Tefilla in Hebrew by Hebrew Speakers

I always thought that native Hebrew speakers did not experience many of the questions that I did growing up because they, unlike me, at least understand the words. They can start at a very different point than I did when I was younger.

The reality: Non-native Hebrew speaking students struggle with Tefilla just like non-Israelis: Why do we daven? Does G-d really listen to our tefillot? How can we teach Tefilla? How can we make the experience more meaningful? etc. etc. etc.

[The Lookstein Center for Jewish Education in the Diaspora has a few helpful discussions and curricular initiatives on this topic that are worth looking at (here, here and here).]

But Israelis also experience many of the same translation problems that non-Hebrew speakers feel. I sat in on a tefilla class today where the kids complained that they did not understand Ashrei. The teacher had to tell them how iyun Tefilla is a must in order to make the best of, perhaps, the most important part of the day.

Just as my former students - all of them Amerian - would have a have time reading Shakespeare in high school, Israelis have a hard time reading the tefillot.

While the Israeli students knew many of the words, they certainly did not know all of them and certainly not in a way that would enhance their kavannah. (And the other theological questions are certainly extant in the minds of Israeli teens.) As I mentioned in a previous post, the fact that they speak Hebrew fluently may serve against them in that they think they know the meaning of many of the words when, in reality, they miss a lot; their understanding is from modern Hebrew and not from its Biblical relative.