by Shore (aka Daniel Shore), OSRUI Alum and OSRUI Birthright trip staff
The flight is so much f…wait, we’re off the plane already. Oh, well there’s one quick story I should recount. With 30 minutes left until landing in Israel, the pilot or someone announced, “According to laws set by the Israeli government, no one is allowed to stand during the last 30 minutes of the flight.” 8 minutes later, I needed to go to the bathroom, stood up, and froze. The flight attendant turned around, looked me in the eye (I had just woken up), and said, “Sir, I need you to sit down. You need to sit down right now. If you don’t, I’m going to tell the pilot and he’ll stop this plane immediately.” Is the pilot also the 1993-verison of my dad? I asked myself. I sat back down, but continued to ponder if I should have called the bluff. Immediately. Really? Is that even a good idea?
Okay, skipping ahead. Night two in Israel. Our evening program ends and I gather the OSRUI folks for our first camp-only meeting, and while we’d done a full group shehechayanu on night 1, it was time for an OSRUI shehechayanu. We started out slow, built up, hit a capella immediately since we had no guitar, and jammed out on some Amens for a good 3 minutes. Loved it. Teared up. Didn’t want it to stop. This was why I was on this trip.
We did the typical Birthright itinerary, but it was the small moments along the way that made it campy. It was running into someone from OSRUI in Tzfat who was on a different Birthright trip (how did we let that happen?!). It was having a talent show Beit Café style. 
It was watching several of our alumni naturally plan and lead a Shabbat service—another moment they’d been preparing for since day 1 of their OSRUI lives. It was re-connecting with Israeli staff from last summer while out in Tel Aviv. It was hearing from one alum who is currently doing a one-year teaching fellowship in Ramla and meeting up with another alum who is about to join the IDF.
It was me being asked to do my Elmo voice on Day 2 by a non-OSRUI participant because the Julian Assange of OSRUI had leaked a secret, and then me having to read Mad Libs as Elmo every time we did games on the bus. And it was me buying a frog-like oven holder at an olive-oil factory so that I could also find my Kermit impression. It was me being my OSRUI-self that I so dearly miss being every summer, and every day, that I’m #campless. And it was our alumni participants getting to reunite at every stop for a picture or at Aroma for an iced coffee or on a camel for, well, camel riding, or sitting together on the bus to write the best blog posts. It was new connections with old friends. The best kind of friends. And now, in camp fashion, I leave you with this:
1. In the beginning, there had been no OSRUI birthright group.
2. No pictures of each other sleeping on the bus,
3. No selfies with cats in the background,
4. No inside jokes about the Golan Heights 4-D welcome video.
5. Just an idea.
6. But once the trip started,
7. We tried Yemeni foods together,
8. Talked about our Jewish identities and played ga-ga together,
9. Sang around a Bedouin campfire and ate camp-sponsored s’mores together.
10. We came knowing each other, but not everyone
11. And we left not not knowing anyone.
12. We were a family.
13. In Israel.
14. It was our home away from home (camp) away from home (home).
15. It was everything we had hoped for.
16. It was OSRUI on Birthright 2015.
17. It was the start of a camp tradition.