Our Stories

The first iteration of Netivot Tefillah happened in Middle School. Typically, all middle schoolers gather together for tefillah every morning, where their student peers lead them in traditional daily liturgy as well as Torah services on Monday and Thursday. With Netivot Tefillah, students choose from one of four tefillah options to attend on Friday mornings over the course of several weeks. In the first session, the options were:

Students lead a session of the Ru’ah Minyan.

• Ru’ah Minyan: Students in this nativ (pathway) develop skills and confidence in leading communal singing of diverse tefillah melodies by experiencing spirited, student-led, musical tefillot that employ tefillah melodies from a range of Jewish summer camp traditions.
• Matbe’ah (traditional structure) Minyan: In this nativ students practice the traditional daily liturgy, including the p’tichot (opening blessings) and hatimot (closing blessings) of long-form prayers in the daily morning liturgy so that they may develop greater skill and confidence in leading a traditional morning service.
• God Talk: There are many theological ideas about faith, doubt, prayer, and God embedded in pop cultural spaces and “texts.” Led by Principal Lisa Schopf, students explore Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, pop art and music, movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and television shows like The Good Place to dive deep into big ideas and topics related to our religious and spiritual lives.
• Hallel Hootenanny: Students in this nativ explore Hallel tunes from Jewish communities around the world, and then choose one to learn and lead in the next middle school Hallel.

In Elementary School, Netivot Tefillah began last week. Typically, each grade gathers for tefillah each morning, with the exception of Fridays, when they celebrate Shabbat together as a whole Elementary School in the afternoon. In these sessions, student leaders lead their peers in prayer and song and also learn new prayers to add to their repertoires.

In the Elementary iteration of Netivot Tefillah, students stay in their classrooms once a week during their regular tefillah time to learn about new skills and traditions from MILTON faculty. This session, students are learning about Torah trope (markings indicating melodies for chanting), movement-based tefillah, the art of sacred listening, Birkot Behenin (or blessings over things that benefit our senses), and how blessings are structured as a basis for writing their own poetry-inspired blessings.

Students learn Torah trope through representing the shapes and sounds with their bodies.

“Our approach to tefillah entails supporting our students’ pursuit of tefillah experiences that inform, inspire, and empower them to engage and to lead,” Lisa and Reb Scott said. “In conversations that students initiated, we heard appreciation that our middle-school-wide tefillah is truly student-led. They also requested new opportunities that would enhance student choice and voice in tefillah and help them learn new skills, master more diverse melodic repertoire, and engage in experiences that could empower them to more fully participate in and lead diverse Jewish prayer communities beyond the walls of MILTON.”

We are excited to bring more choice and diversity to our tefillah experiences, and to continue working directly with students to solicit their feedback and ideas for future programming. We are proud to have a tefillah program that inspires, informs, and empowers our students as leaders of prayer.