Machaneh Kadimah summer camp is LJY-Netzer’s biggest event of the year and the 5784 event was a truly magical experience once again.
Situated in the lovely Devon countryside, young Jews from all over the UK (and abroad) came together for the best two weeks of the year.
Camp was jam-packed with activities, featuring everything from whole camp Friday night dinners, to visiting Exmoor National Park, to reading from a Torah, to making friendship bracelets, to a giant paint fight! Our camp this year was a huge success; chanichimot (participants) and tzevet (leaders) formed strong friendships, worked collaboratively and learned together.
We had a theme of the year for our camp which was looking at ‘Tradition and Renewal’ in Judaism. Each year group participated in various sessions exploring this theme, ranging from exploring the origins of Liberal Judaism, to creating our own new traditions for Shabbat, to designing our own kippot.
Our youngest chanichimot learned about the five main prayers, the meanings of them and why we say them, whilst our older chanichimot learned about the history of Jews and the Enlightenment period. In line with the ‘tradition’ aspect of ‘Traditional and Renewal’, we of course had to make time to watch Fiddler on the Roof, too!
We were also lucky enough to have Noy, an Israeli educator who worked with LJY Israel Tours in 2022 and 2023, fly over to the UK to be with us for Kadimah. Noy was our Israel-Palestine educator for camp and they ran a variety of different sessions for all of our different age groups, including fascinating and relevant topics such as, Israel’s Declaration of Independence, peacebuilding organisations in the region and media literacy.
We had ma’amadim (creative prayer services) every day, in which chanichimot and tzevet prayed and sang, playing musical instruments together to create a meditative, spiritual atmosphere. We also celebrated two shabbatonim, which included Kabbalat Shabbat, Shacharit and Havdalah services that were made special by coming together for a whole camp Friday night dinner. For our second Shacharit service we were lucky enough to have a chanichol read that week’s parasha from a Torah that was kindly lent to us!
Kadimah had so many other amazing activities and sessions, almost too many to count, so here are some of the other highlights: a whole-camp singsong around the bonfire on Shabbat, a Star Wars themed disco, a surprise day with giant inflatables and a secret flashmob planned by Nechalim (Years 7 and 8) that was performed during the second Friday night dinner.
To all of the fantastic, hardworking leaders who volunteered on Kadimah this year – we are so grateful to you for running such an amazing camp for all our participants.
We can’t wait for next year!
