Rabbi Bill Plevan & Adat-haBogrim

Visiting Educator Rabbi Bill Plevan presented his d’var Torah to adat-haBogrim on Shabbat morning.  He asked the chanichim (campers) to do a mental exercise as follows: think of your favorite Palmer memory from this summer; imagine camp ending and going home; imagine telling a close friend about your memory; imagine what that person might think and say, and what you would want them to think and say.  Rabbi Bill emphasized the difficulty of sharing memories of camp with those who have never experienced it, but the Torah asks us to do something similar. In the commandment about Shabbat in the 10 commandments, Moses commands the people to remember that we were slaves in Egypt and were redeemed, even though we did not experience it ourselves. Sharing memories of our transformative experiences, like being at camp, is a way to pass on the meaning and power of those experiences.