Lower and Upper Chaverim led services on Friday night and Saturday morning this week. Here are a few things they wrote…

By Annie S.

At this point in the service, we express how we should be thankful towards God for giving us life, shelter, and all the other necessities we need to survive, such as food. Personally, I’m very thankful, as I’m sure you all are, for the great abundance of food we receive here at camp. On Monday we weighed how much food waste we had from lunch. You might not remember, but in case you don’t, I’ll remind you – 118 lbs of food. But this was just from one meal. If we do this at every meal, that is almost 400 lbs. of food waste a day! That is way too much. So, as we sing this next song, I want you think how thankful we are to have the things we do, and about how we can all try to be less wasteful.

Evan: Bal Taschit means don’t waste the earth.  God gave us two gifts, the earth, and Shabbat, expecting us to preserve them equally.

Andy: It is a tradition before Shabbat to have a super camp nikayon, where everyone picks up trash around camp. The Prayer v’shamru speaks about our reasons to keep and observe the Shabbat. When you receive gifts, it would be ruder to say you like one more than the other – so we must show the middah of Bal Taschit as much attention as we show the Shabbat.

By Camille and Molly

Molly: In the V’ahavta, God wants us to follow the instructions we received. We do this to become better people. One way we follow God’s commandments is by not wasting, whether it be at home or at camp. We do this by composting, recycling and reusing.

Camille: We want to follow God’s commandments because we don’t want them to be wasted. We want to put these instructions to use, just like we put a recycling bin to use.

Molly: This past week we have talked a lot about not wasting – and the V’ahavta shows examples of how we can do this – by not wasting God’s commandments – and protecting the universe that God has provided for us.

By Denali S.,

Elohai Nishamah praises God for giving us a new breath of life each day. Every morning we wake up with a clean slate and renewed energy. At camp this energy can be used to score a goal in soccer or even tye die a t-shirt in arts and crafts. However, on closing day, we leave this safe and sacred bubble and go out into the world, it is our job to use this “new breath of life” for good We have the power to go out and stand up when we see something wrong or to stand with others who are doing something right. We can speak for those whose voices aren’t heard. As we sing the words of Elohai N’shma, take a moment to think about the difference you can make with your breath of life.