- Session 2.1: Bringing Our Bodies into Prayer
Reflecting on current knowledge of the mind/body connection and the role of music in synagogue services, we learn the advantages of consciously involving our bodies in prayer, and new ways to do it.
- Session 2.2: Prayer As a Practice
Together with “When Prayer Works and Mochin d’Gadlut,” this session relates the MPR approach to learning prayer and explores appropriate mind-sets for the deepening one’s prayer life.
- Session 2.3: The Art of Blessing
We learn the basics of blessings, beginning with the Baruch Ata formula and the role of blessings in Jewish liturgy. Using our spiritual dynamics approach, we ask, “What is the purpose of praying a blessing?”
- Session 2.4: Creating Sacred Space with Response Blessings
Unbeknownst to many, the vast majority of traditional blessings are said after an event and unconnected to ritual. We consider the value of “response” blessings, and following Martin Buber, explore the role of blessings in creating sacred space.
MPR - Module 2: Foundations
Description
A Unique Classroom Experience
The Making Prayer Real Course offers an innovative, spiritual dynamics approach to learning prayer and liturgy. Outstanding teachers are brought into the classroom via video, beginning a conversation that challenges students and draws them into dialogue with prayer, the Siddur, and each other. Skills are emphasized before theology as a workshop atmosphere is cultivated. As students explore numerous traditional and alternative prayer practices, they discover their preferences and abilities, crafting their own relationship to Jewish prayer as individuals and as members of the community.
License and Teach
The MPR Course Curriculum may be licensed for exclusive use in your synagogue, school, community center or other institution. The curriculum includes:
- Lesson plans with innovative ideas and tested methodologies.
- Traditional and alternative prayer practices.
- Video montages featuring outstanding teachers of Jewish spirituality.
- A video message to teachers from Rabbi Mike Comins on each lesson with general background and pedagogic advice.
- "Conversations" videos for community programming outside of a class on prayer.
Learn More
Click on the Syllabus tab above to see the MPR Curriculum - Module Two outline.
To view details on Course Modules, the MPR Story and FAQs, Pedagogic Strategies & Teacher Reviews and References, please click on the Samples tab on the MPR Full Curriculum page. Samples also includes an Informational Seminar where Rabbi Mike Comins presents highlights of the Course Curriculum and takes questions.
Pricing
The MPR Coursematerials are licensed to an institution for their exclusive use, and may be used in any normal activity sponsored by the community. They may not be copied or lent to other institutions.
The MPR Course Curriculum may be purchased as a whole or by individual modules. Please go to MPR Full Curriculum to purchase the whole curriculum. Register for Module 1 on this page.
Module Two: $300.00
Module Two, Small Congretation: $250.00 (under 300 member units)
To receive this discount, apply the following code during check-out: M2SM
Module Two, Very Small Congregation: $200.00 (under 150 member units)
To receive this discount, apply the following code during check-out: M2VS
Rabbi Mike Comins
Rabbi Mike Comins grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) with a BA in Near Eastern Studies, and served as regional advisor for the Southern California Federation of Temple Youth and Rosh Eida at UAHC Camp Swig before making aliyah (moving to Israel) at age 26. While guiding Jerusalem for American youth and serving as chairperson of Netzer Olami (the International Reform-Zionist Youth Movement), Mike studied classical Jewish texts for four years at Machon Pardes, a yeshiva in Jerusalem. In 1996, he was ordained by the Hebrew Union College – Israeli Rabbinical Program.
Exploring his lifelong interest in philosophy and theology, Rabbi Comins’ 200 page rabbinic thesis,Borowitz and Beyond: Towards a Hermeneutic Account of I-thou Encounter, received a score of 97 from referee Professor Paul Mendes-Flohr. He holds an MA in Jewish Education from Hebrew University, and worked for five years as education director of Kehilat Kol HaNeshama, a Jerusalem congregation he helped to establish. Upon ordination, Mike earned his license as an Israeli desert guide. He founded “Ruach HaMidbar Desert Trips and Retreats,” leading many trekkers, often rabbis, rabbinical students and students for the ministry, on spiritual journeys through Israel’s deserts and the Sinai mountains.
Returning to the U.S. in 1998, Rabbi Comins spent his first years in North America on an extended spiritual sabbatical. He participated in several two-year institutes for rabbis: the Mindfulness Leadership Training program at Elat Chayyim with Sylvia Boorstein, and the Metivta Spirituality Institute, with Boorstein, Arthur Green and Jonathan Omer-Man. He participated in four- and six-week silent meditation retreats at the Spirit Rock meditation center under the tutelage of Boorstein and Jack Kornfield. He has completed five solo wilderness retreats (four days of meditation, prayer and fasting in a small circle, generally known as a Vision Quest) under the guidance of different teachers, notably John Milton of Sacred Passage, in addition to numerous wilderness solos on his own. He is a graduate of the Kol Zimrah Chant Leader's Professional Development program led by Rabbi Shefa Gold.
Rabbi Comins founded TorahTrek Spiritual Wilderness Adventures in 2001 while serving the Jackson Hole Chaverim in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The community’s first resident rabbi, Mike helped the Jackson Jewish community establish itself while developing TorahTrek.
Rabbi Comins returned to Los Angeles in 2004, where he met his wife-to-be, Jody Porter. He continued to grow TorahTrek and turned it into a non-profit (2009), now called the Center for Jewish Wilderness Spirituality, in order to create TorahTrek’s year-long leadership training program, the Guides Track, and the TorahTrek eJournal, an online publication exploring the intersections between Judaism, wilderness, ethics and spirituality.
A Wild Faith: Jewish Ways into Wilderness, Wilderness Ways into Judaism appeared in 2007 and his second book,Making Prayer Real: Leading Jewish Spiritual Voices on Why Prayer is Difficult and What to Do about It (both Jewish Lights Publishing) was published in 2010. In each, Rabbi Comins developed his “spiritual dynamics” approach to learning and teaching Judaism as a spiritual practice.
Continuing his interest in prayer, he created the video-based, Making Prayer Real Course curriculum for online learning in 2012. He adapted the curriculum for synagogues and schools; the course was piloted in 12 congregations around North America. The expertise he gained in website technology, online learning and synagogue-based, adult education led to the creation of Lev Learning.
TorahTrek and Making Prayer Real continue as divisions of Lev Learning and the Lev Learning eJournal. Rabbi Comins has contributed to numerous books and periodicals, and continues to write, teach and lecture in addition to directing Lev Learning.