Sunday June 30
Shavua Tov and Happy Birthday to our director Yakov Fleischmann!! He received and enjoyed his Duncan Heinz birthday cake, just like every other birthday boy or birthday girl in Machane!! May Hashem grant him and Estee health, strength, patience, creativity, wisdom and continued success!
We had our special extra 30 min of sleep that we get on Sunday morning (we make up for it with an earlier wake up on Friday), and (after tefilah and breakfast) enjoyed a though-provoking shiur on Kiddush Hashem. Many people, during the period of history we are studying, lived and built communities in exile and observed mitzvot and lived “all kiddush Hashem”. Unfortunately, many people also died “al kiddush Hashem” and the chanichim learned about when a Jew chooses to give up his/her life rather than abandon our mission. Everyone started by talking about important values we each have and how we would choose between them if “push came to shove.” They learned that in our halacha, we have the mitzvah to live a life of mitzvot and to choose life whenever we can. But in the face of committing the sins of idol worship, murder or forbidden marriage/relationships or a public desecration of G-d’s name, we choose death. It was a little more positive and less intense for the younger eidot, but we all understood the important lesson that some things are what we live for, and therefore there is no life worth living without them.
The night tochnit tonight was connected to the Mahara”m and his being taken to jail and held at ransom: a camp-wide bean hunt to find the beans and turn them in as the ransom money needed to free the Mahara”m!! The chanichim “got into it” and will never forgot that they bought the Mahara”m his freedom!
After a rainy Shabbat morning, it was nice to see the sun today and have a full day of regular peulot and all-day productivity, fun and creativity in the Village. And everyone had chugim time before dinner today: the elective activity they chose.
Kaytana had color war!! Moshe vs. Aharon (blue/green/purple VS. red/yellow/pink). They were busy all day competing: a-minute-to-win-it game, dodgeball and soccer, and a scavenger hunt of funny tasks. For example, each team had to find three Roshei Eidah, find Yakov and sing him happy birthday and pick up ten pieces of trash. At the end of the day, each team presented their team name with a poster and a song or a skit. They made cheers and talked A LOT about sportsmanship and having fun and taking pride in your team. Yes, there was a winner announced at the end…Team Aharon!!
Machal had a special day learning some fascinating American history, right around here in nearby Buffalo, NY. They went to visit a stop on the underground railroad and talked about social responsibility. Then they visited another important landmark around Buffalo which actually relates specifically to Jewish American history. There was a man named Mordechai Manuel Noah, around the year 1800, and long taken by the idea of a Jewish territorial restoration, helped purchase a piece of land, in the Niagara River near Buffalo, which he named Ararat and envisioned as a Jewish colony. Though the proposal elicited much discussion, the attempt was not a success and Noah’s pretensions as ruler were ridiculed. After the failure of the Ararat experience, Noah turned more strongly to the idea of Palestine as a national home for Jews. The idea that there was an attempt to gather the Jews together in Buffalo, NY is not well-known and was so interesting to hear about! Machal had a fun stop at the Cave of Winds, an observation deck where you can get within 20 feet (6 meters) of the thundering Niagara Falls. It feels like the inside of a tropical storm with torrents of water cascading down and winds up to 68 mph (109 kph)!! Remember to ask your Machal child how that felt.
By the way, we are headed into the second full week here which means everyone is starting to ask (and guess) when the Machane Chutz will be. I wonder how they will “break it out”…..Stay tuned!
