Wednesday July 1
We woke up at the Chutz site, davened Shacharit, had some breakfast and then had shiur. As we approach the July 4th weekend, our Beit Midrash wanted to highlight and celebrate some important American Jews and some important institutions. The shiur, once again, presented 5 stations and the eidot rotated around to each of them. At each station they watched a skit – about the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yeshiva University, the Joint Distribution Committee, Justice Louis Brandeis and the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland. All actors were part of our Beit Midrash staff plus a few other members of tzevet who “got the role”!
Rabbi Alex Israel, teacher at post-high school programs in Israel and creator of the podcast The Tanakh Project, which follows the 929 project (a perek of Tanach each day Sun-Thurs, check it out!) taught tzevet a few times at Machane before the Chutz and then joined everyone at the chutz twice a day for a tzevet shiur. It was a privilege to hear from him and so fun to learn with him.
After morning shiur, everyone cleaned up, packed up and walked back to Machane right in time for lunch. Eidah Daled stayed to do more cleaning and general packing up, and then they ate lunch there, at the chutz site. All in all, Eidah Daled, our oldest chanichim and chanichot, did a wonderful job running the plugot at the chutz, giving everyone food and making all ages feel welcome and cared for. Their Roshei Eidah were so proud of them. The beginning of leadership opportunity at Camp Stone starts at the Chutz and these kids passed with flying colors. They know that their next opportunity to serve as leaders for the younger campers will be…Color War (sometime next week…. we all begin to wonder when??)
That is how the chanichim grow up here: Kaytana, younger bunks (aleph and vav), older bunks (bet, gimmel, daled), Roshei Plugah on the chutz, Color War captains, tzevet, hadracha, Roshei Eidah, Roshei Machal and then…Roshei Moshava. Some of our Roshei Moshava have literally “gone through the whole system” and it is so much nachat 🙂
We were able to have a few peulot this afternoon, and it felt good to be be back in our routine! Well, that is until they announced, at shekem, that we were going to be eating dinner early and leaving for ice skating!! Younger eidot and older eidot enjoyed the skating in two shifts, with the younger chanichim leaving for ice skating and returning to machane earlier. Look for fun pics from that outing!
Machal spent the day at Hershey Park, enjoying the rides and fun!
