Galil Repairs the World

Shalom from the JRA! Today, the older age groups (schavot) at camp (machaneh) went on a trip that we call "tikkun olam" which means, repairing the world. I travelled to the Jewish Relief Agency in Philadelphia with the Sayarim (post-sixth graders), Tzophim (post-seventh graders), Bonim (post-eighth graders), Bogrim (post-ninth graders), as well as the Madaztim (counselors in training). The two younger schavot remained in camp. They had a special activity and said goodbye to their friends who were participating in the two-week program. 

Two Bogrim at the JRA.

So it was a smaller group than usual, but when we arrived to the JRA, we were still the biggest group there.We spread ourselves out across a few of the "assembly lines" that were going on inside of the warehouse. If you've never been to the JRA before, like I hadn't, I will explain to you the process that we were involved in. What we were doing there was packing boxes of food to be eventually given to elderly Jewish people in the area who cannot physically go to the store to pick up food for themselves. The system of packing boxes is in the fashion of an assembly line, where a volunteer begins by picking up a box and then moving down the line, passing by other volunteers who drop items of food in the box. At the end of the line, there are more volunteers who close the box and stack them for distribution. Once you've dropped off a box at the end of the line, you go back to the beginning and start packing a new box. From Galil, we had volunteers in every job (tafkid). Some walked the assembly line, some put food supplies in the boxes, and others closed and stacked the boxes. We did this for about two hours, alongside with Jewish volunteers from other machanot, and even some Galil parents who happened to already be volunteering there! Then, we all gathered outside to eat lunch. 

An Amelah holds a chicken.

At around noon, our busses were packed with the boxes that we'd filled and we headed out to make our deliveries. All of the schavot went to the same apartment building except for the Bogrim, who went to another one nearby. Once we got there, we put stickers on all of the boxes with the room numbers that they were supposed to go to, and we separated into smaller groups to deliver them. This process took a few more hours, so we didn't get back to camp until a little bit after 3:30. When we got back, the Amelim and Chotrim were in the middle of free swim. The rest of    machaneh took some free time (chofesh) to relax a little bit after our long day (volunteering wasn't hard- todays high of 91 degrees is what got us all). I asked the Amelim and Chotrim what they had been up to all day while everyone else was getting cleaned up. They told me that they'd played games together, said goodbye to some of their friends, and even met some animals (our sheep and ducks, as well as some visiting animals: a sheep named Bob, a goat named Buttercup, and a chicken). They also went down to the pool for free swim. 

A few Bonim at the JRA.

After everybody was settled into machaneh again, they had age group discussions (peulot). Many of the peulot today required low energy, because everyone had already done so much. After peulot, we had a snack (kibud), before doing chores (avodot). The reason that we did avodot later in the day was because of the unusual schedule in the morning, which meant no avodot then. Later today, we will go to sing to lower the flags as usual, and then head down to dinner. The evening activity (tochnit erev) for tonight is Pirates vs. Ninjas, which involves spitting machaneh in half (one half will be pirates, the other ninjas) and then having them "battle." They will be trained in the ways of pirates/ninjas, and then they will challenge each other in games. At the end of the night, everyone will come together for a party (messiba). Tomorrow will be a normal day again, which I will tell you about in the next post! That's all for now, lila tov!