5/31 SOL

 My favorite two more religious things we do at camp are celebrate Shabbat, and Havdalah. Shabbat is the seventh day of creation; God rested so the Torah commands us to do so as well. There is a nice dinner and we all dress fancy and have a party. There is lots of singing and dancing, and religious food such as challah. The last Shabbat, I was one of the five or six people that played the Jewish prayers/songs on the guitar before we went to bed. The lights were off and the whole camp was singing along side by side, hand in hand. It is just a special moment when you are singing these prayers and songs with a special bond with the camp in a big circle all connected. People say they have comfort food, but these songs and tunes and even this memory is my comfort. I feel at home when I sing the songs and the songs remind me of a place where I belong. The words go "Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai Elohanu Adonai Echad. Baruch shame kivod malchuto l'olam vaed." The next song I also played is called the Haskivanu and it goes "Haskivanu Adonai Elohanu L'shalom V'hamidanu Malkanu L'chiyim." There are other versus but normally we just repeat this verse.

        Havdalah is when Shabbat ends and there is no party but we have a ritual. We all sit in a circle with a cup of wine, a jar of sweet smelling things like cinnamon, and a braided candle in the center and we sing a couple of songs about the objects in Hebrew, and the other two I mentioned. As I sit next to two of my friends,  I sway ever so gently to the music as I sing along to the familiar lyrics. I just close my eyes and feel the warmth of the candle on me even though it is very small. This is my home away from home, and the songs are part of me. The lyrics are repeated and I don't want this night to end as the jar of cinnamon gets passed around and everyone takes in the soft smell and wish for a sweet week like the cinnamon. I am exhausted from the long day and almost fall asleep on my friends shoulder, but I keep singing while I sit there. During the part when we sing about the candle, we hold up our hands and watch the light and the shadows crawl around our fingers as we move them around. The candle is a dark orange and almost fills the room, with only a single flame. The candle rests in a tin where the blue wax slowly drips down from the heat I love.The last part of the ritual marks the end of Shabbat, which is dipping the candle in the wine and hearing the crackle as it burns out. Before I go to bed when I am laying in my stiff cot, I still mumble the lyrics because I don't want the night to end.