By Raphaella Ruggiero, Photographer and Communications Specialist
Four days in and the Bonim unit is off to an action packed start!
To kick start their first official Evening Program of the session, the fun began with an ice-cream fashion show and dance party! The campers were offered a giant box of costumes and they had the opportunity to dress up their specialists, which was then followed by a yummy ice cream and some killer dance moves. The perfect way to let out all their built up excitement for this summer, and lay the foundations for building friendships with each other and staff members.
During Bonim’s Kavanah T’filah (prayer service), the key theme revolved around how other people see things in us that we don’t always see in ourselves and how this links in with silent prayer. The campers sat in a circle and closed their eyes, then 3 campers were tapped to open their eyes. These campers were given the task of lightly tapping other campers that made them feel a certain way when a question or statement was made. These ranged from “people you are excited to meet”, “people you think exemplify peace”, “people you think built your bunk community”, “people who make you laugh”, etc. They then had a discussion about how they all felt being tapped by someone and not knowing who that was. The campers said that they found it a little hard to not know who chose them because they wanted to reach out to these campers and be friends with them. Delilah, the Bonim Programmer, went on to talk about how they should sit next to someone new everyday because maybe that will be the person who tapped them, and even if it isn’t, it’s another opportunity at life long friendship. Following this they then read a piece from Exodus about how God veiled his face while speaking to Moses; God saw leadership in Moses, that Moses didn’t see in himself. This was then linked back to the silent prayer; because Bonim are are at an age where they are continuously experiencing new situations which will shape who they become and where they really start to reflect and question a lot of things they are presented with. When asked “how does this relate to silent prayer?” one of the campers answered, “when someone said tap someone that makes you laugh, I found myself silently praying that I would get tapped!” The service concluded with singing a song about how there is a light in their community and how it shines through all the Bonim campers- illuminating the next 3 weeks of fun the campers are going to have!