What Our Participants Say

I feel like our last (coaching) session gave me the insight necessary for that, and I even applied it in a relationship I am developing, and already felt the thrill and liberation of seeing it work. It has been a true and meaningful breakthrough. This breakthrough is liberating, and has helped me experience Sukkot in a very deep level, and made a huge impact on my Avoda. I can't wait to apply this with my students, though I know its implementation and methods will be different. I've also applied it in dealing with my website. I contacted customer support and asked for help with all of the things I had piled up as "to figure out later", and got all the information I needed to move forward. I've only had the time to implement some of it, but I have all the information. I will also be calling my friend, who is a personal trainer, to help me with my diet and training regiment, so I can get back in shape and lose weight. So exciting, all this good stuff! יישר כח, I can't begin to express my הכרת הטוב. Just telling you what I've done since then should give you an inkling of how important this is to me.

When Rabbi Tal first made changes in davening I wasn’t happy about it, I preferred davening in the Beit Midrash with the rest of grade 6-8. Before the changes I had no connection with my tefilot, to me it was just saying words that I didn't understand what they meant. However, after a few weeks of the new program I started to notice a difference. I started understanding what I was saying, and that helped me connect with my tefilot. Even once I started connected with my tefilot I continued doing the program with Rabbi Tal and my davening kept on improving, and by the end of the year I was often chazan.

“As a staff of the youth program at the Village Shul in Toronto, I worked alongside Rabbi Ariel Tal in facilitating Shabbat programs for children and youth ages 5-17. As part of his teaching, Rabbi Tal introduced some of this Tefilla methods which included saying the whole tefila out loud together and saying a smaller number of tefilot with more kavanah. These methods made a significant difference in the engagement of the kids in the program and we still use these methods very successfully in the programs several years after Rabbi Tal made Alyah to Israel.

In addition the regular tefilla services in each age group, Rabbi Tal also introduced a new family educational minyan which brought together parents and children in a shortened Shabbat Shacharit service. This service became a big success and had very strong participation from both parents and children. Rabbi Tal’s friendly and enthusiastic personality alongside his expert skill in facilitating these tefilla sessions were major contributors to the success of these programs.

I would recommend Rabbi Tal’s tefilla project to any organization looking to take its tefillah to a different level of engagement”

Over the past many years, I have had the privilege of watching Rabbi Ariel Tal’s mentoring of students. First, as a board and executive member for the Jewish Day School he taught at it in Toronto and then as a parent, when my son was in his class. Originally the Shacharit minyan in the school was very disorganized and lacked meaning and participation. A few grades (around 100 kids) sat together in a Bet Midrash, mostly talking and fooling around while the rabbis walked around, tried to instill decorum, but unfortunately mostly failed.

Rabbi Tal then initiated a program that vastly increased the enhancement, participation and spirituality of the Tefilot. He took it upon himself to run a minyan for the boys with two significant changes, 1) he had a much smaller and focused group and 2) he shortened the tefillot. This led to a much higher quality of tefillah and it gave the children a much greater appreciation of the davening and what it meant. In particular, my son who originally had no interest in davening at all or saw any purpose to it, reacted incredibly positively to Rabbi Tal’s initiative. By the end of the school year, he went from minimal involvement to leading the davening as a chazzan, both in school and on Shabbat in our shul, being very proud of doing it and having a much deeper understanding of what tefillah should be and should mean.

I believe one of the main reasons for the success that Rabbi Tal’s program had was due to the care, love and concern that Rabbi Tal showed to each individual child. Due to the small size of the group, he was able to give the required and unique attention needed to each child based on their abilities and his being able to differentiate between the specific needs of each child.