"Creation" page
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With All Your Heart: A Weekday Prayer Book |
With
All Your Heart: A Weekday Prayer Book is the culmination of a multi-year
project at The Minneapolis Jewish Day School (MJDS)
to develop a new t’filah (prayer) curriculum.
At MJDS, students are taught that t’filah is
a mode of expression in which we seek to explore the
meaning of life within a Jewish context. It is a process
where we grapple with and reflect on the eternal questions
of living and our personal relationships with God.
Students are taught concepts found in each prayer and
how they are relevant and meaningful to our daily lives.
With
All Your Heart: A Weekday Prayer Book is written and designed to enhance
the spiritual experience of children and adults during
a prayer service and to also be a tool for learning
prayer in a variety of Jewish educational settings.
The
use of artwork is a main design element of With
All Your Heart: A Weekday Prayer Book.
All the artwork was created by students at the Minneapolis
Jewish Day School and reflects the
conceptual meaning of individual prayers. For some,
it can particularly challenging to read a page that
is filled with large amounts of text. The artwork opens
up the imagination of the reader and makes prayer both
aesthetically appealing to the eye and accessible to
those with or without reading challenges. The “empty
space” on
each page also is designed to help the reader approach
the text.
With
All Your Heart: A Weekday Prayer Book
is educationally appropriate for readers age 7 and
above.
The new English translations
are intentionally written in a way that children and
adults alike can understand and find meaning. All language
referring to God is gender neutral. The Hebrew text
is clear, bold, with a large sized font. Furthermore,
close attention has been made in the way the Hebrew
is laid out. Each line of Hebrew text is divided in
such a way to reflect the syllable patterns and rhythm
structure of the way the prayer is commonly recited
in many communities. This helps the reader pause when
appropriate and makes it more readable.
With
All Your Heart: A Weekday Prayer Book is also an instructional tool
for teaching prayer. Each color-coded section reflects
a different part of the weekday service. This helps
teach that there is a structure and order to the prayer
service and enables us to locate where we are in the
service. Friendly icons direct us to the appropriate
times in the service to bow, close eyes, or other prayer
choreography. Highlighted color text point out unique
features of prayers and help distinguish when the leader
recites and when the congregation responds.
"May
this prayer book help to facilitate meaningful prayer
experiences both intellectually as
well as spiritually, bringing people closer to God,
and uplifting the spirits of many for years to come".
- Author Rabbi Brad Horwitz
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