Tues. June 25

Today’s shiur at the beginning of the day dealt with the basic halachot of shmittah (the “every seventhyear” in Israel when we don’t farm in order to show that the land belongs to Hashem. The chanichim/ot had the experience of dealing with food from a shmittah year: at lunch, everyone had to figure out what foods had kedushat shivi’it, (i.e. grow from the ground) and then deposit them in special garbage cans (just like every home has in Israel during the Shmittah year and the year after). These food scraps rot naturally and begin to disintegrate and then can be thrown away.

Estee Fleischmann, our co-director, gave the 301 today about other Mitzvot that connect to the food of Eretz Yisrael, like terumah and ma’aser. “The 301” is 501 seconds of Torah each evening in the Beit Midrash, open to all campers. Whoever comes to hear these 5 minutes of Torah before dinner puts a raffle ticket (with his/her name on it) in a lottery and a winner is chosen right after the learning. The prize is…how well do you know Camp Stone??…double shekem, of course!!

After a fun day of peulot, we had our first evening of Chugim, affectionately called “klugim” for our Rosh Sport Noam Klugerman 🙂 The chanichim/ot looked so happy interacting with children of all ages at one of their favorite activities, which they requested and signed up for. Pictures were taken by Yakov Fleischmann for Instagram – look for those!

Kaytana, in their journey with the Jewish nation from Charan to Eretz Yisrael, learned about the 10 Plagues today (and even tried to make some blood by darkening the bug juice at lunch!) The spent the afternoon making charoset and baking matza, all preparation for their Mock seder tonight. Yetziat Mitzrayim is going to be exciting!

Machal hiked along the Allegheny River, pontooned across and then camped out tonight.