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Back when I was a member of BBYO, I was frequently in charge of putting together and leading services. It wasn’t an easy task. When you get a bunch of Jewish teenagers together on the weekend, praying is usually the last thing they want to do. Not only that, but when you’re dealing with Jews from a variety of Jewish educational backgrounds, it can be hard to create a service that everyone is comfortable with. I would make photocopies of common prayers, their English translation, and their transliteration then paste them all together to make one comprehensive prayer packet. We were always trying to spice up services with themes and quotes to make them more fun, only that required more cutting and pasting for each new service.

 Now thanks to BBYO International, there is now a website called Build a Prayer dedicated to creating your own prayer service. There, you can choose which service you would like to plan (Friday Evening, Saturday Morning, Saturday Evening, or Blessing After Meal), which type of service you would like (Traditional, Pluralistic, or Custom), which languages you would like to choose (English, Hebrew, and Transliteration), and which template you want. From there you can select which prayers you want to include and add your own commentary, images, audio, video, etc to personalize your service. With this site, you can now quickly make a custom prayer service for any occasion. It also allows you to browse through services created by other users and to learn more about the purpose for each prayer. For an online tutorial, BBYO has even included this online tutorial:

Don’t be fooled! Just because this site is sponsored by BBYO, doesn’t mean it is just for teens. I encourage you to check it out and play around to create your own personalized and meaningful service!

Let us know in the comments section what other online Jewish educational tools you’ve found helpful.

-Jill