Who would benefit from this course?
While the course targets those who feel lost and disoriented by the flow of the Shabbat morning service at Congregation Kehillath Israel, it provides a framework to understand traditional Jewish prayer in general. The course addresses not only public prayer, but deeply explores personal and communal benefits to prayer and barriers to feeling comfortable in prayer and techniques to overcome those barriers. The course also provides pearls of information and wisdom in understanding specific prayers, historical prayer development, and how to make choices in our individual prayer lives. As such, the course has lots of information and wisdom to offer even experienced daveners who are already very comfortable in Shabbat morning prayers.
How is the course structured?
This course was originally run as a five session weekly interactive workshop. Those sessions were recorded and they form the backbone of the course. Topics were determined by participants. After each session, a written overview of the topics covered were presented along with links to useful resources. Naturally, an online, do-it-yourself course cannot be as rich as an interactive experience. Nonetheless, a novice can still gain a substantial amount by viewing the recordings of each week of the workshop, then reading the summary provided for that week, exploring the links to resources before moving on to the next week’s recording, and then summary until all five weeks have been completed.
Should experienced Daveners use the resources differently?
For experienced daveners, I could recommend one of two differing strategies:
- Do the course the same as a novice, but run the videos at 1.5-2x speed and slow down or repeat for only those sections that interest you. This strategy is strongly recommended.
- First read the summary for a week and determine if the subject matter is of interest to you and then decide whether or not to view some or all of the recording. Using this method, you will be more efficient. However, you are likely to miss interesting and useful pearls of information.
What if there is something I do not understand or I have further questions:
Feel Free to contact Bruce Weinstock
Email: BruceWWeinstock@gmail.com
Text/Phone/Voicemail: 617-818-7976
How can I get started?
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