This week, Rabbi Aya Baron, Beth Am Israel’s Curriculum Developer, reflects on the learning that she led for our Kitah Hey and Vav classes on May 9.
Ba-ruch a-tah A-do-nai, h’mevorech et amo yisrael b’shalom
Blessed are you, our G-d, who blesses the people of Israel with peace.
This spring, each cohort at Shorashim focused their learning and adventures in the Ya’ar on tefilah (prayer). K-2 explored core themes of our prayers, which support us to proclaim Help! Thanks! and Wow! through deep dives into three core prayers: Oseh Shalom (Prayer for Peace- help), Modeh Ani (gratitude prayer- thanks!) and Mah Tovu (How great is this- wow!).
Kitah Gimel/Dalet explored themes of love and interconnection through shema and v’ahavta, and our Kitah Hey and Vav classes focused on Amidah. Each journey combined sinking our teeth into the liturgy with exploring core themes of these prayers through embodied learning in our Ya’ar.
To culminate our Amidah study, Kitah Vav and Kitah Hey embarked upon a unique challenge: a solo meditative journey through Amidah in the Ya’ar. We drew upon skills we cultivated this year outside: gathering the courage to spend prayerful time alone in nature practicing hitbodedut, gaining comfort interacting with the biodiversity in the yaar, and connecting the rhythms of our Jewish year to the rhythms of the changing seasons to culminate our study of Amidah. Each step involved reading and reciting various brachot (blessings) found in Amidah that we had previously encountered through text study with Rabbi David and tefilah with Hazzan Harold and reflecting upon the meaning of each section of Amidah while drawing upon each individual’s natural sense of curiosity and creativity.
So- what did we do?! We journeyed through the heat to the grove of white pines near the upper parking lot and sat in a circle to prep for solo journeys. Once the activity was announced, it was met with just the right amount of resistance- fears of doing the activity alone, of needing to be quiet, of discovering this activity had not one or two but six parts, etc. The resistance mirrored back the discomfort many of us have with being alone- something that is all too hard to come by in our world today.
I will admit- I too was nervous. Did the students know and trust me and our team of teachers enough to try this out? Would they enjoy the activity? Would they honor the request to remain quiet and work alone? Would they drop down into the level of presence and inner quiet required? Would they connect the dots of all we’ve seeded this year?
Amidst this buzz of wonder, each student went out.
Through the first three blessings of Amidah, each student gathered objects from the Ya’ar that related to the theme of the blessing and was asked to reflect accordingly. Captivated silence replaced the hum of anxiety present before the activity began. From petals and flowers to pinecones, sticks, stones, and everything in between, we all interacted intimately with the Ya’ar. Everyone crafted and created with objects they gathered, then reflected in their journals about their creation… “How do the different parts of your design come together as a whole?… How do the pieces fit together and how are they separate? What makes this space “holy” right now?,” and so forth, reciting the 15th blessing in Amidah in which we have a chance to share the prayers of our hearts before thanking God for shomei tefilah (hearing our prayers). At their own paces, each student moved through the remaining two steps, reciting the gratitude blessing found in Amidah, and the final blessing, shared at the beginning of this post, for peace.
Once most were done, after enjoying some silent time together, we returned to the essence of Amidah for one last activity. Amidah invites us to find and express the unique prayers of our heart. Each student found one word to describe the design they’d created while journeying through Amidah. They used this word to inspire them to write their own prayers. While the suggested pathway to doing so was to work with “found” words- to cut out words printed on sheets of paper, a few students chose to write spontaneously, in free form or haiku.
All the while, our greatest surprise lay just down the path from where we crafted our poetry. One student was so immersed in the process, that they spent the entire block building a beautiful creation from the many nature objects they had gathered from around the Ya’ar.
As a facilitator of earth-based Jewish experiences for almost 15 years, my favorite days are those where we all get a bit lost. Lost in our activities, lost in the forest, lost in the moment. Nothing subverts and corrects the constriction of our modern day, plugged in, productivity-centered world… Nothing rings “success” more than… getting lost. Veering off the path, veering from the plan, finding our way to somewhere we did not know we would go, and letting ourselves arrive there b’shalom, in peace. So many minutes in our days, especially for 4th-7th graders, are directed, with little room for divergence.
The impulse to call students back to the group struck once in a while, quelled by this deeper knowing that they were finding their own ways deep into the heart of Amidah. This activity transmuted resistance and fatigue for everyone involved. We forgot about the discomfort of the humid day cresting towards 90 degrees. It had brought us all into the heart of Amidah, of our silent prayer. We learned to be alone, together. We connected with something greater than ourselves, with the thriving mid-spring Ya’ar, and with our own desires to get lost in time and space, both by ourselves and in our Shorashim community. Some of us sat silently crafting prayer-poetry in a circle, others sat alone or kept crafting the living prayer pictured below. Just as Amidah beckons us to, we each found kedusha (holiness) as we got lost in time, alone and together, that afternoon in the Ya’ar.
