By Rabbi Edwin Goldberg, Senior Rabbi at Temple Sholom of Chicago in Chicago, IL and Gesher Segel

Serving on faculty of Gesher is a new experience for me.  Back in the very early eighties there was no Gesher unit.  So I had to learn about them.  I like what I have learned.  The unit has almost seventy kids, at a critical time in their lives, hovering around the age of bar/bat mitzvah.  I remember this as a difficult time for me but also a fertile time for character development.  This makes the study theme of the session so important: We all can be leaders, even when we are not standing in front of the room, so to speak, because leadership is about discernment.  In this week’s Torah portion we read that the Israelites are a great nation because they have wisdom but also discernment.  Wisdom is great but without discernment it can be misused.

As I told the unit this morning in worship, when you are climbing the ladder of success it is important to make sure you are leaning the ladder up the right building.

Our study sessions and our worship align themselves on the theme of leadership perspectives.  After worship today a chanich (camper) came up and thanked me because I had given him something important to think about.  Made my day!

At the end of the service I reminded the chanichim (and madrichim) that discernment means knowing the difference between a problem and an inconvenience.  Most stuff we face are inconveniences, like the rain this morning.  I doubt anyone in California these days would see the rain as a problem!

I also quoted the great teacher, Robert Fulghum, who once said that a lump in the oatmeal is an inconvenience, but a lump in a breast is a problem.  One should know the difference!

Finally, noting the fact that we were praying (due to the rain) in the Lorge amphitheater, I mentioned that I once asked Rabbi Lorge (one of the founding rabbis of the camp) why he created Union Institute.  He said that we cannot take community for granted.  If he thought that in 1952 one can only surmise how much more important that these words are today.

I am grateful to be among a people who esteem both wisdom and discernment!