Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer • the Open Siddur Project ✍ פְּרוֺיֶּקט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ

Some thoughts on God’s proper, ineffable name, a d’var tefillah by Shoshana Michael Zucker

Contributor(s):	Shoshana Michael Zucker (translation)
Categories:	Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	Know Before Whom You Stand, Shem Havaya, Ineffable Name, Tetragrammaton, Rashbam, Divine Names
	Some thoughts on the ineffable divine name. . . .

Prayers that Hurt: Public Prayer in Interfaith Settings, by Rabbi Chaplain (Captain) Arnold E. Resnicoff, USN, Ret. (1987, 2009)

Contributor(s):	Arnold E. Resnicoff
Categories:	Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	20th century C.E., interfaith, 58th century A.M., interfaith prayer, prayers of military chaplains
	Suggestions for chaplains on offering public prayers in interfaith settings. . . .

Masking the Liturgy: a pedagogy for learning the Siddur, by Rabbi Dr. Joshua Gutoff (2003)

Contributor(s):	Joshua Gutoff
Categories:	Roleplaying, Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	teaching prayer, Mask Making, Constructivism, weltanschauung
	I wanted my students to start thinking of prayers as expressions of an interior world, rather than as descriptions of the exterior one. I suggested to them that they think of a prayer as a kind of mask, much like the ones worn in religious rituals by many peoples. The job of the mask-wearer is to discover the reality on the “inside” of the mask and bring it to life. . . .

Kavvana: Directing the Heart in Jewish Prayer, by Rabbi Dr. Seth Kadish (1997)

Contributor(s):	Seth (Avi) Kadish
Categories:	Davvening, Liturgical traditions, Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., reference works
	A comprehensive treatment on the praxis of Jewish prayer. . . .

“On Prayer,” by Abraham Joshua Heschel (1969)

Contributor(s):	Abraham Joshua Heschel
Categories:	Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	20th century C.E., North America, 58th century A.M., Essays on Prayer as Praxis, Private Prayer, personal prayer, private worship, why prayer
	Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel’s speech, “On Prayer,” delivered at an inter-religious convocation held under the auspices of the U.S. Liturgical Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 28, 1969. His talk was printed in the journal Conservative Judaism v.25:1 Fall 1970, p.1-12. . . .

Introduction [to the Siddur], by Rabbi Dr. Israel Wolf Slotki (1964)

Contributor(s):	Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Israel Wolf Slotki
Categories:	Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	20th century C.E., 58th century A.M., introducing the Siddur, introducing Jewish prayer
	An introduction to the Siddur, by scholar and translator Israel Wolf Slotki (1884–1973). . . .

“The Spirit of Jewish Prayer,” by Abraham Joshua Heschel (1953)

Contributor(s):	Abraham Joshua Heschel
Categories:	Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	20th century C.E., North America, Know Before Whom You Stand, communal prayer, 58th century A.M., Essays on Prayer as Praxis, Private Prayer, American Judaism
	“The Spirit of Jewish Prayer,” by Abraham Joshua Heschel was a speech given at the Fifty-Third Annual Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly of America which took place at the Breakers Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey from Tammuz 9 to Tammuz 14, 5713 (June 22 To June 27, 1953). The speech was subsequently published in the Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly of America v.17. . . .

“Prayer,” by Abraham Joshua Heschel (1945)

Contributor(s):	Abraham Joshua Heschel
Categories:	Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	20th century C.E., North America, 58th century A.M., Essays on Prayer as Praxis, why prayer
	The essay, “Prayer,” by Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel, then Associate Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Hebrew Union College, published in Review of Religion vol. 9 no. 2, January 1945. . . .

Das Gebet Als Äußerung Und Einfühlung | Prayer as Expression and Empathy, by Abraham Joshua Heschel (1939)

Contributor(s):	Aharon N. Varady (English translation), Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Abraham Joshua Heschel
Categories:	Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	20th century C.E., 57th century A.M., Essays on Prayer as Praxis, Needing Proofreading
	Abraham Joshua Heschel’s essay “Das Gebet Als Äußerung Und Einfühlung” published in Monatsschrift Für Geschichte Und Wissenschaft Des Judenthums, vol. 83 (1939). . . .

On Composing Prayers Outside of the Prayerbook, an introduction by Isaac Leeser to “Two Short Prayers” (1851)

Contributor(s):	Aharon N. Varady (transcription) and Isaac Leeser (translation)
Categories:	Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	19th century C.E., English vernacular prayer, American Jewry of the United States, teḥinot in English, Jewish women
	Thoughts on petitionary prayer literature (teḥinot) and Jewish women’s prayer literature in the mid-19th century United States of America. . . .

Ὑμνεῖν με δεῖ τὸν θεόν | “I Must Praise God,” excerpted from the Discourses of Epictetus by Rabbi Morrison David Bial

Contributor(s):	Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Morrison David Bial and Epictetus the Stoic
Categories:	Second Temple Period, Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	Antiquity, 1st century C.E., 39th century A.M., Stoicism
	A short discourse on the necessity for prayer by the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. . . .

Siddur Class: Sourcesheets from Amit Gvaryahu’s Shiur on Tefillah

Contributor(s):	Amit Gvaryahu
Categories:	Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	Nusaḥ Erets Yisrael, Genizah, girsot, Mechon Hadar
	We are grateful to Amit Gvaryahu for sharing his sourcesheets for his Siddur class at Yeshivat Hadar’s 90@190 Open Beit Midrash this past summer 5771/2011, and for sharing his translations with a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license. . . .

Source texts on Jewish Prayer and Spirituality, compiled by Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman

Contributor(s):	Levi Weiman-Kelman (translation)
Categories:	Davvening, Pedagogical Essays on Jewish Prayer
Tags:	sourcesheet, Silence, Breath, Music, Words, Community
	A few select source texts on prayer and davvenen of importance to Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman. . . .

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