Sunday, July 8
Shavua Tov!
Machal headed out last night for their few days of Algonquin hiking, canoeing and camping out. This is the experience chanichim here talk about for years before, anticipating this fun, bonding and challenging week. We know they will do great and can’t wait to hear from them when they come out on Thursday. Each group of 20 kids has 3-4 madrichim and a professional guide for the few days they are there.
Meanwhile, it’s been weird around here… the more “experienced” chanichim felt that color war breakout was around the corner. “Something’s been wrong with the water” and there was a sewage smell in a boys’ bunk today…the bathrooms by the chadar ochel weren’t working and the motorolas were abuzz with discussions about the guy coming to fix it. Sure enough, after Maariv, Estee and Yakov (the camp directors) came down holding a very dirty shirt in a zip-lock bag that they said was found in a pipe. They were so disappointed that someone would be so thoughtless and immature and put all of us through something inconvenient and dangerous. They felt like the only option was to send everyone home early!! But then – out of nowhere – Yael and Aryeh (our Roshei Moshava this month) came running up to them with paint-water, screaming “no one is going home,” and dumped it all over Yaakov and Estee. Cheers and chants of “color war” erupted!! They announced the captains and who is on which time and then dismissed everyone to their first team meeting.
So, here we go – the two political parties HaTzohar and Mapai will battle it out over the next two days. These two parties represented two different ideologies in the 1940’s. Should we ignore the British and “get the job done” or work with the British to create the State?
You’ll see pictures from the pre-lunch skit today where the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel – smoke filled the air around the malon (where guests sleep on Shabbat) as a way to bring the chanichim into this time period and the drama unfolding between Jews at this time. Shiur today dealt with war ethics and what we learn from Torah about using violence.
We wil have a fun two days with races, sports, competitions, cheers, themed toranut in our chadar ochel, marches and team meetings. Eidah Daled captains will lead the chanichim and madrichim, as tzevet decides what team they want to be:)
Look for the very spirited pictures that will be posted over the next couple of days. Team blue and black is HaTzohar while all red and yellow means your child is on Mapai 🙂
Happy Color War!!
