Session 3 – Day 7 (or is it 8?): BIKKURIM

Hi Herzl Family!

In the Twin Cities, one of the local news channel’s weather team coins any good weather day a “top 10” weather day. Yes, here it comes, today was a top 10 Herzl Day…it was BIKKURIM!!!! (Our full camp color wars.) 

The theme was Pop Stars. 

Yellow Team = Beyoncé 

Green Team = Justin Bieber 

Blue Team = Drake

Purple Team = Rihanna 

Orange Team = Pitbull 

There was music blaring all day long…I knew like 2.5 of the songs. 

As usual, the party started with a 3 point contest last night. The Beit Ruach was bursting with (appropriately) Ruach as we launched the 3rd Session Bikkurim. The Yellow team took the contest in very dramatic fashion and you would have thought they just won the Stanley Cup! It was only the first event.  We were in for good one right from the start. 

For the 3 readers that were alive and self functioning in the 70’s and early 80’s, do you remember Battle of the Network Stars? Well, this morning after breakfast we got right into competition and had the Tug-of-war. The top camp strong people came marching out onto the Sports Field, just like David Hasselhoff and Tom Wopat did oh so many years ago. The were donned in face paint and wearing cleats and gloves as if it was all on the line, at 9:30 am. The teams had to have a certain number of campers and only 1 staff, but that led to each team having a couple smaller kids giving their all and impressing camp with their admirable grit. 

The rest of the day was your standard Bikkurim fare. Basketball games, dodgeball, games, flag football games, cake boss prepping their cakes, plaque competition design designing very creative plaques that will be hung up in the Beit Ruach for years to come. And then everyone’s favorite and when I say everyone, I mean me and Danya especially, Silent lunch. A competitive lunch with the entire Chadar stays perfectly silent from talk. All you can hear is plates moving, and silverware clanging, and the occasional one lone kid who decides to dress in color of another team and run the Chadar yelling “I can’t take it!“ A fun spoof tradition that’s been going on probably since the 1950s.

After a nice Minucha, I’m sure the campers were like caged animals ready to get back out there, we jumped into the afternoon rotation, which was stand-up paddleboard races, more basketball games, more ultimate games, more flag football games.  And if you walked around camp, you saw every team in their team location practicing the ever so popular Pop Dance.

But my personal favorite is the end of the day, before we go take a little break to shower up for dinner and get ready for the evening festivities, which is the cake boss reveal, the plaque reveal, and then the aforementioned most popular Pop Dance, is the marathon. The marathon is really a relay of which there are about 30 stops. It’s everything from crab walks to wheelbarrow races to three legged races to shouting some phrase multiple times to speed walking, leapfrogging, “hitting Moe“ (which is throwing an frisbee from the back of Ozo park and it has to hit the old Ozo Mo) and then the sprint race around camp leading into the softball field where the camper captain, Ozo captain, and staff captain, build a fire that has to burn a rope, The Rope Burn. They used to do it and we brought it back this year and it’s become a huge hit.  The entire camp gets out in the field, there’s of course on abundance of safety precautions taken, and these kids love it. They are cheering them on and when that rope finally burns and the first team gets to run across the finish line… again it’s like we’re in the NBA finals and we just won.  

The whole camp is buzzing going into the evening and they know, the best is yet to come. 

I think I’ve said this before, but Pop Dance amazes me. Most every kid wants to be a part of it whether they have the moves or not and our older campers put themselves out there in potentially very embarrassing situations (or at least that’s how I would’ve felt at 14 or 15 years old) and they teach these younger campers how to do that and inspire them. It’s really fun to watch. And of course I’m shocked and impressed by how talented some of these kids are. It’s awesome. Some nights are so fun here and so magical, I can’t even put it into words. It’s just awesome! 

Well, I’ll cut to the chase, the Yellow Team is your champion for 3rd session Bikkurim! 

So folks, this camper’s all cheered out for the day and ready to hit the sack, but know this…

All is well, safely rest. 

Thank you for sending your kid to Herzl Camp. 

‏לילה טוב

Tommy