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Camp helps us feel closer to God.”  With this sentence, I opened my dialogue with the summer leadership staff of URJ Camp Newman, a Reform Jewish sleepaway camp, at our annual retreat. As it turns out, even some of our rabbinic students felt uneasy about this language and its placement within our opening conversation.

The title of a recent JTA article asks these two questions:

This year at our Passover seder, I experienced something deeply powerful which I had not felt in the context of Passover before.

For a people with just one God, we Jews sure do a lot of counting. 

Three patriarchs, four matriarchs, six days of creation, eight nights of Hanukkah, 12 tribes, 40 years in the desert, 70 years in a life - 80 if we’re really robust. You get the picture…

I stood on the border of my wilderness.
It beckons in silent commandment,
My feet feeling for the road
That is dusty and half hidden
Under brambles and
Desire.

by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Galilee Diary and Ten Minutes of Torah)