Memories From Camp | Rabbi Yisroel Besser

There are people in the world who are Camp People. And if you're one of them, then you know what I mean. That means those... that month in the year or three weeks or two months or whatever it is, become such a big part of your identity, that even when you're a little bit older and you see people go around, people with gray hair or white hair, people who have grandchildren already, they still get emotional and excited and passionate when they talk about camp. When they remember those days, they could still tell you who was in their bunk and where everybody slept. They could tell you the words to their marching song in color war. It becomes such a big part of their identity. Not long after I left camp, just a few years after my wedding, I was less than a decade out of camp, I had the opportunity, which for me was a dream, I had to meet with R’ Dovid Cohen shlit”a, who was in Camp Munk, the camp I went to my whole life for the summers. So I was ecstatic. I was like, besides the merit of meeting a great man, R’ Dovid Cohen, I have an excuse to go to Camp Munk. And really, I was looking for any excuse just to walk up the path, to go walk on those grounds again. So much nostalgia, so many memories, such a big part of who I am. And I remember the feeling when I parked and I walked up, and I'm thinking, like, Okay, I'm back. Do they realize that I'm back? I was here for so many years of my life. I wrote such good theme songs in color war that everybody sang and I scored the good goals in the hockey games that everybody cheered for. I'm sure the whole camp is going to be ecstatic that I’m back. And I saw a bunch of like probably 17-18 year old boys on chairs under a tree, exactly where I had spent so many hours in that same spot. And I went over to them and I said: Oh, what's your job? waiting to tell them: Oh, you know that I wrote that song, or I was here, and they'll ask me and I'll share some of the lore and some of the history. And I quickly realized that they weren't that interested. I was just another old guy with a pot belly, coming up to tell them his war stories. And I realized, they were nice kids, well brought up kids, good character traits and everything, but they didn't care, because now they were in camp and this was their place. And okay, your time was and now it's not and move on, right? And I understand it now a little bit but I didn’t understand then so well, because it was great at the moment, it was great while it lasted, I'm happy that you enjoyed the experience, but the camp doesn't care about you once that time is over. In spirituality, it's the exact opposite. The moments when those latent powers came forth, the moments when you were biggest, are the moments that live on forever. Who's the Rebbe of Vayimaen? Yosef Hatzaddik. He refused. Yosef told the wife of Potiphar at that fateful encounter, he said to her, he wasn't, he didn't agree to be with her. He wasn't okay to be with her. Rashi says, What's the double expression of ‘to be with her’? Says Rashi: In This World and in the Next World, in This World and in the Next World neither. Now the question is obvious. Who ever said anything about the Next World? She never proposed anything to do with the Next World. She wasn't asking him to get married to her, to be his soulmate. She was asking for a single action, a single deed in This World, very much in This World. So why was he busy thinking, like, Not in This World and not in the Next World? Yosef Hatzaddik understood that what a person does lives on forever. This World, Next World, it just looks like scotch tape on your shoe. You just can't get it off. It's certainly like that with holiness. Your best moments do define you. So in the world of camp, you can't be 50 years old and still be a camp legend. Nobody cares. But in the world of spirituality, a challenge that you stood up to when you were 13 or 16 or 18 or 21 or 30, it lives on forever, defining you that you're a person of greatness, that you’re a person of strength, that you’re a person of depth, that you're a person of tremendous potential. The merits level is on ways you don't even know. Good things happen to you, Tefillos are answered, you don't even know why, but the Ribono Shel Olam does.