Session 2 – Day 17 (maybe): Unplanned Beauty

Hi Herzl Family!

I’ve said this a gillion times, but so much happens throughout the day that I could write pages and pages of materiel about our morning let alone the day. 

Today was a beautiful one! The sun was shining and the temperature was about as perfect as it gets. The scene at the cookout tonight was out of a movie. Like the fun montage where the camera does a scan around the area and everybody’s laughing and the characters who may have had a rub on something but then figured out their difference and now were laughing or tossing a ball or throwing a frisbee or lying on a blanket in joyous conversation.. like a John Hughes movie. 

We had some incredible visitors doing a program for us today. I was talking with our friends at the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, and they had told me about a couple from Kibbutz Hilot who were survivors of October 7 and lost their daughter tragically that day in one of the many horrific stories that we so sadly hear of around that horrible time. 

The couple go around the US and Canada telling the story of their daughter and the horrors of that day and have a presentation that was so appropriate for the age group that we had them meet with and had such incredible impact. It’s hard for me to describe it. It was something else. 

Jaqui and Yoren Vital lost their daughter on October 7. She was murdered in the safe room of her home on the kibbutz that she helped bring back to life, as it had fallen into disarray some many years before.  Her and her husband were amongst the 24 re-founding members who were determined to rebuild that kibbutz and a kibbutz lifestyle. A picture of the kibbutz weeks before this happened, was a successful look at that rebuilding and a functioning vibrant community that was thriving. 

On October 7, their daughter Adi was shot in her safe room in front of her two children (9 mos old and 4 yrs old). The story that Jacqui and Yoren told about their daughter and that horrible day, along with how they told the story to our Kadima and B’yachad  campers, and the Ozrim (in two separate presentations) was eloquent, appropriate, and real.

I heard the story twice and I was just captivated and in tears each time and I’ll bet you if I heard it three or four more times, it would be exactly the same. It’s incredible to me the courage of people like these, the courage of our Israeli family and what they do for us American Jews and Zionists out in the diaspora is something that I have a hard time finding words for… it’s beautiful it’s sacred, it’s holy. It’s the essence of what we’re trying to teach and what we’re trying to show our campers here of what Herzl Camp means and what the experience is all about. The experience that goes way deeper than the fun, the schtick, the Bikkurim’s, it’s the mission. 

I don’t feel like the above flowed as much as I wanted it to, as I type this out in these later hours of the night, but I want you to know what I saw and heard today. 

Danya, Michael, and I spend a lot of time over the year preparing for the summer. The educational themes of the summer, the hiring of the staff to help execute the fun and the learning, the partnering with people and organizations to help us achieve the mission, but sometimes an unexpected, unplanned thing happens and you give thanks for the outcome. We can only control the effort after all. 

One of our campers, during Q&A at the end of their presentation, asked how they have managed to hold up and get through the last 2 years. Yoren answered “Bikur Cholim” – then he explained to the 150 Kadima and B’yachad campers, who’s 300 eyes and ears were transfixed on his words, that the mitzvah of visiting someone in the hospital or visiting the sick takes takes 1/60 of their pain away, he then said all of you just took a little bit of our pain away. He said “you paying attention, you keeping Adi’s name alive through your story to someone else, you showing us the respect and the maturity like you’ve been showing us is helping us heal. You are doing a mitzvah”

Ask your kids about Adi’s story. Be proud of your kids maturity, or the maturity that shows in the independence of camp. We were really proud of your kids today. 

All is well, safely rest. 

Thanks for sending your kid to Herzl Camp. Am Yisrael Chai!

‏לילה טוב

Tommy