Elevating Elul - 5 Elul 5780 with Cantor Shira Lissek & Jacob Cytryn
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5 Elul 5780
Our Elevating Elul series continues with messages
from Cantor Shira Lissek and Jacob Cytryn!
Click the image below to watch Cantor Shira Lissek's beautiful video and then read Jacob Cytryn's inspiring message below.
Cantor Shira Lissek is the Cantor at Temple Israel in Charlotte, NC
A Message From Jacob Cytryn
I imagine it is jarring for all of us who are invested in transformative Jewish summer camp and Israel experiences to deal with their absence this year. For twelve years I joined the Ramah families from B’nai Amoona and my fellow campers from around St. Louis at Lambert Airport as we boarded the short flight to Chicago and then on to camp. Those were the first years of my thirty straight summers at camp. For B’nai Amoona, ties to Ramah date back to the earliest years of camp when Rabbi Lipnick Z”L served as the administrative maestro who translated the radical creativity of educator Louis Newman Z”L into a realistic and potent educational experience for campers and staff in the early 1950s.
Every summer at camp we witness at least one breathtaking rainbow – a colorful miracle stretching across the gorgeous sky of Wisconsin’s Northwoods. I didn’t see any rainbows this summer, save for one or two through the sprinkler as my sons tried to stay cool in our front yard. Those camp rainbows seem unimportant when we think about the overwhelming losses to the Jewish community this summer: too many deaths; too much illness; Torah scrolls left unread. Less tragic but very significant as we look to our Jewish future – an entire camp season of Jewish living, friends, independence, and unbelievable fun has been erased.
The majesty and miracle of the rainbow make a brief and implicit appearance in the Zichronot (memories) section of Rosh Hashanah Musaf. Zichronot here refer not to our memories but to God’s. The collection of ten Biblical verses in Zichronot are reminders to God of moments and episodes when God remembered human beings, expressions of God’s love we hope will be repeated in our own time. The examples of these moments begin with the most universalistic of them all: when God remembered Noah and the animals in the ark and “calmed the waters.” A little later in the story we learn that the rainbow, the calm after the storm, will forever be a sign to us that God shall not destroy the world again.
We tend to focus inwardly during the High Holy Day season, asking ourselves how we can improve as human beings. This year I think it appropriate that we channel an ancient Jewish instinct and engage with God on how, in partnership, we can push each other – humanity and God – to make the world a more livable place.
God, please show us the figurative rainbows that have been so hard to find during the last six months. Reassure us that the stormy waters will soon subside. May next summer’s rainbows at camp be a sign, like they were for Noah, of smoother sailing ahead.
-Jacob Cytryn,
Executive Director of Camp Ramah, Wisconsin
