Class Questions for Project!

1. How often do you say a spontaneous prayer?
2. How did you start davening? Who inspired you?
3. Do you have a specific mindset when you go into davening? What are your feelings when you first step into tefillah?
4. Do you feel like you’re a “good davener”
5. How do you get so close to HaShem? How do you connect to HaShem?
6. Do you feel like you connect?
7. Were you always a davener like this? Were there harder times and did you have a transformation?
8. How have you changed as a davener since you were in 5th grade? Or high school?
9. Do you feel like you daven better in harder times or easier times? Do you feel like its harder to daven when its just a routine regular day?
10. Do you connect more to spontaneous prayer or fixed text?
11. Do you daven better with people around you or alone?
12. What is your experience in  a minyan?
13. What type of davener are you? How do you emotionally feel when you daven? Angry? do are you talkative? a servant? do you judge yourself? the needy? the lover? What are you emotions  coming in?
14. Do you connect to Gd when you daven or say it for other reasons? because you’re asking for things?
15. Do you space out?
16. Are there any days when you wake up and don’t feel like davening? and what do you do?
17. What’s your favorite tefillah?
18. How do you focus on tefillah and not get distracted?
19. Do you look around to see others and work harder or have this intrinsic motivation?
20. Do you understand all the words to tefillah?

Yesodot Mid-Year Project

Yesodot Mid-Year Project

Presentations: Friday Dec 4th

• You will have an opportunity to represent your insights into tefillah in a variety of different ways. What you choose is entirely up to you!

• Each assignment will have a written and oral component. You can do your assignment individually or in pairs.

• In each case, your goal is to represent your profound understanding of this person’s approach to Tefillah and what you have learned from him/her.

Interview someone about Tefillah and their experience. It should be someone you’ve seen davening whom you admire. He/she should be at least 5 years older than you. Use what your interviewee has said to complete one of the project options below!

Project Options:

1. Essay: Write a formal essay (2-3 pages) in which you offer an insightful understanding of your interviewee’s approach to tefillah. Analyze what he/she has said and why you agree or disagree.

2. Playlist assignment: Create a playlist. Design an album cover with a unique title and image which represent your interviewee’s internal landscape. Choose one song from the playlist and write an analysis of the lyrics which illustrates how this particular song relates to this person’s thoughts on tefillah.

3. Create Your Own Siddur: Choose a couple of tefillot from Shacharit you or your interviewee find particularly meaningful. Create a commentary, formatted like the artscroll siddur, which explains the meaning of these tefillot. They should not be tefillot we have already covered in class.

4. Wild Card: A super-creative assignment of your own devising that shows your profound understanding of the interviewee’s thoughts on tefillah. Make sure the final “product” can be shared with the class.

Good luck and looking forward to your presentations!

13 Principles of Faith: Reflection

Of Rambam's 13 Principles of faith, which do you think are the MOST important to YOUR life? Are there any you feel you could not live as a Jew without believing in? Why?
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/332555/jewish/Maimonides-13-Principles-of-Faith.htm
Due Monday Nov 16th 9am.