solve the problems of teaching prayer, this
dissertation sheds light on what might be considered. Neither adding instnlctional
hours, nor creating teacher education opportunities, nor conducting family
education units in an effort to transform the home into a more observant place
will resolve the issues.

For example, one might think that by increasing the number of school hours,
the teaching of prayer would be greatly improved. I can easily imagine a
practitioner claiming that two more hours a week would provide the necessary
time to devote to teaching both Hebrew prayer skills and key concepts of the
traditional liturgy. My dissertation suggests otherwise. While extra time might
help, other issues would still loom. Educators would still have to contend with the

waning practices in the home. They would still encounter the questions and

207

doubts that are typical of the modem liberal mindset. And they would still have to
contend with a teaching corps that is unfamiliar with traditional prayer.

Similariy, I can imagine school principals claiming that teacher education
opportunities are the key to solving the problems related to the teaching of prayer
in supplementary schools. While obviously it is very important for teachers to
Ieam more about the subjects they are teaching, teacher education alone cannot
resolve all the issues in supplementary school education. As religious school
hours continue to dwindle, it is impossible for teachers to cram more into the
school day.

Students in our schools come from homes where prayers are not regularly
recited and where there are many questions about God» If their parents do attend
synagogue, they do not expect an encounter with God. Rather, they are coming
to connect with other Jews and to create some sacred time in their busy lives.
Students come to school with many questions about God that cannot be
answered in their homes.

Thus, while having capable teachers—who really know their subject matter-—
respond to these questions is important, it is not enough. Educators will still have
to contend with the disjuncture between tradition and modernity. Teacher
education might help teachers grapple with this tension, but it will not solve the

problem.

Teaching Prayer and Praying in Other Liberal Settings

My research focussed on the supplementary school. I am certain that this

dissertation would have had different ﬁndings were it to have included research

208

about Kl members and their Jewish journeys. The dissertation describes the
historical context of the supplementary school, and offers a limited understanding
of who sent their children to supplementary schools during the past 50 years.

I suspect, however, that many of the challenges I have described are not unique
to the supplementary school. Potentially, this dissertation could inform the work
of educators in formal and non-fonnal settings, and rabbis working with adults
and children.

There are many different venues in which Jewish educators struggle with
these issues. The supplemental schools are one such venue. Another involves
camps and youth groups. While educators struggle with the same issues, there is
a different theory of action in those informal settings. Camps allow children to live
Judaism and youth groups allow them to experience it in informal settings. This is
a different approach than the more formal classroom based one. Future research
could examine how these endemic challenges are addressed in varied contexts.

Having been involved in Jewish summer camps, I know that counselors often
struggle to create meaningful services. This dissertation is relevant to those
working in Jewish camps, or those working in non-formal education. After all, it is
the children who attend supplementary schools during the school year who often
attend Jewish summer camps or participate in youth groups. The theological
tensions between the traditional liturgy and the modern liberal Jewish home are
the same in the informal setting as in the supplementary school. Also, it is worthy
of future research to see if stafﬁng issues are comparable to concerns about the

teaching corps of the supplementary school. Finally, educators in informal

209

settings will have to deliberate about their educational goals. Are they attempting
to enable participants to have meaningful prayer experiences? Or is the purpose
to teach important Jewish ideas as represented in the liturgy?

Another important venue where children learn about prayer is the Jewish day
school. While it is true that day school educators have many more hours to
teach, the same issues rear themselves in that setting. There is the tension
between the traditional liturgy and the students who live in modem liberal homes.
While it is possible that day school parents might be a bit more observant, it is
almost certain that some tensions do exist.

Day school educators also have to contend with the tension between teaching
Hebrew and prayer skills and ideas. It might be tempting to assume that day
school educators can teach both because there is more, that is erroneous. The
day school curriculum is very committed to both intensive secular and Jewish

studies.

Looking Forward: A Story

The teaching of prayer is not an issue only for educators and rabbis working
with children. Many adults are searching for a portal to Judaism. For some,
Ieaming how to participate in services feels critical while for others, studying
about the prayers is compelling. This dissertation can help liberal rabbis, cantors
and educators think about how to make prayer more accessible to serious adults
who are struggling with prayers and praying. In particular, this dissertation has
helped me see my work through new eyes. I conclude this dissertation with a

story that illuminates my point.

210

My present congregation in Kansas City has had a task force for the last 3
years devoted to making worship more meaningful for the average congregant.
There was great concern that most of the congregants do not come to services
on any kind of regular basis. Those who do come are bored and do not
understand the structure or meaning of the prayers. The task force struggled for
a long time, trying to decide how to enable congregants to become more
conﬁdent pray-ers. There was a Ieamers’ minyan where congregants studied the
ideas behind the prayers. The people who came to the service also wanted
worship experiences. But when they went to services, these same people
yearned to understand the liturgy. Most recently, the congregation has begun to
experiment with innovative services. The basic structure of the service has
remained intact, but musical instruments have been added so that the service is
very engaging. The committee is trying to create a service where attendees can
participate in a meaningful service thereby acquiring basic prayer skills and also
Ieaming some of the important big ideas of the liturgy. This dissertation could
help the members of the task force as they reﬁne the goals for the service. It is
relevant to any liberal practitioner thinking about how to teach traditional prayers
to Jews who are not immersed in a traditional world where regular prayer is
incorporated into one’s private and communal life.

The efforts of my congregation are not unique. There is a national effort,
known as Synagogue 2000, that is working to transform synagogues into vibrant
spiritual institutions where Ieaming runs deep, worship engages, and

congregants matter. The founders of Synagogue 2000 believe that the American

211

synagogue is failing. In the curriculum of the project, the following problem is
succinctly described:

Most American Jews are fully integrated into modern Western
culture and values but are carrying around a pre-modern
understanding of God. The problem began in Europe in the
nineteenth century, not here in America. By the time our
forebearers arrived here as immigrants, they had mostly jettisoned
the traditional God-images. As a result, many considered
themselves atheists. In Eastern Europe, some channeled their
Jewish messianic fervor into socialism, remaining proud cultural
Jews without the baggage of a God they could not believe in. In
Western Europe, with the advance of scientiﬁc and intellectual
Enlightenment thought, Jews became as skeptical as their non-
Jewish peers about the idea of a personal God active in history.
Jews from both Western and Eastern Europe built synagogues
here, but their synagogues served as social meeting places and
ethnic compounds more often than as a sacred meeting place for
divine encounters. With the emergence of American ideas of
corporate efﬁciency in the twentieth century, and the
suburbanization of much of Jewish life, synagogue leaders
concentrated on making their organizations efﬁcient deliverers of
services to a consumer-oriented population. Today, Jews are
increasingly identifying themselves as yearning for spiritual
connectedness, and are looking to their synagogues as spiritual
communities. (p. 4-21)

The leaders of the Synagogue 2000 project recognize that a major problem
for American Jewish adults is that they are searching for meaning in their lives,
and the synagoguwhich is secular in some important ways—is failing them.
Those involved with this project are trying to transform the synagogue so that it
can once again be a spiritual center for American Jewish adults.

Ultimately, my dissertation can inform the thinking of researchers and
practitioners trying to understand the signiﬁcant challenges inherent in teaching

traditional ideas and practices in a modern liberal context.

212

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