by Emily Schwartz, Tiferet Rosh Eidah

We are in the middle of another exciting week in Tiferet! Just as we celebrated our Mesibirthday Party for the Star-Spangled Mesibah last Saturday with all of camp, Tiferet kicked off last week with its own celebration of 20 years of Tiferet! We had a Black and White Ball where the campers got all dressed up for an evening party with lots of games, dancing, and special treats. Everyone had a blast!

One of the unique things about Tiferet is our connection with our art moomchim (specialists) who are attached to the eidah. Every Tuesday night, we do an “Artists’ Night,” a combined t’filot and evening program that is planned and executed by our moomchim. Last Tuesday, the chanichim had the opportunity to go through the prayer service and ask any question that came to mind. These questions, rather than being answered right away, were left hanging in the air for everyone to think about. Far too often, it seems, we jump to answer the difficult questions about God and prayer. The curious chanichim had so many questions that we only got through four of our prayers. After asking the questions, each chanich(a) wrote a question on a piece of tape, put it up on a wall of our Beit Am, and then walked around and found a connection to some other question. The connections were drawn or written out, and were quite beautiful. I think everyone left this program with many more questions, and that’s okay.

I had a conversation with a chanicha yesterday that I’d like to share with you. She told me how she came to camp several years ago, and didn’t have a great time for a number of reasons. This summer, her mom “forced” her to come back to camp, and she was not all that excited. The first day was tough, but now, she is so happy to be here. She said she loves Tiferet because it is like a family. She has lots of friends, enjoys the programming, and just wanted to talk to me to say thank you.

Tiferet is like a family. Yesterday with our family, when it was really hot out, we substituted our regular sports activities with some water games outside. While I was explaining the rules to one of the games, our S’ganit (Assistant Unit Head) Andi Pearlman, dumped a bucket of water on my head! So, instead of the rest of the games, we turned it into an all-eidah water fight! It was quite the adventure, and everyone left soaking wet and smiling.