Monday July 7
Today we learned about a concept we speak about with the well-known phrase from Pirkei Avot: עשה לך רב – make for yourself a teacher/mentor. The chanichim were taught about the Yeshiva of Volozhin, started and led by Rav Chaim who had learned from the Vilna Gaon. The idea of a yeshiva, instead of learning at home with your father, was revolutionary. Rav Chaim founded the yeshiva in 1803 with only 10 students. Chanichim were asked to think about someone they would want to call their mentor (real or imaginary) – what characteristics do they have? What does this person “stand for” and tend to say often? Why is it important to have a religious leader to look up to? Interestingly, a Gemara highlights for us that in Tehillim Chapter 1, King David compares a Torah scholar to a tree that has been uprooted and replanted near water. Not planted but rather REplanted, and this teaches us that we should move around and learn from more than “just” one mentor/main teacher. The chanichim spoke about having diverse influences in their lives.
Back to “when will color war be happening??” since that is the main talk around here lately…
Background: The tzevet camp t-shirts came late this year. All of the hadracha and tzevet received the t-shirts only just recently, yesterday and today. All of the chanichim were asked to go to the upper baseball field and re-enact the first day of camp with getting off buses, hugging and opening tochnit. They were told that we did not have the t-shirts that day, and Yakov and Estee want to make a video for donors and include that first exciting day. So right after lunch, all chanichim went back to their bunks, got their backpacks and candy boxes (ha!) and re-did opening day for the cameras! A video was put together and shown to the camp tonight. We had a donor visiting and he was watching the video, but then it got awkward when the video was glitching and showing parts that should have been edited and Yaakov started getting upset…and well you can imagine it (or your child can describe the scene) but basically….Color War!! It was all fake. The donor was actaully one of our security guards and the whole video recreating Day 1 was a hoax!! It was innocent fun and a silly practical joke 🙂 Balloons came out of the ceiling and someone yelled “Color War” and everyone started cheering!
Team Yeshiva vs. Team Kehilla
More details tomorrow about the teams and the team colors, competitions, cheers and marches…
Machal left for DC today and spent most of the day on the buses, but they were able to do one activity when they arrived: a tour of the monuments at night.
