Over the past few years Gilboa has partnered with different communities to run in-person High Holidays programming, including IKAR, Shtibl Minyan, and the Kitchen in SF. This year we were able to bring these activities to Zoom and have Gilboa chanichimot (campers) join in on the fun and learning alongside kids from our 2020 partner communities, IKAR and TBI Highland Park.
Rosh Hashanah:
We were all hanging out on Zoom, saying hello and getting to know each other, when we suddenly heard a strange noise. It was coming from some of the participants. When they finally turned their cameras on, it turned out alien friends were visiting us! They had heard we were 6 months into a pandemic and had learned how to build community even when physically apart. Coincidentally, the aliens were dealing with the same issue on their planet so they joined us to learn from the pros!
Together we played a fun gameshow where we answered trivia questions about Rosh Hashanah, completed silly challenges, and went on scavenger hunts. Some of the questions on the board were secretly special values squares - if we chose one of these, we had the opportunity to share with the aliens what the core values of community are and how we've still been able to bring these values into our communities these past 6 months.
Yom Kippur
On Yom Kippur, the story of Jonah and the Whale guided us in thinking about our own places as individuals in fixing what's broken in the world and bringing about a more loving and just society.
The activity started with a mysterious phone call - apparently God was calling to say it was on us to fix the world! God made it seem so simple - just go tell people to stop hurting each other and the planet! Seeing how complicated the problems in the world are right now and that we didn't even know where to start, we decided it would be better to ignore the request, and just run and hide.
While in hiding we participated in reflection activities and were reminded of the story of someone else who ran away - Jonah! We heard a fun song re-telling of the story and discussed how both we and Jonah decided to hide when faced with a problem we didn't know how to solve. We explored other ways we could have handled the situation, such as asking for help.
The middle schoolers dug deeper into the question of how we each play a part in repairing the world. We discussed the teaching in Pirkei Avot that it is not on us to finish the work, but neither are we free to desist from doing the work.
We ended the activity with a fun game of charades, where we explored how we each wanted to contribute to the work of fixing the world.
8th Grade Madatz
Something especially fun about these High Holidays was that some of the 8th graders joined as madatz (CITs) - they were so much fun to have helping run the activities and they showed us how lucky we are to have them as our future madrichimot (camp educators)! Thanks for helping out, Sebastian, Camille, Flora, Mack, and Rachel!
Tzedek
The Tzedek chanichimot (9th-11th graders) are working hard to put together a voter education and phone banking event to oppose Prop 20 on Sunday October 25th, 2-3:30pm, so mark your calendars!
You can still register to participate in Gilboa year-round activities - dates & details here: https://www.campgilboa.org/virtual-eizor
Next activities are this weekend:
9th-11th Grade: Saturday 5pm (Zoom Join Link)
2nd-8th Grade: Sunday, Oct 4th, 4-5pm (Zoom Join Link)
Shana tova! We hope you all had a meaningful past few weeks and are looking forward to the coming year - together, we can work to make it better and bring more love and justice to our communities and to the world!