What Dr. Bruno Bettelheim writes about teaching young children to read holds equally to teaching prayer. Describing the need for the material or story to be interesting and enrich the child1s life.
”It must stimulate his imagination; help him to develop his intellect and clarify his emotions; be attuned to his anxieties and aspirations; give full recognition to his difficulties, while at the same time, suggesting solutions to the problems which perturb him.” (The Uses of Enchantment, page 5)
Teaching prayer must meet the same requirements that Bettelheim establishes for teaching reading:
“ In short, it must at one and the same time, relate to all aspects of his personality – and this without ever belittling, but on the contrary, giving full credence to the seriousness of the child*s predicaments, while simultaneously promoting confidence in himself and his future.” (op cit.)
Teaching Jewish worship as theater allows the students to take the prayers seriously without taking them literally. It means sensitizing the students to being actors working with a script, for which they are not always in the mood. Separating role as performer and performer as person is something that happens – and students come to recognize that at times the script can prepare them to pray, if they would allow it that possibility.
Experiencing a prayer opens up to the student that area of life and human emotions that the prayer expresses, allowing him or her to “try it on for size.” Reciting a prayer opens up with the worshipper these aspects expressed in the prayer by bringing those emotions into consciousness during worship.