Each of us is created in the image of God, yet none of us is perfect. This week’s Torah portion includes the transfer of leadership from Moses to Joshua. It would be Joshua, not Moses, who would lead the people across the Jordan into the land of Israel. Looking back on Moses’s leadership we see that Moses had imperfections. We learn early on that Moses is described as slow of speech and slow of tongue. The children of Israel built the golden calf under his leadership and twice Moses had trouble controlling his anger. He broke the ten commandment tablets and struck a rock in anger to bring forth water. Like Moses, we are not expected to be perfect.
Camp provides a safe place to make mistakes, learn from these mistakes and do better the next time. Creating a community takes work. We need to be flexible; we need to compromise, and we need to learn how to communicate and really listen to one another. It can be hard to step out of the gaga game when you are not sure if you were really “out” or to apologize to your cabinmate if you said something that may have hurt their feelings.
One of my favorite parts of camp is the nightly cabin time activities planned by counselors for their campers. These are often reflective activities that are done at night sitting in a circle all together in the cabin. Some nights campers share their “rose, bud, or thorn”. A rose is something that went well that day, the bud is something they are looking forward to and a thorn is something that didn’t go that well. By including the thorn, our campers learn that sometimes things don’t go as planned or as well as they may like, but that this is OK.
As we prepare for Shabbat, we gather in village circles. Similar to our nightly cabin-time activities, cabin circles provide an opportunity to reflect on the past week. We pause and acknowledge what went well this past week, what might have not been done as well as planned, and what we can look forward to in the upcoming week. The communities we are building are works in process and they change and grow throughout our time at camp.
Campers and staff often share that camp is a place where they can be their most genuine self. Camp friendships can be strong and long-lasting. Having a place that recognizes and embraces the imperfections in each of us is part of the reason this is possible. We look forward to another week full of roses, buds, and thorns.
Shabbat Shalom.
Lisa Handelman
Camp Director