Shabbat Sermon: From Camp to Congress with Rabbi Michelle Robinson

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Did you or your children go to summer camp? If so, do you remember the songs you or they sang? For me, my childhood soundtrack of classic summer camp songs is filled with silly ditties like “I Said a Boom-Chicka Boom” and “Sippin’ Cider through a Straw.” Throw in a “Zum Gali Gali” and a “Shalom Rav” or two, and it always made me smile that my kids are singing those same summer songs – a joyful summer soundtrack filled with ruach (spirit) and a camp legacy.

Last week, I visited our Temple Emanuel kids at Camp Ramah and found them singing a very different tune. After lunch, they gathered in the middle of the dining hall, swaying in large circles, serious and spiritual. Mournfully, they belted out Acheinu, a prayer for the hostages: “As for our brethren, the whole house of Israel, who are in trouble or captivity… May the Almighty have mercy upon them, and bring them from trouble to abundance, from darkness to light, and from subjection to redemption, now speedily and soon.”

My heart broke, as all our hearts break. So proud. So moved. And yet, so broken that Acheinu is this summer’s camp soundtrack – that the world our kids inhabit is one where hostages have been held in Gaza now for 295 days.

It was with the echo of the campers’ plaintive prayers that I went this week to Washington, D.C., at the generous invitation of our Congressman, Jake Auchincloss, to hear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress. I don’t need to tell you the hopes, the fears, and the politics that surrounded this moment – especially taking place, as it did, in the midst of our own historic moment here in the United States.