Hi everyone,
It’s definitely been a while. I’ve finally got some time on a long train ride to write about my life for the past few weeks, but the train ride couldn’t be long enough. We’ve been doing a lot of stuff and Zac and I are having a great time.
I can’t exactly remember the last time I wrote and I’ve told different people different stuff about different things, so I’ll start from our last night in Israel. After a week of Chofesh, Zac and I found ourselves on the balcony of his aunt’s apartment overlooking the Knesset and the oversized flag that flies above it on our final night in Israel. We looked out over the city of Jerusalem planning our 3 days in NYC and kept on being constantly mind-blown about the insane trip that we were about to embark on.
We landed the next day in NYC and had an awesome three days going around, seeing some great sites and eating at cool places. You can read about those adventures here:
and here:
On our final afternoon in NYC, we made it to the city headquarters of our camp, Young Judea minutes before it started thunder-storming. We moved all our bags in the pouring rain into a van and got in to start the 2 hour drive up to the north of New York state to Camp Sprout Lake. Driving the van was a guy called Dave, who is head of all the specialty areas on camp (like swimming, ropes, art, etc.) and his Israeli wife Roni who is Rosh Chinuch. We now work with Roni on a day-to-day basis, but more on that later. They’re a lovely couple who instantly invited us to their house for Shabbat when we get back to Israel (Mum- I invited them to ours whenever they’re in Australia, so be prepared for a few more guests in a year or two).
We arrived at the campsite later that evening to be greeted by 200 screaming kids as they had just announced that the massive team tournament on camp, Maccabia, was taking place the next day. It was themed ‘The Avengers’ which, I think, is a team made up of different super heroes like the Hulk and Captain America, though I’m not that up-to-date with my comic book trivia. I joined the green team and Zac joined red, but we both lost the next day to the black team after a day of sports, chanting, dancing, cake decorating and shield decorating. The team that wins gets to hang their shield in the sports hall for the rest of eternity, so I feel the shame of losing every time I see it on the wall.
The next few days were the wrap-up of the 1st session. The way Young Judea works is that the 8-week camp is divided into 2 sessions, each consisting of 4 weeks. Some kids stay for both sessions over the whole summer, but it’s quite expensive and a long time to be away from home so most only come for one. Over intersession, we had some staff training with two other new madrichim from Israel while the rest of the Tzevet (staff) got a day off to relax. They explained to us the structure of the whole camp, the hierarchy, took us on a tour and we met some of the people who run the different aspects of camp.
Camp hierarchy is divided into a few different streams, the main ones being madrichim who take care of the kids, specialists who run their different activities and education staff who try and put education into a lot of aspects of camp. There are roshim (heads) of each section and one director at the top who oversees everything, and is reminiscent of Mrs Goot. Zac and I call her G-d, because she has so much power that she practically decides what the weather will be the next day.
While we were doing our orientation, Roni told us about a new aspect of camp that she was trying to introduce called the Chinuch Tzevet (education staff). This newly created group would oversee the chinuch aspects of camp while writing and running programs for the chanichim (campers). Zac and I were super interested and got involved instantly. At Sprout Lake they have an office with great educational resources and great staff to help us out. We work closely with Jesse who just finished her Masters in Jewish Education at Pardes (a liberal text-study institute in Jerusalem that I was thinking about going to) and is about to start her job in a director’s role at a school. She’s married to Adam who is not only a rabbi, but also a clown doctor and a chef. We also work with Korin who is from Israel and has been at Young Judea in Seattle for the past 2 years as Shlicha (exactly like a Shaliach, just female). The office has a whole database of programs that we can use as inspiration as well as a whole bookshelf of great books, a costume cupboard and a really cool machine that can make hot apple cider. I drink about 3 cups a day.
I spend my mornings writing and running programs for kids in 7th & 8th grade and Zac does the same for kids in 5th & 6th grade. We’ve both got partners that we work with from Israel.
The make-up of the madrich body is very different to Hineni. The camp employs about 30 Israelis that fly over each year to bring that atmosphere over. They don’t get paid like all the Americans do, but their incentive is to get a free return plane ticket to the US. A lot stay for a few months after and travel around North & South America. There are two British girls who Zac and I had an instant connection to being in the minority that weren’t from Israel or the US. They’re from a youth movement in Britain called FZY (Federation of Zionist Youth) that Young Judea is affiliated with. A few madrichim come over each year to lead on Young Judea camps, but we found that Hineni’s way of running camp is a lot more similar to theirs. Young Judea is also affiliated with Tsofim (scouts) in Israel, so two of the Israelis are official representatives. They run the flag-raising in the morning, scouting activities during the day, hikes and bring that aspect into camp. One of them is my partner in the Chinuch office and they’re both really nice. So overall, the madrich body is more or less 48% Israeli, 50% American and 2% members of the Commonwealth nations. It’s great to meet people from all over the world, and I’m sure we’ll catch up with the Brits when we go to London at the end of the year, stay with some Americans in NYC and see some of the Israelis when we go back in a few weeks.
