This year has been an extremely difficult one for me. My 13 year-old son, the love of my life, returning from a summer visit with his father, announced to me that he wanted to go and live with him at the end of the school year. He said this with no anger, no malice, no hurtfulness. He reassured me that he loved me, that he knew I loved him , that no-one knew his heart better, and that the lessons I had taught him would carry him through this monumental transition. I was not as composed. Panic, fear, loss, grief, anger, sadness, resentment, desperation. It felt like I was drowning while everyone around me was watching, helplessly.

Through all this I sought comfort. My husband, my parents, my friends, my other children, my colleagues – all have provided love and support in the most sensitive and beautiful of ways. But the pain, the grief, the panic still persisted. I longed to find a place of safety, a place of protection, where my heart would be held, where I could let go, where I could find peace. And so I turned to Judaism, to something called God, to try to find comfort where so many have found comfort before: I turned to prayer.

How do Jews pray? Jewish liturgy is rich and meaningful, but the prayer book – the siddur – can be an intimidating work for many. Its vastness, its repetition, its formal language, can make one feel lost in a sea of words and completely disconnected from the emotion it intends to invoke and inspire. And while some may find it possible to spontaneously engage in prayer, whispering words of their own choosing, this felt unsatisfying to me. I did not want to pray alone using my own words, I wanted to pray in the way of my People – to connect to the experiences, aspirations, and community that Jewish prayer represents. As Hayim Donin so eloquently expresses in his book To Pray as a Jew:

A Jew may choose his own words when praying to God; but when he uses the words of the siddur, he becomes part of a people. He identifies with Jews everywhere who use the same words and express the same thoughts.

And ultimately, that’s what I sought in this moment of pain and fear: connection, that I was not alone, that something infinite and transcendent would hear me as it had heard others before me. That the words I uttered had been uttered by thousands who sought the same peace and comfort.

The challenge for those of us who are untrained in Jewish prayer and unfamiliar with the content of the siddur is that because we have never used this device in normal circumstances, we become easily frustrated with it when circumstances become desperate. As Donin explains, because we have never prayed out of a sense of obligation to pray, we find it extremely difficult to pray at those times when we truly want and need to do so. It’s much like the peace the musician finds in music: countless hours of practice is required before he can finally find the notes effortlessly and lose himself in the act of playing. While we may have a great deal of kavanah, or intention, walking into prayer, our lack of familiarity with keva, or the form of prayer, often leaves us feeling like we are doing nothing more than making noise, not music. Our words feel untethered, fractured, and unfocused without the structure formal liturgy provides. Keva provides a scaffold, an anchor, that bridles the often overwhelming emotion and urgency that brings us to prayer in the first place.

So, I decided to practice. I opened the siddur. I began to study. I realised that my journey was going to be infinitely more complicated by the fact that I was without a Jewish community with which I could pray. My isolation made me feel all the more motivated, though, to approach the practice of prayer rigorously, methodically, and carefully. And very quickly, as I began to study the elements of Shacharit, or morning prayer service, I came to realise just how much meaning each prayer conveyed and what a long journey I had in front of me. Understanding the very first, seemingly simple, prayer Jews recite upon waking, Modeh Ani, led me to pages and pages of interpretation, explanation and analysis. I studied the text of this simple, short prayer, its history and origins, the meaning it holds and has held for others, the ideas and concepts it intends to convey. I listened to recordings of the prayer in Hebrew – spoken, chanted, and sung – and practiced reciting each word myself.

And then finally, with a true sense of awe, I felt ready to say it: with my eyes closed, breathing in the promise of a new day, feeling filled with hope, humbled with gratitude, and held in the secure embrace of mercy and compassion. I felt comforted. And I had begun the process of learning how to pray….