המבדיל בין קוֹדש לחוֹל

I spent this past weekend up at Camp Ramah in the Poconos for an in-camp reunion for the oldest two edot. I have never before had the opportunity to visit camp in the winter months and to be completely honest, I found it a stunning sight. While the trees had seemingly long since lost their leaves, there was still a charm and beauty to the place. It really was stunning, especially watching the winter sun rise above the lake while davening in Beit Mogilner (one of the few winter-friendly buildings at camp). It was bitterly cold, but that did not stop the campers, or former campers, from wandering about camp in a nostalgic manner. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing former campers reminisce about past summers, not to mention when they tell you that you provided them with the best summer of their lives...

Time really does give perspective, and I am so happy that I was able to serve as a counselor for Gesher this past summer. Not only did my campers grow and gain much from the experience, but I learned so much about myself as well. On our trip this past summer, we ended up at Ramah in Wisconsin. While there, we learned a little bit about Abraham Joshua Heschel's formulation שָׁבָָּת in his appropriately entitled book, The Sabbath. In the book, Heschel writes that שָׁבָּת is a temple in time... it is a holy place in time. Akin to how the Temple in Jerusalem was a sanctuary in space, so too, according to Heschel, is the Sabbath a sanctuary in time. It is more than just a time set apart, it is quite literally a holy period of the week, there is something innately sacred about the Sabbath. The connection that we made was rather simple: if the Sabbath is something a holy time of the week that is inherently set apart and sacred, so too is time spent at camp. Similarly, camp is a time set apart from the rest of the year that is arguably very sacred for both campers and staff. It is a time when people get a break from school/the rest of the year in a safe environment. In this way camp is both a safe place in time and space.

This weekend made me question that notion of camp being both a holy place in both time and space. I was at camp but was this to retain much of the sanctity that is "camp" even in the off season. I was pleasantly surprised to find that when the right mix of people come together in the right place, a holy community truly is formed. There is some thing truly קדוש or holy about camp. Much like Heschel's conception of the Sabbath, there is something set apart and uniquely holy about camp, that is unlike the rest of the year.

So, as we said הבדלה, the ceremony that separates the holiness of the Sabbath from the profane of mundanity, I could not help but think that we are not just separating the holiness of the sabbath from the rest of the week; rather, we were separating the rest of the year from the time at camp. The last line of the last blessing in the הבדלה is the title of this blogpost, it translates as, "...the difference between holy and profane." I can't help but think on both the last night of camp and this past Saturday night that in this case, the ceremony is not only separating the sanctity of the sabbath and the rest of the week, but also serves as an appropriate marker separating the sanctity of camp and the rest of the year...