Monday July 2

We ALL had a fun, busy day!!

Eidot Aleph-Daled had shiur about socialism and the way Torah looks at property and our ownership of property and land. We looked at the mitzvah of bentching (where the context is a mitzvah to remember that G-d gives us success on our land with rain and we cannot become arrogant and forget Him) as well as the mitzvah every 50th year where land returns to the original owner etc etc The chanichim also discussed the inevitable challenges to “equality” and “sharing everything” – all in all, a pretty sophisticated topic for 9:30 am 🙂

The day continued with the theme of Old Jew vs. New Jew and looked at our own staff that sits in the Beit Midrash learning and teaching Torah vs. our staff on Plugah who use their hands all day, fixing and building. There was a cute skit before lunch to bring home the point.

The peulot today had one activity one in the mix: if you saw “the bedouin experience” on your schedule, you walked down to our new activity near archery – a tent where the nature counselor involved you in making tea and baking lafa bread. So fun!!

Two bunks tied for clean-up this week, on both sides of the camp: Both Eidah Gimmel girls’ bunks and both Eidah Daled boys’ bunks were rewarded with a bus ride over to Friendly’s today!!

Tonight’s night activity was a tochnit-related game/competition of Junk Wars, where items that are “old Jew” items and items that are “new Jew” items were on a list of things chanichim had to search, scrounge around, find and bring to the judges 😉

Kaytana had their last day 🙁 All of the chanichim in Kaytana look so happy here and had such a great two weeks! We hope to see them for the four weeks of Eidah Alef next year!!

They had some of their favorite activities today in the morning – the refet (animals in our small petting zoo), agam (activities at our small lake), basketball, and soccer – which turned into a major water fight with hoses!!

They are having an end-of-the-summer celebration with a carnival that includes a bouncy castle!! (also, of course, related to what they’ve been learning, it’s a celebration of Bnei Yisrael’s entry into Eretz Canaan!)

We hate to see you go, Kaytana!!! We will miss you around here.

Machal is off-camp in the D.C. area this week. Yesterday, they visited the 9-11 memorial in Pennsylvania where United Flight 93 crashed almost 17 years ago. It was an appropriate stop on their trip, considering it was a fast day, and they spoke about how a community remembers and commemorates tragedies and losses.

Today, they visited the Holocaust Museum, and then they were able to choose which Simthsonian museum they were interested in visiting. They had discussions after each museum and focused on advocacy skills, i.e.  learning how to have conversations with people who disagree with you. They will put some of those skills to good use tomorrow…stay tuned 😉