Dispatches from Camp: Making Friends

There's a special place in the world for the children of Jewish professionals.

(sometimes known as RK's - Rabbis' Kids - but I'm thinking of the children of all Jewish professionals!)

They live in a unique world...they are often in a fishbowl, observed on all sides by congregants. Everyone knows their names, they are public property in the synagogue.

They are the kids who know all the blessings, who can answer almost every question in Sunday School, and whose parents don't let them slack off on their Hebrew homework.

But they are also the kids whose parents love Judaism, who make it a part of their lives, who bring it alive in ways that many of their classmates never see.

Jewish summer camp is full of all kinds of kids. 

Jewish kids of all shapes and kinds, with all manner of background and experience. 

But for my children, camp is a uniquely special place. 

Even though they are not quite old enough to realize it, they are making friends that will last their lifetime. And many of those friends (although thankfully not all) are also children of Jewish professionals.

I hope that these are the friends that they can call when they are frustrated and fed up with their parents.
Their parents who are running synagogues.
And those friends will understand.

This is what I hope for my children.

(Pictures of Sam and his friend, whose mama is a Jewish educator and also serving on faculty at camp with me. They are hunting bugs and being spies...all at the same time.)