I didn’t want to come to camp. From the outside looking in, it seemed like a faraway place endorsed by my rabbi that took my sister away from me. I came to camp kicking and screaming hoping my parents wouldn’t make me come. Now here I am, a month after my fifth and final year of camp. Looking back on the amazing memories gone by, I think about how wrong that Maskilimer was. I thought of camp as a place that took me away from my parents but in reality, it brought me to my family, because camp is my family.
I know I’m not the first to say this and I know I’m not the last. When I started to write this I wanted to express something original, but that doesn’t have to be the case. The feeling that camp is family may not be original, but the fact that it is shared my everyone makes it truer than if I had the thought independently. I met some of my best friends at Henry S. Jacobs; People who [I] can imagine my children one day will call “Aunt” or “Uncle.” Jacobs is where you find the people you want to be with and get to be with, all connected by a universal trait. Jacobs is a family, a family we get to be a part of, are a part of, and will always be a part of.
-Audrey Gold
Chalutzim 2018