Purim and Camp- A Match Made in Heaven
Tonight we celebrate the holiday of Purim, where we commemorate the story of Esther, who stopped Haman’s plot to murder the Jews with the assistance of her uncle Mordechai. Perhaps there is not a holiday more apropos to camp than Purim. While there are many connections between the values and culture of camp and Purim, we want to highlight our top three.
On Purim we put on masks, dress in costumes and explore aspects of ourselves and different personalities. Some of us dress up as heroes, some as jesters and clowns, some as villains, some as pop culture references and some in costumes that can’t be categorized but are great fun. We dress up for many reasons, but perhaps it is to explore the parts of ourselves we don’t get to express every day. At camp, you are not forced or labeled to be any one kind of person. Just like wearing a costume on Purim, you get to self-select your camp experience. Some people choose to spend all summer in the water, some playing sports or making art, and some on the ropes course, while others mix and match to build the experience they desire. This allows the person who plays sports all year long to try their hand at ceramics, or riding a horse, or editing a film. Just like we explore who we are and want to be on Purim, at camp we get to broaden ourselves through the plethora of specialties offered. And just like Esther had to face an unthinkable challenge when confronting Achashverosh with Haman’s (boooooo!!) evil plan, we push ourselves to try new things and overcome challenges each summer, ranging from just coming to camp to the leap of faith, participating in the camp play and so much more.
All this self-exploration and broadening we do allows us all be the person we truly are at camp. As we said, Esther had to go to Achashverosh and showed the king who she was, which put her in grave danger. Luckily at camp, we are encouraged to be who we are in the truest form, and that is celebrated in each of us. Campers and staff are not pushed to conform into a mold or pre-determined model because we celebrate kehillah (community) at camp and we know a kehillah is made up of individuals who display our other core values of kavod (respect) and chesed (kindness) to one another. Part of displaying those values is being the real you and treating others the way they expect to be treated, so they do the same for you.
Not quite as deep and perhaps a little obvious, but Purim is arguably the campiest holiday as it is the most festive holiday. Purim is all about fun- we dress up, we cheer and boo as we hear the story, we play games, we sing songs, and we are just merry. That screams camp! Dressing up in costumes is almost as campy as s’mores and Chi Burning. The SITs’ Saturday Shabbat meal costumes are as much part of Shabbat as the morning cinnamon rolls, and that’s just a taste of the dressing up we do at camp. All day every day at camp we are playing. Not to win necessarily, but playing for the sake of play, just to have fun, and as we said Purim is THE fun holiday and we love it. And of course, there are the songs and noise associated with Purim celebrations. Where at camp do we dress up in costumes, sing songs, yell, cheer, and shout? The campiest moment of each week is song session, which has so many similarities to Purim celebrations. Song Session checks all the boxes of Purim: Costumes- yup. Cheering- yup. Drowning out with noise- absolutely. Incredible amounts of fun- you got it! Song session may actually be the ultimate Purim celebration.
Purim occurs in the Hebrew month of Adar. Adar is known as the festive month and many say “Be Happy- It’s Adar!” And while we are happy it is Adar now, with all the similarities between Purim and camp, we know that in just over 100 days, we’ll be saying something very similar, “Be Happy- it’s Camp!”