Jewish Personal Prayer - Speak And Record

This is a good time to remember Deuteronomy 31 again, especially the part about, "...put it in their mouths." 

Jews have been, and continue to be obligated to speak words of Torah each day. While many understand the word Torah to mean "doctrine or law," it also means "instruction." Torah comes from the root word, "yarah," meaning "show, direct, instruct."

Some Torah is written in our siddur prayers, and some torah is spoken by us in our personal prayers. We are showing and being shown, directing and being directed as we speak aloud the cry of our hearts and souls in prayer to our Almighty God.

We are following the instructions given to us in the most basic of all Jewish prayers, The Shema, which tells us to listen, hear, love our God and speak of our love for our God when we sit in our house and when we walk on the road. Indoors and outdoors, wherever we may be, we are instructed to speak.

Listening, hearing and speaking are the most basic instructions for our daily lives. Speaking to other people might be our first thought, but speaking spontaneously to God is certainly another application, and speaking to ourselves is another.


One of the best ways I can speak to myself is to make a recording when I pray out loud. I use the Easy Voice Recorder app on my Android phone, and of course there are other options on iPhones.

I've only begun to explore recording some of my prayers in the last year, so my experience is limited. But from my limited experience I can say the practice of listening to myself pray out loud is significant and satisfying to my soul. 

Without links or references to substantiate my experience, it's understood by sound healing specialists that each human being has a unique tonal vibration which can bring personal healing. The sound of our own voice provides our unique tonal vibration. 

That's a simple, logical conclusion which may lead us to another conclusion - the sound of our own voice is not only familiar, it can be comforting and healing for us.

When I record my spontaneous Jewish personal prayer and listen to the recording later I benefit by: 1) Reviewing what I said to my Almighty God to learn from it, 2) Experiencing the emotion and sincerity I expressed, and 3) Receiving my unique tonal vibration.

Nearly everyone owns a smartphone with the capacity to record, save and replay the sound of their voice, or to download apps to do it. How many people record themselves speaking spontaneous prayers? 

I invite you to be one of the few people recording prayers and experiencing the tangible benefits. Please share your experiences in the comments to this post!

Here's a link to a New Scientist article titled, Sound of Your Own Voice May Help You Understand Your Emotions. 

And here's one posted by a classroom teacher who is experimenting with making recordings and posting them in Google Drive for her own and her students' access.  The teacher can assess her teaching methods and the students can fill in their notes. Everyone has the potential to benefit.

My personal prayers are certainly not lectures, but they have the potential to be highly instructive as well as healing for me. My voice recordings are valuable to my Jewish soul.

This is my sixth post sharing about my own experiences with Jewish personal prayer and the experiences I'm collecting from others. Please feel free to share in the comments, or leave a message on 903-642-1449.