LOOKING AHEAD
Spiritual Inspiration
• Workshops, Shabbatons and weekend retreats to transform davening from a ritual to a spiritual experience.• A selection of popular Jewish songs and Chassidic niggunim (melodies) to use as musical inspiration before or during tefillah to energize prayer and to serve God with joy.
Bringing the Schools into the Shuls Program
We plan to create a synergy between our pilot schools and the shuls (synagogues) in their communities to develop thought-provoking, educational, and meaningful tefillah programming for adults through shiurim (classes), y’mei iyun (days of study) and much more.To bolster our initiative, we also plan to invite leading community rabbis to visit our school communities.
Publications
Translations found in most Hebrew/English siddurim are seemingly irrelevant to young people and fail to personally connect them to prayer. To create an experiential approach to prayer that’s truly uplifting and personal, not just intellectual, and to inspire them and the community at large, we plan to make prayer user-friendly with these tools:• Stirring contemporary English tefillah translations, complete with reader-friendly explanations of key terms and concepts.
• A separate User’s Companion Guide to the She’ma and Shmonei Esreh prayers.<,i>
• Workshop guides to better understand the meaning of major prayers.
• Cutting-edge online resources and media materials to popularize prayer in the larger Jewish community.
• Kavanah (intention) triggers, meditation and guided imagery techniques to help focus on prayers.
• Field-tested teachers’ guides and co-curricular/extracurricular teaching materials and projects.