This session we are studying miracles at GUCI, and we spent the first week learning how to recognize miracles in the world around us through Jewish blessings. In this next week, we are exploring various Jewish stories that tell of miraculous events, discovering how we can interpret them in multiple ways.

At the beginning of our second all-camp shiur (lesson), the Wizard of Awes challenged GUCI to figure out what the miracle of Chanukkah really is. Moreover, since one of the commandments around Chanukkah is to publicize the miracle, the Wizard also requested that camp come up with some way to tell the world about the miracle of Chanukkah.

To meet this challenge, campers and staff became investigative journalists who were writing the front page of a newspaper. Everyone had the chance to interview four personalities, each of whom represented a different view on the miracle of Chanukkah: Judah Maccabee, who said the miracle was that he and his family were able to defeat their oppressors; Rava of the Talmud, who said the real miracle was that God kept the small amount of oil lit for eight days; Marcus Jastrow, poet behind the song “Rock of Ages,” who said the miracle was God’s role in the military victory; and Israeli secular Zionist Aharon Ze’ev, composer of “Anu Nos’im Lapidim (We Carry Torches),” who said that no miracle occurred at all and that everything should be credited to the deeds of humans. After each interview, campers wrote a one- or two-sentence “article” representing the person’s view. Campers then drew the front-page “photo” that showed what they thought was the most important scene from the Chanukkah story, and they came up with headlines to tie their page together. The idea behind the whole activity was to explore different ways of interpreting the Chanukkah story from an “objective” perspective.

Finally, we needed a way to publicize the miracle, and to do this we recorded all of camp singing the Chanukkah song “Light One Candle” by Peter Yarrow. A few campers and counselors also volunteered to speak on camera about the concept of miracles and about GUCI miracles. This video, paired with the picture of all of camp in the shape of a Jewish star from the previous day’s Yom Sport, will be sent out to all of the URJ camps, publicizing our miracles. In doing so, we are also challenging the other camps to record and post videos showing and talking about their own miracles. Keep an eye out for an upcoming post on the GUCI blog with our video and the instructions for the miracle challenge.

In the end, the Wizard of Awes was very happy with GUCI’s work on Chanukkah, but he then challenged the camp to spend a few days learning