Sunrise- What a way to start a day!

You would think if you were going to visit a camp for kids with cancer you would see a lot of sick kids.  I went with LIBOR (Long Island Board of Rabbis) to visit Sunrise Day Camp at the Henry Kaufman Campgrounds on Long Island, a camp for 500 kids with cancer and their siblings, and I didn’t see one sick kid. 

I saw campers of all ages getting giant hugs from counselors.  I saw campers of different races and ethnicities running around and cheering with giant smiles on their faces.  I saw kids playing on the jungle gym, doing arts and crafts, getting ready for sports and swim.  (I’m sure they played sports and went swimming but I didn’t get to actually see that.)  I was reminded that while Sunrise grew out of Jewish values it is open to all kids as cancer doesn't care what religion you are.

The counselors, many of whom have been with the camp for multiple summers (Sunrise is in its 8^th year) are not told who is a primary patient and who is a sibling.  “That is a way they are identified in the outside world, but here they are all just campers,” said Beth Fenton, director of Development and our tour guide.

Today about 260 campers were at camp with around 100 counselors.  Over 500 campers are enrolled over the course of the summer.  On any given day 250-300 campers attend camp, which has bus pick ups at all the referring hospitals in the NY area.  The night before our visit was a late night for campers and their families so today’s attendance was a little light.

Michele Vernon, directs a camp that allows kids to be kids and have fun no matter what else is going on in their lives.  She and her team have thought of so many details.  All the staff members wear hats or bandanas so that any of the kids who have to wear a hat, because they have lost their hair, won’t feel funny.  “If a camper starts a project on Monday but has to be out Tuesday for a treatment, the project will be there waiting for him to finish on Wednesday, or whenever he returns, unlike in the outside world where everything keeps moving,”  shared Beth Fenton.

All the rabbis who visited saw congregants who are working as counselors there.

While camp is going on at the campgrounds in Wheatley Heights, in Israel and at the third Sunrise Day Camp which opened this summer in Pearl River, NY many of the activities are being mirrored at the hospitals where they have Sunrise on Wheels.  Sunrise on Wheels brings the camp experience to hospitals not only in the summer but throughout the year.

Sunrise Day Camp is a magical place that will not cure cancer but will make life easier and fuller for kids with cancer and their families.

Our prayerbooks were our banners, the psalms our protest songs

To pass a restaurant that says “tafrit l’taysha yamim” - "a menu for the 9 days of Av" is one of the amazing things that happens when you are in Israel.  It is wonderful to be in a country where more of the restaurants are kosher than not.  Where you can observe Shabbat without missing anything.  Where you can go to the Kotel, arguably the holiest site of the Jewish people or at least an iconic landmark of Jewish sovereignty, an pray on Tisha B’av, on Shabbat or on a random Monday morning that happens to be Rosh Chodesh.

Well on Rosh Chodesh Av I couldn’t do that.  I couldn’t go to the Kotel and pray, even though the Supreme Court ruled that it is permissible for women to go to the Kotel in Tefillin and Talit.  On this past Rosh Chodesh I was prevented from going to the Kotel by over 100 police officers.

Bus loads of supporters of Women of the Wall arrived to pray on Rosh Chodesh Av as was their custom for the past 25 years.  I was so excited to be joining them although I thought that I was coming late to the party, an that the right to pray at the Kotel had already been achieved. 

We began with the song, Ozi b’zirmat Yah, v’ehi li l’shua – My strength is in songs to God and this will be my salvation.  And then we continued with psalms.  At one point Anat Hoffman and the Bat Mitzvah girl raised their prayerbooks in the air, like flags and we all lifted our siddurim and waved them in the air as we continued to sing our prayers.  Our prayerbooks were our banners and the psalms our protest songs.

Those opposing us were not so peaceful.   My friend’s daughter was spit on, ephihets were cast – interchanging the words Reform Jew with Nazi and telling us to go home. 

I later learned that we had not been allowed into the Women’s section because we had been out maneuvered by the Ultra-Orthodox- they had filled buses of their own, arrived at 6:30 in the morning and filled up the Women’s section to insure that there would not be room for WOW.  The police decided that they would not be able to protect us if we went down to the Kotel proper and that it would be easier to keep us in the this area outside of the holy spaces.

The bitter irony is that this was Rosh Chodesh Av, the beginning of the nine days of Av leading up to Tisha B’av, which marks the multiple destructions of the Temple and other atrocities of Jewish persecution.  Interestingly Jewish Tradition does not blame this destructions on our enemies but on sinat chiham- senseless hatred of Jew against Jew.

I pray that Rosh Chodesh Elul will be one of peace.