Shabbat Shalom from Camp!

Our Assistant Limud Director Chelsea Feuchs shared her moving story with us at Shabbat on Friday night. She told us about her struggle through her first year of Rabbinical school. Love you, Chelsea!

This summer’s first Shabbat was a huge success. All of the Camp Specialists are here and it’s been a year since most of us celebrated together. It’s been two year for me and it was great to come back.

Shabbat starts with a shower, throwing on some nice-ish clothes (usually a Hawaiian shirt and the least dusty shoes), then making my way to the Chadar Ochel to embrace what camp is all about – fun, Judaism and making memories.

We eat a fantastic meal with freshly baked challah courtesy of Mike The Baker (and our new food vendor, Wolfoods), surrounded by amazing people from all over the world, who started off as strangers and now have become treasured friends. This is then followed by services where we explored how Crane Lake Camp is a community no matter where you are and even if you missed a couple of years,
you’re always a Crane Laker.

Then we head to services, led by Chelsea. With Crane Lake always by her side, she knew she always had a community to fall back on. Throughout Shabbat, we sang prayers together, explored the Torah and its teaching. As it was the first Shabbat of the year we were a bit rusty with the dance moves, but give it a couple of weeks and we will have it down pat.

The rest of the evening was filled with Israeli dancing, prayers, and Oneg. The final song,
Summertime Forever, which we sing at the very end of Friday night reminds us that “the days are weeks, and hours in the day,” reminding us that our time here at camp is short so make the most of it!!

Saturday morning Chelsea lead services, focusing on bringing everyone up to speed on what services were. For the rest of the day, we broke off into our new teams of Animals and Ropes, Sports and Drama, Arts, Media and more, and started planning the fun that Summer 2019 has in store!

Time bends in weird ways at camp, but it always feels like our time is centered around Shabbat. Like
Shabbat is the focal point that we build and ebb from, its important to us and everyone at camp.

Summer is here, and being in the Berkshire sun with all my friends is why I always come back. We’re getting ready for camp to start, and all that’s missing is you!