Hebrew, Arabic, and Prayer as Foreign

 Rasmussen repeatedly mentions the idea that in Indonesia, Arabic is largely used only as a language for prayer and reading the Quran and, even outside the stricter definitions of prayer, it's pretty much only ever used in religious Muslim contexts. I was actually surprised by how much time she spent explaining this, going on to say that many Indonesians don't even understand Arabic despite using it in religious contexts, because it was a pretty easy thing for me to understand since, unsurprisingly, I have at least a similar relationship with Hebrew.

I could tell you the literal translations of maybe a dozen Hebrew words, on a good day. Hebrew is so associated with prayer for me that sometimes I forget people actually speak it (I say, knowing people that speak it).

For another religion class, I had to watch the livestream of a church service (they were protestants of some kind, idk) and I remember being so totally baffled because I could not tell the difference between when they were talking and when they were praying, because the prayers (all in English, obviously) just sounded like they were talking.

And because it's associated with prayer, Hebrew is also very musical in my head. I remember the cultural whiplash I had when my family switched temples when I was a teenager and the new temple had the audacity to use different tunes for a few prayers. To this day, there is a prayer where I was taught to sing the word bashamayim as ba-ba-ba-bashamayim (I could be making up the actual word, I can't even remember what prayer it is atm) while the new temple omits those extra unwritten syllables. My whole family still sings it our old way, usually smiling and under our breaths, to the point where it's kind of an inside joke (edit, courtesy of my sister: it is aleinu and I got the word right).

<-- a text my sister received with absolutely 0 context

Interestingly, despite not being able to remember what prayer that line was from, much less knowing what any of it means, I probably could've sung a good portion of it, off the top of my head. I've certainly read translations of many prayers, but the English words don't have nearly that much staying power in my head. To me, prayer is more about what you feel than what you understand, so the melodies and the rhythms are far more important than the words themselves. Maybe it's just because it's what I'm used to, but sometimes it seems like the words would just get in the way.