By the second Shabbat of 2nd Session, camp has found its rhythm.
Cabins have developed their own traditions, friendships have deepened, and places that felt unfamiliar just a short time ago have begun to feel like home. As I walked around camp this week, I found myself thinking about what it means to make a place, a tradition, and a story our own.
As part of our Parsha Project, we continue exploring Torah portions that are traditionally read outside the camp season. This week, campers engaged with Toldot and Vayetze, two portions that invite us to think about what we inherit and how we make it our own.
In Toldot, Isaac returns to the wells that had been dug during the lifetime of his father, Abraham, and later filled in. He could have simply moved on. Instead, Isaac re-digs the wells, rededicating them with the same names his father had given them. He returns to something inherited from the generation before him, uncovers what had been buried, and renews it as part of his own life.
Then, in Vayetze, Jacob begins a journey of his own. Leaving home and everything familiar behind, he stops for the night in what appears to be an ordinary place. There, he dreams of a ladder reaching toward the skies. When he wakes, he declares, “Surely God is present in this place, and I did not know it.” Jacob inherits the story of Abraham and Isaac, but his connection cannot belong only to his parents and grandparents. He has to encounter it for himself.
Perhaps that is part of what it means for a tradition to endure. We receive stories, values, places, and rituals from those who came before us, but each generation must return to them, ask their own questions, and discover their own meaning within them.
That is something we see every day at Capital Camps. Our campers are participating in traditions shared by generations of campers before them, but their experiences are entirely their own. They sing familiar melodies with today’s cabinmates, bring their own questions to Shabbat, and discover Jewish connection through omanut (art), shira (music), friendship, celebration, and conversations beneath the stars. Jewish tradition provides the foundation, but our campers are invited to find their own place within it.
As we welcome our second Shabbat of Second Session, may we remember that carrying tradition forward does not mean experiencing it exactly as those before us did. It means returning to it, engaging with it, and finding within it something that speaks to us – something worth passing along for the generation that comes next.
Shabbat Shalom,
Havi Goldscher,
CEO