by Rabbi Melissa Buyer. Rabbi Buyer is currently the Director of Lifelong Learning at Temple Israel of New York City. Rabbi Buyer served as a faculty member for URJ Eisner and Crane Lake Camps in Summer 2012 and is a proud Crane Lake Parent.
Everything depends on the person who stands in front of the classroom. The teacher is not an automatic fountain from which intellectual beverages may be obtained. The teacher is either a witness or a stranger. To guide a pupil into the promised land, the teacher must have been there themselves. When asking themselves: Do I stand for what I teach? Do I believe what I say?, the teacher must be able to answer in the affirmative. What we need more than anything else is not textbooks, but textpeople. It is the personality of the teacher which is the text that the pupils read: the text that they will never forget. – Abraham Joshua Heschel
After 8 years of patient waiting and anxious anticipation, my dream of sending my eldest daughter to a Jewish sleep away camp has finally arrived. Having attended Jewish Camp myself, I knew what amazing experiences awaited her. I knew she would fall in love with the music, hardly noticing she would be shouting out Hebrew words that emphasized Jewish values and ethical guidelines with the biggest smile on her face. I knew she would be learning about mitzvot (obligations) and middot (values) in fun, experiential ways- from Jewish Educators, Cantors and Rabbis from all over the country, helping her internalize and solidify her Jewish identity. I knew she would memorize the Birkat Hamazon (blessing after the meals), daily shachrit prayers (morning service) and fall in love with Shabbat, and better yet, there would be no complaining or eye rolling when her counselors asked her to join in. I knew she would make unbelievable friendships, learn new skills and develop an unrivaled independence that would serve her for her lifetime. I knew camp would change her indefinitely. But what I didn’t know, or perhaps forgot, is the deeply connective and important relationships she would form with her counselors, and just how significant this will be in her development as a young Jewish woman.
These, counselors, these young men and women are what Abraham Joshua Heschel called “textpeople”. Most of the counselors and staff at Crane Lake Camp grew up here. They too started their sleep away stint at age 8 or 9 and returned summer after summer, inspired perhaps by a counselor or the music or something they simply couldn’t describe. They know it will be exhausting work, they understand it will not pay as much as another job, and they acknowledge it may not further their career like an internship in Washington DC or in a Fortune 500 company. But these textpeople know, from the innermost parts of their neshamah (soul) that nothing is as rewarding as giving back, carrying on camp tradition and creating lasting memories for the next generation of campers.
Serving on the Faculty of Crane Lake Camp the last two weeks of session two, I’ve had the privilege of watching my daughter and countless others hug these young women and men, high five sport specialists, and snuggle with their counselors during the bedtime shema and Hashkiveinu (nighttime prayers). I’ve seen counselors place reassuring hands on shoulders for emotional support, or carry campers with bee stings to the Mirpa’ah (infirmary). Right here at Crane Lake and I’m positive in Jewish camps around the country, there are those ever-illusive twenty-somethings we worry are less connected to Jewish community than ever before. But here they excitedly shoot up during services to clap and sing along to prayers and then turn to their camper and pull them up with them- inspiring them to simply relish the joy in our music and tradition. With their hearts full of unsurpassed delight and unmatched enthusiasm for Jewish camp style living, they inspire the next generation of Reform Jews. These young adults are textpeople. I’ve observed my daughter, at age 8, watch them with awe, seeing for the first time in her eyes a look of heart-felt admiration. In that look I can see her soul whispers to her, “You want to be just like them when you grow up.” and in her smile she is nodding in agreement. Yes, I want to be a textperson too!
Do we as Jewish parents want that for our children? I can think of nothing more reassuring than knowing she will grow up to love her Judaism, that she will beg me to travel to Israel with her NFTY and Camp cohorts, that she will ache to be a counselor that comforts, heals, sings and dances with her campers, and that she will count the days with anxious anticipation for the moment she in turn sends her child to Jewish Sleep away camp for the first time.