Sunday Aug 9 – Yom Tochnit
Shavua Tov! We are so excited to kick off the week and start the excitement for color war! Our shiur today was about the Beit HaMikdash that Shlomo built. (On Friday we learned about why David HaMelech, who had the idea to build Hashem a permanent beautiful home, was not given the green light to build it.) The project took seven years to complete. It was grand, labor-intensive, and very expensive. Why did we invest so much in it? What is its significance? Bnei Yisrael were spread out all over the country. They had mostly settled the land, and it was important to work on keeping unity for generations. The Mikdash was our hub for Avodat Hashem. It was shared by all, and helped us stay unified. Chanichim explored, through a few sources, the importance of centralized worship and its impact on us as a nation.
The shiur set the tone for the day, Yom Tochnit, where we spend half the day doing a deep dive into our time period. The special event for today was the inauguration of the Beit HaMikdash. After lunch, each eidah had an assignment for the Mikdash:
Daled – brought wood to build the Mikdash. They went to our forest and brought wood that was there through the low-ropes course into camp.
Gimmel – found stones for the construction project at the Aleph Lina site and basically had to play “Capture the flag stones” to get them and donate them for the Mikdash.
Bet and Vav had to find copper and gold (little rocks spray painted those colors) – they searched in the waters of our creek and agam.
Aleph baked lechem haPanim (the showbread) in the village brick oven and made wine from grapes – 152 pounds of grapes – through stomping on them with their feet!!
Each eidah had to decorate a wagon that would take their gift to the Mikdash. At 7 pm we gathered by our mishkan model on the girls’ migrash and took those vessels – the menorah, shulchan, gold incense altar, copper korban altar and the aron kodesh, along with all of their hard-earned donations, towards our Shabbat Mifkad site where the mikdash was standing. Each eidah was called up to present each gift and the menorah was lit – by a kohen, of course! We had kohanim in white robes and white hats and a kohen gadol (actually two – ha!) helping out with everything. It was really fun and full of drama. We ate some korban shlamim/”salamim,” i.e. cut up salami in BBQ sauce – and then went into our Indoor Beit Knesset for maariv and Shlomo HaMelech’s inauguration speech. Our Roshei Moshava wrote a great “purim spiel” of the prayer Shlomo haMelech wrote – see Sefer Melchaim Perek 8 – with references to camp – all about when we will need Hashem and will be able to take advantage of this holy place where we will come to pray. For example, Shlomo haMelech talks about praying during a famine, and our Roshei Moshava Ephraim and Maayan, spoke about the famine that could happen in camp if our shekem shack ever runs out of our shekem treats!
We felt the tension the Jews felt after their inauguration of the Beit HaMikdash – would Hashem accept this place, where we are trying to be a unified nation of His servants? In the olden days, a fire came from Heaven and “consumed the korbanot”. For us, in Sugar Grove, the sign of acceptance was also a sort of fire in the sky…more like fires…in different colors…with loud booms… yes, a fireworks show!! It was gorgeous and exciting!! Great way to end the day!
Dinner was served right after that and it was one of the favorites – spaghetti and meat sauce! How can we top this day? Is color war next?? Stay tuned…
Machal had a trip today – to Niagara Falls and then to Grand Island. The story of Grand Island and city of Ararat is so unbelievable – you will have to read up on it here: https://buffaloah.com/h/grandisland/ararat/index.html
(Just one quick taste – a Jewish politician bought this piece of land, hoping to settle it as the new homeland for the Jews!!) Machal had a sicha, discussing the plan for this piece of land and why it might not have been successful. They returned to machane to sleep and will head out towards DC tomorrow.
