By By Isaac Brynjegard-Bialik: Nice Jewish Artist, URJ Camp Newman Hagigah Artist
This summer at URJ Camp Newman was my eleventh in a row as an artist with Hagigah, the arts track for 10th and 11th graders. As usual, I spent a few hours a day for two weeks cutting paper with them; after all, that’s what I do in my “real” life outside camp. But for the past three summers I’ve also spent that time making a mosaic with some of the Hagigah campers.
Step one is always the same: we start by studying text. This year we decided on a big piece focused on the idea of community, so I brought a few ideas to the kids to jumpstart their brains, and asked them what community in a camp context meant to them. They came up with a dozen or so great ideas, but when I asked them to vote on their favorites, the choice was unanimous:
They wanted to represent the moment in Erev Shabbat services when their counselors hold up their tallitot up to bless the campers with the words of Hashkiveinu.
I sketched out a few ideas and found a way to express what they wanted to show, and then we got to work. In just six one-hour sessions, these 20 campers completed 24 square feet of mosaic. They chose the colors; they chose to add a hamsa and a Jewish star and flowers on the tallitot; they picked the words we added to drive home the message of community. After a day of grouting, we were done – and the result was spectacular!
What really got to me, though, was how the mosaic-making process was a microcosm for the camp experience …
Not everyone came to the table with the same experience or ability; not everyone had the same interest in every part of the process; but we all had to work together to get it done – and we did. Everyone learned how to choose and break and combine tile to create an image, and the resulting mosaic was truly a group effort. It’s a representation of the community we choose, and the community we build – steeped in religious and cultural traditions, but constantly being remade and renewed by every single camper.
