Jewish prayer and ritual are meant to be connective, spiritual, and powerful, but for many people, they are not. A big barrier is language: both the Hebrew, when we don’t know what we’re saying, and the English, when we glance over and maybe wish we didn’t know. But the language can also be a pathway to get closer, if we take the time to zoom in and zoom out.
One reason translations of Jewish texts into English often fall flat is that Hebrew (and sometimes even Aramaic) is multivalent. Each word in Hebrew is its own universe, built on and plugged into a system of roots and branches. A word has what’s called a “root”—three Hebrew letters from which the word is derived. There are nearly infinite ways to translate any piece of Jewish text, and someone made the choice to go with whatever you are reading on the page in front of you. But we Jews don’t take texts just at face value; there is always more and a different meaning. There is always somewhere deeper to go.
I want to look at two words for which this is especially true, words that have to do with prayer experience: t’fillah and mitzvah. By zooming in on these words, I hope we can dive below the surface, where more expansive opportunities for connection and meaning might be found.
The Hebrew word t’fillah, while often translated just as “prayer,” means so much more. T’fillah means both “liturgy,” meaning the words in the siddur (prayerbook) that our spiritual ancestors wrote, prayed, and passed down to us, and “prayer,” the directing and softening of our own hearts. The Hebrew root p.l.l. can mean “judge” or “arbitrate.” But who is doing the judging? T’fillah is reflexive, so we might translate it as “to judge oneself” or “to clock oneself.” T’fillah can be an opportunity to slow down and notice reality: Who am I? What do I value? How are my actions in alignment or not with my values, and what can I do to make change? The related Hebrew root f.t.l. means “struggle,” an opportunity to grapple with what matters. Often, self-awareness and world-awareness is challenging, but the struggle is important and real, meant to lead to greater truth and clarity.
In the mishna, the Hebrew root t.f.l. means to “bind together,” adding yet another midrash (interpretive teaching) on what t’fillah can be: an opportunity for connection in every direction. Through shared language, liturgy can connect us with our spiritual ancestors, our immediate community, our global Jewish community, and all who will come after us. Through its themes, liturgy also invites us to more deeply connect with our earth and its cycles, time itself, and the practices of love, liberation, gratitude, humility, and wonder.
But t’fillah also means prayer, and prayer can connect us to the still, small voice inside each of our hearts, and that which is greater than me, of which I am also a part. (Some people call both of those things g?d).
(The musician and educator Shira Kline also shows us the meaning to be found in the sound of the word itself: “to feel ahhh.” We spend so much of our lives clenched up, in anxiety and fight-or-flight. How can t’fillah be a way to help move us from “clench” to “ahhh?”)
Let’s take a closer look at our second word: mitzvah. Mitzvah is often used colloquially to mean “a good deed,” like giving tzedakah (charity) or helping someone cross the street. That is one of the word’s meanings, but mitzvah on a more basic level means “commandment.” Lighting Shabbat candles, wearing a tallit (prayer shawl), visiting the sick, saving a life: these are all mitzvot, commandments.
The Hebrew root tz.v.h. in verb form means to “command” but also to “charge.” Is there a difference there? “Charge” connotes responsibility, that we are being shown a particular direction but the doing is left up to us. What if we translated “mitzvah” as “commitment,” focusing on our side of the covenant? Obligation is a counter-cultural notion, but Jews have always been a counter-cultural people. We are the Hebrews, the “Ivrim,” meaning “those on the other side.” In a self-obsessed and individualistic world, how can we recognize, delight in, and live up to the commitments we have to each other, to the world, and to making it more sacred?
In Aramaic, the root of mitzvah means “connection.” It’s connection all the way down! Just like the liturgy, rituals and mitzvot are also opportunities for connection: with our deepest selves, with each other, with our planet, with time itself, with our ancestors, and with all-that-is. It’s like the blessing is moving the periscope, and our spiritual predecessors are saying, “Here, what if you focused on this?” It’s up to each of us to adjust the lens and actually look through.
T’fillah and ritual can be potent pathways to deep and meaningful connection, even if you are a person for whom they usually are not. One strategy I use to find meaning is to soften my gaze and look at a page in the siddur with gentle eyes, letting a word pop out to me. It’s like those word-finding puzzles that make the rounds before the new year: “The first three words you see will be your 2026 intentions!” A word will draw my intention, and then I can wonder: Why this word, right now? What does it have to teach me? And even if I don’t know the full Hebrew root of the word (which, nine times out of ten, I do not), I can re-translate the word in a way that makes sense to me, just using the English, my own mind, and my own heart.
By zooming in to the roots, and out to the page, perhaps the Hebrew can come back to life, and enliven something in us.