WHERE THE JOURNEY BEGINS, AND WHERE IT LEADS… (But never ends)

Dear Parents,

We learn from the story in Genesis of Abraham welcoming strangers into his tent that hospitality is a great mitzvah. We have several holidays (Sukkot, Pesach, and Shabbat among them) that are partially built upon the Jewish value of welcoming guests. Taking together the sanctity of hospitality and the proposition of “the more, the merrier,” tonight GUCI just may be the holiest place on earth.

Most weeks, due to limited space, we are able to invite only a small number of guests to join our on-camp community for the celebration of Shabbat. Tonight, the walls of the Chadar Ochel will be bursting as we welcome an assemblage of visitors who are actually larger than two of our camp units. The majority of these guests are coming to camp as a part of one of two different groups… Camp K’ton families, and Avodah 2003.

Many of our camper families from outside Indianapolis may not be aware that we run a day-camp onsite for local children too young to participate in the overnight program. Camp K’ton has been operating here for several decades, and recently we have begun inviting these families to join us for one Shabbat each summer so they can be a part of the full camp community and see how GUCI operates at its best. My hope is that all of these children will want to someday become overnight campers with us, and that this Shabbat is the first step toward a lifetime of friendships, memories, and Jewish discovery as a part of our family.

With all of these folks just beginning their “GUCI careers” tonight, we have just as many who will be looking back at friendships and memories solidified long ago. Almost two dozen former Avodahnikim will return to camp this evening to commemorate the tenth anniversary of a special summer of work and study that for many helped to re-orient the direction of their Jewish lives. The large number of people who actually return to camp so many years later for these events is a testament to the impact that their camp journey has had on them.

Fittingly, I know that some of the returning Avodahnikim themselves began their camp careers as day-campers at Camp K’ton. And so this Shabbat is one in which we get to join old friends in celebrating a Jewish identity that has come full-circle. It makes me smile to think of doing this in the presence of more campers and families who are just at the start of this beautiful journey, a journey that leads down many roads, but never ends. Once a member of the GUCI family, always a member of the GUCI family.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Mark Covitz

Director, Goldman Union Camp Institute