Special edition of the Weekly Verse
while Rabbi Rotenberg is at Camp Ramah Darom

And just like that, another session at Camp Ramah Darom comes to an end. It always amazes me just how impermanent the structure of this strong and vibrant community actually is. Not even a month ago this camp was nearly empty. Walking around, you didn’t hear the yelling and laughing from noisy campers, or music booming through portable speakers hitched to campers’ backpacks. And within a day all of that changed. The campers came, and in an instant the camp community was reborn.

Come Sunday, the opposite will be the case. All the noise that fills this forest will subside. Trucks will take bags to the airport. Cars, buses, and planes will transport kids back to where they came from, and the camp will empty out. The camp community, so colorful and alive, so important to so many people, will once again separate. In some ways the community carries on – friends stay in touch, and many connections made here will last a lifetime. In some ways, the community really does break apart. There will never again be this particular combination of people and place. 

It’s a good reminder that no community lasts forever. Even amongst our more permanent institutions, the measure of a community cannot only be how long it lasts, but how it shapes the people who pass through it. How this summer shaped the staff and campers, how it changed the way those who spent this month together carry themselves outside of these gates will attest to the strength of this community. This place sees the creation of lifelong friendships, connections that carry through well beyond the summer. It also sees lifelong impact in those who pass through – the creation of Jewish educators and rabbis, kids who are confident in their own skin and Jewish identity, future counselors and community leaders.

I’m looking forward to thinking about our BZ community in these terms too. How does engagement with our incredibly BZ family express itself beyond the synagogue walls? What is the impact we make in the lives of adults and children who are part of our community? At this moment, I’m simply grateful to leave one remarkable community and return to another – to continue, together, the sacred work of building a community whose influence reaches far beyond the place where it gathers. After all the communities that shape us most are never left behind, but carried within us.