Personal Reflection
Sammy Marks
Rosh Hashanah (Second Day), 5770
Shanah Tovah.
A few weeks back, I asked the Rabbi if I could give a reflection when I came home from school for the holidays. He responded that he would love to hear a reflection on my own Jewish journey. I had just come back from being a third year counselor at Camp JRF, the Reconstructionist Overnight camp out in the Pocono Mountains, and after a 36 hour turnover, was on my way to the University of Illinois to take on the mantle of the Presidency of the campus Hillel. I was excited, I was in charge, I had just spent the past two months working with the greatest kids in the world and was about to try to revamp Jewish student life at school.
As I sat down to put my thoughts on paper, I realized that I was not sure where to start. Do I talk about my experience at Camp JRF as a counselor? Do I talk about growing up in several transdenominational Jewish communities? Do I talk about my profound experience in BBYO? What about the 9 years that I spent at OSRUI, a Reform Movement camp in Wisconsin? What has been the common ground? Why have I developed into who I am today, standing in front of the dynamic Reconstructionist community that raised me from childhood?
After much conceptual struggle, some writer’s block, and a bit too much nosh, I decided to take a step back. Why not look at what has been constant in my Jewish experience. I grew up in a life filled with a diverse Jewish experience. I went to a reform preschool and overnight camp, attended to a conservative day school, and had a nurturing Reconstructionist community that raised me my whole life, whatever that meant when I was 9. But the one thing that I could always count on making sense was going to church for the high holidays. It is from this that I would like to explore the journey and evolution of my personal Jewish values.
Rosh Hashanah has always been special. When I was younger, my day school would talk about the holiday for weeks. At home, we would gather every year with family and friends to eat apples and honey and share a typical Jewish meal, and enjoy each other’s company. Then, later on, we would go to the church (it would be years before I could figure out which one it was on my own), sit down for services, and I would either read a book, fidget around pretending to listen, or find the first opportune moment to go to the bathroom and explore the limits of the mysterious building we were temporarily inhabiting. This was the period in my life where the value of a supportive Jewish community filled with tradition and joy was being thrown on me, and I was relishing it.
I began going to OSRUI in 1998, when I was in fourth grade. Like any good overnight camp, we were thrown into close quarters with 10-15 of our soon to be best friends, not to mention a few older counselors. When I was that young, I had no idea what these counselors did, nor could I care less. Although we had daily Hebrew and Jewish studies lessons, it was very in to spend as much effort as possible to not learn and instead goof around. At the same time, though, camp was building a personal independence in identity. A little to my dismay, being Jewish was really cool at camp, even though my parents weren’t telling me I had to feel that way. Where else do a group of kids look forward to Hebrew song sessions, some sort of prayer twice a day, and buggy and sleepless nights with a bunch of other Jews? Every year, when I would come back to the church for Rosh Hashanah, I would see a another face that I recognized and be a little more okay sitting still through the marathon 2 hour services, because I knew that I was making decisions about my Judaism for myself.
Flash forward to the beginning of high school. I had just graduated eighth grade, and was on the tail end of years of generalized anxiety. Much of my time at school had been spent in the principal’s office, and there would always be conversation at camp of sending me home if I couldn’t keep myself together. High school was an opportunity to start over. Through a funny series of circumstances (most probably orchestrated by my parents), I joined BBYO, an international Jewish youth movement whose mission is to develop tomorrow’s Jewish leadership. After numerous defining experiences, I began to refine the practice of leading a community based on the prescribed and accepted values and principles. By the end of my senior year of high school, I was regularly planning programs based on the organization’s five programming folds and seven cardinal principles, and was perfectly capable of speaking for 45 minutes to 100 teens discussing the state of the region from a programming, membership, and ideals standpoint, for which I still get grief today.
In the last couple years of high school, my role at camp also started to change. In my last summer as a camper, I went on a month-long backpacking trip through the deserts of Utah and the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Although it took me several years to realize it, this was my first opportunity to actually build a Jewish community from the start. It was such an intimate and isolated group that any institutionalized values became irrelevant, and we as a unit needed to define, act on, and enforce the values that we created. I was too old for the trip leaders to tell me what to do, and was being forced to really have the values conversations. And believe me, when all you do for a month is walk and talk, there is plenty of time for this. As I returned yet again to the church, the building seemed a little smaller, the younger kids seemed a little younger, and I began to see the larger picture of my Jewish community and how I played a part in nurturing and developing its values so I would be comfortable in it.
These past few years as a counselor at our very own Camp JRF are where I have really been able to verbalize my Jewish values. On the first day the staff arrived my first year, we were told very bluntly that yes, camp is a magical place, and no, believe it or not, the magic does not happen on its own. While I had some understanding of this already, I needed the campers to arrive for it to really sink. Let me explain. Two campers (I had the 4th graders) are arguing and hitting each other. I ask them to stop. They ask why. I respond that hitting is not nice nor is it a good way to solve an issue. And anyway, they both signed a Brit Kehillah, or Covenant of the Community, at the beginning of the summer that said that they would only use nice physical contact. Now here I am, doing my counselor thing and explaining why it is not nice to hit. Why is this significant? Because not hitting out of anger is a Jewish value. I am explaining that we as a Jewish community do not hit each other to be mean, therefore hitting is not very Jewish and not very nice.
Let’s jump to this past summer. I am a third year counselor, a Cornerstone fellow through the Foundation for Jewish camping, I am the official 4th-6th grade Jewish Educator, and I am a master of my trade. After all, who else but a veteran camp counselor can teach Frisbee and a little Hebrew while applying basic first aid, all while wearing an octopus hat and sunglasses. The curriculum that I had presented to my campers this summer I think sums up my values journey. Believe it or not, the curriculum this summer was entitled “values-based decision making.” I had been teaching all summer about how we as Jews make our decisions based on our Jewish values, and every decision we make, thus every action we take, can be inherently Jewish. A notable instance of this was when I was explaining to one of my homesick fourth graders that although he was homesick and his best friend had gone to the other session of camp, that was okay because he was with a good community that really cared about him, and this was an opportunity to explore his Jewish community on his own. And anyway, he and his friend from JRC could share stories when they got home. As much as this was a learning experience for my campers, this was also a learning experience for me. I would ask myself every day, as the role model I was, if I could justify the actions I took and the words I spoke as particularly Jewish, even if they were universal.
Coming back home from college for Rosh Hashanah, I am now at a crossroad. I am looking back on twenty years filled with relentless exploration of the values of nurturing and developing a Jewish community that I feel comfortable calling home. I am looking back on the hundreds of lives I have affected and that have affected me, both at camp and at home. And I am struggling to balance the pressure to grow up and pursue a professional career in engineering with the want and need to spend my time cultivating a meaningful Jewish community, relationships and values abundant.
Thank you, and Shanah Tovah.