Several years ago, I hit a wall.
I was going to shul/synagogue, forcing myself, really, because I have kids and I wanted to set the right example. But I'd stand there during davening and feel nothing. Worse than nothing. I was getting angry. I would read the words in Hebrew and follow along with the English translation, and very little of it landed. Why are we reading this? This doesn't connect with me. This feels meaningless. And then it hit me: if this wasn't genuine to me, it wasn't going to be the right example for my kids anyway. Because they feel that.
At the same time, I had discovered breathwork. And the connection I was getting from that was extraordinary, present, alive, real. So I started down a path of thinking the siddur was the problem. We should just be meditating. We should just be doing breathwork. We've had it wrong this whole time.
Then I started learning with Rabbi Akiva Mann. We learned about Shabbat, Kosher, and the Holidays. The depth underneath all of it was staggering. I felt reconnected to Torah in a way I never had before, so much so that I donated a Torah. I was reinvigorated.
But at that very minyan, the one I loved, the one where I had just donated a Torah, I found that I still couldn't actually pray with the group. I would sit on the side and meditate, setting aside the words of the siddur entirely. And eventually, I stopped going. I stayed home.
Tefillah specifically just wasn't clicking. Everything else had opened up, but not this.
Then Rabbi Mann taught a three-hour class on a single prayer: Adon Olam. And when I came back to that prayer with that depth, with that intention, everything shifted. What I thought was empty was anything but. The siddur wasn't the problem. I just had no idea what I was actually saying.
That realization hit hard. And then it turned into something else: I was baffled that no one had ever taught me this. Not in school, not in shul/synagogue. The depth was always there. I just was never shown where to look.
So I decided to do something about it. I went back to the Shabbat minyan and for about six months sat with my kids and their friends during davening, teaching them tefillah in real time. And it worked. They were excited, engaged, asking questions. When I had new materials and new ways of teaching, they couldn't get enough. But I ran out of sources fast. I got stuck at an elementary level, started repeating myself, and the kids felt it. The excitement faded. They stopped wanting to come. The materials just weren't there to sustain what the kids themselves were hungry for.
When Rabbi Akiva Mann passed away, a group of us decided to start a monthly Shabbat morning minyan in his memory. We committed to learning the depths of tefillah, not dismissing the structure of the siddur, but going inside it. We spent hours on the morning brachot alone, taking each one at face value first and then going deeper.
Went from thanking God for the ability to stand straight to something I carry with me every day. A reminder that I have the strength to handle deeply challenging situations, difficult people, and my own internal conflicts.
Became a physical experience, arms outstretched, moving, singing. An embodied declaration, in the tradition of Reb Zalman, that everything I need is already here.
Became a daily reminder that my soul is always perfect. I can never be broken. Sometimes there are just layers on top, clouds that obscure what was always there.
And through this, I shifted from disconnected to moved. From frustrated to responsible.
This depth exists. It's been there all along. Now it's time to curate, build, and share it, with our generation, and with the one that comes after us.
This is my story. But if I've learned anything from sharing it, it's that nearly everyone I know has some version of it. Which is exactly why this can't just be mine.
That's what Layers of Tefillah is.