In day camps, overnight camps and youth programs all over, children are doing their part to support the people in Israel.
In Montreal, the Lubavitch Youth Organization hosted a rally recently with some 700 children from five different day camps gathered to pray, sing and show that they care.
At Camp Emunah in Greenfield Park, N.Y., program director Baila Kievman reports that the 300 children there have been gathering every day at 6:30 p.m. to partake in what she dubbed “Children Unite for Our Holy Land.” Assembling in the overnight camp’s synagogue, they learn a verse of Torah related to G‑d’s constant attention to the Holy Land, recite Psalm 121 in prayer and give coins to charity—forming what the Talmud (Avot 1:2) refers to as the “three pillars upon which the world stands: Torah, service and acts of kindness.”
“I passionately feel the kids can make the whole difference in a situation like this one,” she says. “When the Jews were threatened by Haman and King Ahasuerus, Mordechai gathered the children to study Torah, and the Rebbe [Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory] did the same when Israel was in danger in the past.”
Kievman says she does not go into detail with the children about the technicalities of war.
“We tell them the Jewish people are facing challenging times,” she explains. “We are at war with Hamas, which is a terrorist group that wants to enter Israel to hurt people, and the soldiers are fighting for the safety of Israel. We talk a lot about how every mitzvah counts, no matter how far away we are. The Rebbe would tell the children that they are soldiers whose tools are mitzvahs. Every mitzvah is our ammunition against evil. The more good we have, the more we protect our soldiers.”
Taking it to the next level, Kievman has used social networking, as well as the resources available at her husband’s real estate office, to invite camps, families and individuals to join them at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time for Torah, prayer and charity every day.
“I’ve gotten responses from as far as Australia, Canada and Mexico, with people telling me that they are doing it,” she enthuses, “and there are so many more that I have no way of even knowing about.”
(For some camps, like the Machne Yisrael Day Camp in Queens, N.Y., that are not operational in the evening, the daily routine is held at another time of day.)
One place that has adopted the practice is Camp Gan Israel in Parksville, N.Y. Head counselor Nachmon Dov Wichnin says all the children are into helping, even the kids who have a harder time throwing themselves into things.
And the prayers work wonders: “We had an intercamp game with staff from another camp, and we took a break to say Psalm 121. The kids appreciate that our way of dealing with the situation is with prayers.”
He also encourages the children to extend the kindness beyond the coins they place in the tzedakah box. “I tell them how we can all be kinder, more considerate and nicer friends throughout the entire day, and that is how we can transform the entire world into a place of peace.”
Sending Them Gifts
With his bar mitzvah in just two months, Daniel Chikvashvili had wanted to do something special to help others. This week, he found his cause.
“My older sisters and I have been following the situation in Israel through Facebook and other ways, and we are aware of how often the sirens go off there,” says the 12-year-old from Melville, N.Y. “I imagine that some of the younger children probably don’t have many toys, so I decided to send them some gifts.”
Together with his mother and Chabad Rabbi Dovid Weinbaum—co-director of the Jewish Chai Center in nearby Dix Hills with his wife, Mirel, and who is preparing him for his bar mitzvah—David picked up puzzles, tricycles, plush toys and other goodies at a nearby Target—sharing the cost with his parents.
He wrapped them up nicely, affixed a note in Hebrew on top, and is looking forward to sending them to children in Sderot and other cities in southern Israel—areas that have been particularly hit hard by Hamas rocket fire from Gaza.
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