A Safe Haven

Our story began over 5000 years ago, and each year, over the course of 12 to 13 months, we read it over and over again. God brought the world into creation and then made a promise to us. That promise, one of many, has been our guiding light; Gen12:1” God said to Abram. Go forth from your land, your birthplace, your father’s house, to the land that I will show you”, And, as we read from Beresheet through to Deuteronomy, we discover each year that the journey is not easy, not direct, full of challenges, dangers, wrong doings. We set out to find a place in which we could be free to live in covenant with God, a place where we could pray to God in our own fashion, have a Sabbath we could honour, holidays we could celebrate, create laws that were fair and just for all.

We had our leaders: Moses. Aaron, Miriam, Joshua…; Our kings: David Solomon…, our judges, our Rabbis, and yet, here we are today still hoping for, searching for that “Safe Haven”. In order to be free, we need a place that is free, a society that is free. We, as Jews, should be able to walk proudly down a street, enter a public building, go shopping and at no time have to hide our identity. A free society should be free for us, for all people. The reality of our world today is that this is not our reality.

But this past summer, actually over the past numbers of summers, I have found, at least for our Jewish children, their safe haven, and it is called Camp George. At Camp George, the kids, each morning, can raise proudly the flag of Israel (along with the PRIDE flag and the flag of Canada) They can sing O Canada, and Ha Tikvah, and Modeh Ani. Our Israeli shinshinim can teach each morning the Hebrew word of the day as the campers gleefully repeat the words. At all meals they can say the blessing before and after meals and during every meal, they chant, sing, shout, stomp, their feet and each sound really say- “Hey, I am a proud Jew, and I am so happy to in in this safe heaven where I can shout out to all around me. I am a Jew”

Camp George has all of the regular activities as other camps. It has swim, water sports, ropes, arts and crafts , bicycling, pottery , drama, but it also has “Jewish” And , as I discovered, especially this year when we went out for some Dairy Queen with the kids, they are hungry for the place that has “Jewish” , the place where wearing a kipah or a Star of David won’t get them jeered at or threatened or beaten up, the place where they can announce openly that they are Jewish and being Jewish is good! Camp George is a Jewish safe haven, and I hope that Beit Sefer Solel is that haven as well for our kids, who, in their day schools, are often forced to hide their identity. At Beit Sefer Solel, we don’t hide!

God made a promise about a land. And the journey to be safely in that land is still in progress. But we are here, in a different land, but still we are the Jews who were promised freedom. Let’s work on making that a reality here. Let’s help our kids find safe Jewish havens, and let’s help everyone learn that we can create freedom and peace for all. Perhaps it is naive to hope, but as we begin 5786, and after I have experienced so much Jewish joy at Camp and have seen some really happy children, I believe we can find, that we can create a place, a safe place for us to be free people in covenant with God. Israel needs to work on that goal: we have to work on that goal, and camp George is a great safe place to start!!

Filed under: Educator's Message

« Read more articles

---