If You Build it, They Will Come!
Did you ever wonder what Camp looks like in the snow? What goes on in Windgale during the agam (lake) frozen. What really does go on in Windgale during the winter? Ramahniks clamor for such details.
We who work year-round for Camp spend a lot of the off-season planning, discussing, analyzing and improving the physical plant of our beloved Wingdale site. We consult with many experts, many of whom volunteer their time, specialties and thoughts. In painstaking detail, we analyze such questions as : how can we best design a camper bunk that enhances the quality of life for the campers? How do we turn our various kikarim (fields) into the perfect ultimate Frisbee playing field? How do we keep the public buildings cool during the hot days of summer?
We can trace this adherence to detail through our heritage. We need look no further than the Parashat HaShavua for this week (Terumah) to see the original source for such concentration on the particulars of physical space. The text in Parashat Terumah is among the most detailed in the Torah, giving instructions for the design and building of the mishkan (Tabernacle). That the entire parasha is dedicated to such minutia of the construction and design of the mishkan is testament to its significant religious importance. The Tabernacle was to be the ultimate sacred space, with the ultimate honor: it was to be a place where God dwells. V’Asu Li Mikdash v’shachanti betocham : And let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. (Etz Hayim translation).
Does God really dwell in one physical space? We believe that Kedusha, sanctity; is not in one physical place. Holiness is in the worship of God, in the communication with God. So why so much detail about building and design, if the actual space is not what embodies holiness? The words of the Torah “V’asu Li Mikdash” can be interpreted in a more figurative sense: God’s sanctuary is not a room or even a wing of the mishkan. God’s words in the text bring us to consider the notion of sacred space, a sort of travelling holy place. The sanctuary is symbolic of a non-literal holy space. God’s sanctuary, sacred space, is every place we experience God’s presence.
We all know that Camp Ramah is not really the snowy, cold Wingdale site, with an empty hadar ochel, and without children playing on the fields. While it is the recognizable physical site of Camp, it is still a shell. What transforms the well-planned, constantly maintained physical space into Machaneynu (our camp)? The agam needs to be filled with kayaks and swimmers, we need to hear the sounds voices of over five hundred children singing “Ivdu et Ha Shem,” sports hug practicing on the fields, and the laughter wafting from within the tzrifim (bunks) in order to be Machaneynu. And having all of these things not only transforms Camp into Machaneynu, but also into a sacred space, a mikdash. Just as the mikdash, sanctuary, in Parashat Terumah, is not solely a holy space as is, we see that the off-season camp facility is not, by itself a holy space. We know that it is when we are all together, experiencing those unique moments as a community, that we are feeling God’s presence. This is the way that Camp does become sacred space.
The physical space is essential, but not sacred without the other elements. It is exciting to see photos of camp in the winter; we feel nostalgic for the physical site to which we feel attached. But it is not truly the A-Side Kikar or Bet Am Bet that are compelling: we internalize our feelings of how Camp becomes a mikdash during the summer, and connect physical space to the sacred. In the winter, we imagine being in Camp during the summer, when it comes alive, and when the physical and spiritual combine to make it a mikdash, a space where we feel God’s presence.
