Tuesday Aug 12 – Color War day 1

Kibbutz vs. Yishuv!

Kima was bright and early this morning at 7 am. Somehow everyone was op and at ’em fairly quickly. Whereas usually each eidah has mifkad on their own before tefilah, on the Color War days the whole camp meets for mifkad next to the Indoor Beit Knesset. A little achdut (unity) before the day of comeptition began.

Each time is responsible for decorations and toranut twice during these tweo days a lunch and a dinner. The decorations need to be in some way related to the team name or colors. Each team chooses a representative to explain their theme and deliver a short dvar torah.  For breakfast Team Tzevet sets up and cleans up. Their team is Team ORBIT – why? Our tzevet is offered incentives for turning in their phones for the month (no phone for a whole month!) Yakov calls it “sending your phone into orbit” and well over 100 did it! They will receive some prizes and swag and a bonus in their paycheck.

The day’s activities included sports and other team competitions, team meetings, team marches before lunch and before dinner, swimming and boating races, a huge camp-wide dodge ball game in Indoor World, and minute-to-win it races as the night tochnit (think egg-on-a-spoon).  Meanwhile the teams had members working all day on the projects and presentations that we will all see tomorrow night. Extra points are given out for funny (team-theme related) memes posted around camp and for any team member who can recite the following to a Rosh Eidah, a Rosh Moshava or a Rosh Beit Midrash: short tefilot like Tefilat haDerech and the brachot of asher yatzar and al haMichya, the 24 books in Tanach, all the parshiot in the Torah, תפילה לשלום המדינה  or לחיילי צה”ל  or the tefilah for the hostages.

Our FIDF group continues to enjoy their time here with regular peulot, taking full advantage of all the activities. Today they went biking on our new bike trials and horse-back riding with Cowboy Dave. This is a happy, care-free, fun, relaxing, therapeutic 8 days for them. We are so honored to have them here and to be giving them love, support and the gift of summer camp. Rumor has it they are preparing some sort of song or prersentation for the camp for tomorrow night too 🙂

Good luck to Team Yishuv (green and purple) and Kibbutz (orange and blue).  We are enjoying the good spirit, the fun nature of the competition and the nachas of watching our 14 year old captains leading their teams towards victory.