In terms of the actual campsite, you can check out the facilities in a video Zac & I made:
or on the Sprout Lake website:
As you can see it’s a beautiful place- lots of green grass to play on, a basketball court, Zionist murals, an outdoor synagogue, a climbing wall, etc. There’s also horseback riding offered and a Tiyul (hiking trip) for every Eidah (year level). Each Eidah also does MADIMOW, which is an acronym for ‘Making A Difference In My Own Way’, or just a more ridiculous way of saying social justice activities. My Eidah went to volunteer for one day at a local organic farm which grows food for the needy and provides fresh produce to the local population who otherwise would find it hard to buy it. Other Eidot go to old age homes, soup kitchens and the oldest Eidah, Bogrim, goes to NYC for meals on wheels. Right now Bogrim are on an excursion in Washington DC to look at Israel’s relationship with the US, learn about advocacy and obviously do a bit of sightseeing.
An average day on camp looks is as following:
7am Wakeup
7:30 Mifkad (flag raising, announcements, anthems- I’m slowly learning Star Spangled Banner)
8:00 Prayers
8:30 Breakfast
9:45 Electives x3
12:45 Lunch (they do it Israeli style here- milk meals for breakfast and dinner, meat for lunch)
1:30 Naptime (Favourite. Part. Of. The. Day.)
2:30 Bunk activities
5:30 Chofesh (free time for everyone around the campsite, all activities are open)
6:15 Dinner
7:00 Night activities
8:30 Bedtime
9:30 Lights Out
And then if I’m not in the room looking after kids…
12:30 Sleeptime/whatsapping everyone that I’m going to write an update soon/Listening to Hamish & Andy podcasts
And finally onto the most important part, my chanichim! My Eidah is called Tsofim, not to be confused with the Tsofim scouts mentioned above. The kids are 9-12 years old and in around year 5 & 6. We don’t do much with the girls because my age level is so big with 32 boys. There are two bunks of 16 kids each with three counsellors sleeping in each bunk. Shmira here is sleeping in the bunks to keep an eye on the kids, instead of walking around patrolling the campsite. If you’re not on Shmira then you can stay out until 12:30 before you go back to the bunk to sleep. My bunk is the only one where the Wifi from the dining room reaches my iPhone, hence the 12:30 whatsapping. In my bunk, I have two other Israeli Madrichim as well as one Madrich-in-training. On the whole, my kids are great. One of the boys is the son of a rabbi that sometimes helps out at Sprout Lake with Chinuch.
Most of them love basketball so my skills have had to improve rapidly. I’m drawing on my under-13’s experience, and still managing to win against them but I’m not sure how much longer that will last. They’re also obsessed with Magic cards which is like a more complicated version of Pokemon. That usually keeps them occupied during nap time, but a few of them have tried to teach me against my will- I don’t even want to dabble in the world of Ice Mages and Level 78 Wizards, so I leave them to it and just play Checkers. I’ve also been subtly trying to convert them to Australianism. I have a flag hanging above my bed and every so often play Angus & Julia Stone on the speakers. The whole camp has also learnt ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oy Oy Oy’ and do it on repeat, even when Zac and I aren’t around. There is talk of having an Australian themed day where we’ll sing the anthem in the morning, replace ‘Hebrew Word of the Day’ with ‘Aussie Word of the Day’ and have a game of cricket or two.
Today Zac and I had one of two days off that we get this session, so we headed into NYC for 24 hours. We spent the night on the Upper West Side near Central Park, woke up at 10:30am, headed to an awesome cafe in Manhattan, walked around the area, got haircuts in Brooklyn (I got yet another buzz cut, yet this time there was considerably less hair) and finally headed back up to camp.
Tomorrow we go on Tiyul. We have a 5km hike which will be comparatively easy to the usual 16km we do in Israel. We’ll hike for about 4 hours with the Israeli nature staff, set up tents and chill for the rest of the night. The next morning we head back to camp and do the regular schedule.
So that’s all from me. It’s hard to write frequently because I don’t have all that much time, so apologies for the length but this will hopefully buy me a guilt-free 2 weeks without writing more. Also, we’re not allowed to take photos of the kids for privacy reasons which is the reason for the lack of them, but I’ll see if I can take some around the campsite of our bunk, etc.
All the best,
Mark
