Session 2 – Day 14: BIKKURIM!

Hi Herzl Family!

Based on my last night post… this morning the sun was a little brighter, the grass was a little greener, and the water of Devils Lake was sitting calm, waiting for campers to make waves and fill the air with the sounds of laughter and fun.

It was a normal Chugim day and there was plenty of action all across Camp. I walked into a favorite from last year that still holds a pretty high bar called Torah LARPing. For those of you who are seasoned veterans of the Herzl ecosystem, or at least were here last year, Torah LARPing was a huge hit. A group of counselors created it last summer.  They take stories from the Torah and they live action role-play these stories throughout camp, sometimes in front of the whole camp during a meal and sometimes they do it as a bit of a flash mop just out there walking the poad.  

There’s another new program started by one of our awesome staff members called TFTG which stands for Torah for the girls! It’s a chug where campers meet and talk about interesting stories of empowered women throughout the Torah and then it’s capped off at the end of the week with a challah baking lesson, of which I am the beneficiary! 

It’s really cool. I’m impressed with both of those programs. It’s our staff showing our campers how proud they are to be Jewish, how learning Jewish history and our stories can be fun and creative, and how they apply to our every day. 

On the other side of things we had visitors today from a professional Ultimate team called Windchill. Of course one of the members is a Herzl Camp alumni because Herzl Camp is an Ultimate producing machine. 

These guys were awesome. They ran drills and practice with Kadima and B’yachad in preparation of the annual Kadima v. B’yachad Ultimate game, something that everyone looks forward to!  They ran a really fun activity at the end of the day where the three of them that were here took on 25 Ha’atid campers. It was comedy, It was Ruach and cheer… It was Herzl Camp in one of its finest moments, everyone was having a blast. We were all out in the sportsfield watching and then…. One of the Windchill players went down holding his knee. The crowd tightened up and gasped. They had to call a break in the game to see if he was OK and just when everyone was quiet down a little bit to see if he’d get back up, out came running six people dressed in different colors, shouting B I K K U R I M!!!  That’s right folks it’s Bikkurim (color wars for those of you new to us)! Everyone went. Nuts, even the Windchill players, who I’m sure wanted to stay.

You can imagine the energy that was flown across that field. Campers are split up into 6 teams and the second session Bikkurim theme is The Big 10, so the yellow team is really gold and is the University of Minnesota, the red team is Ohio State, the blue team is Michigan, the green team is Michigan State, and the purple team is Northwestern, and lastly, the orange team is Illinois. 

Campers all went back to their cabins to dress in their colors for their teams and the games are on. Of course every camper thinks they’re in the lead now because they won this or they won that and all we’ve had tonight is the tug-of-war, slam dunk contest (which has to be the whole team working together and some kind of creative way to get a basketball into a hoop) and then the very loved three-point contest of which the Orange team won. I’ll give you a lot more detail tomorrow, but this camper has himself a little cold and needs to go nighty-night. But know this…

All is well, safely rest. 

Thanks for sending your kid to Herzl Camp

‏לילה טוב

Tommy