The following is an excerpt from Ahava Salomon’s Bat Mitzvah speech that was delivered at camp this past Saturday. 

I was given the chance to see Judaism from another side at camp. A side where you use teamwork, patience, and friendship to have an amazing summer. People always ask me what my favorite part of camp is, and I assume they usually expect answers like ‘the BLOB!’ or ‘messy night’, but the truth about camp is that it’s just the feeling. I used to sit in services at home and wonder what I was supposed to be feeling. Listening to these people sing songs and chant in a language I only partially understand. Shouldn’t I be feeling G-d’s presence or really anything other than just tired? I would always be confused, just waiting to feel what every movie or rabbi described as ‘holy’. Then I came to Henry S. Jacobs Camp where I got pink eye for the first time and stung by a wasp on the first day of camp. Where I got lice twice and poison ivy all over my legs. Where my whole entire family, including dogs and cousins, once showed up for Shabbat. Where the pool turned green and I learned how to chug water due to the sometimes suffocating heat in the middle-of-nowhere Utica, Mississippi. So why, then, since the first time I came in those gates, have I always felt something special here? Maybe because of the grilled cheese they serve on the first day of camp and the things you create in the art room. Or because of seeing how high I can climb on the tower and screaming my head off at Friday night song sessions. Because of the people I see once a year and cry when I don’t. Because of the skits that always manage to make your day brighter. Or maybe because after 13 years of going to shul in a dress that goes to my knees and covers my shoulders completely, I am here on this bema in a onesie. Thanks Mama! It’s all of this together, the good and the bad, that creates this feeling of joy, anticipation, warmth, love, and pride, or, as I’ve learned to say, Holiness.