In honor of the start of the rainy season in Israel, here’s a guest post from Ezra Epstein, Yagilu alumnus and current star counselor. Register now for Yagilu 2019!

Ideas I learned from Camp Yagilu:

1. People Are Waterproof

My fellow Y2 campers and I were hesitant to work in the rain. Our counselor, Josh Botwinick, didn’t understand why. “People are waterproof!” he said. “It’s not like we were going to melt in the rain.”

I was stunned. I had never realized that before. And he was completely right. I had simply been told my entire life that when it rains, you go inside. The only reason for my initial discomfort was that I hadn’t bothered to think objectively about how to react to rain. And this awareness of my own faulty thinking was mind-bending.

I wondered what else in my life needed reevaluation.

2. Use A Rock

Another lesson I learned in Yagilu happened when I was working on a project and reached a point when I needed a hammer. But there were no hammers. So I told my counselor, “I can’t continue. There are no hammers.”

“There are hammers everywhere!” he said, pointing to all the rocks scattered around the forest. “Rocks are nature’s hammers!”

Not only does Yagilu challenge you to question the way you think, it also encourages you to come up with creative solutions to everyday problems. This was far from the only time I was challenged to think outside the box in Yagilu. No sponge for cleaning out your bowl on a hike? Use a clump of moss. Nothing to sit on? Use a tree stump. Broken car door? Use some rope.

All it takes to solve a challenging situation is a little imagination.

3. Make One

Here is the most powerful lesson I learned in Yagilu. It helped me discover a quality of divine creativity that exists in every person, but is usually ignored.

The lesson: If you want something, make it.

After hopping off the bus on the first day of Y2, the counselors wouldn’t give us rope to work with until we made some rope from scratch. That hand-made rope had to be strong enough to hold the weight of one of the heavier counselors! This theme continued throughout the course of the summer.

“I need an extra shelf.” 
“Make one.”

“I need a new knife.”
“So make one.”

“I lost my kippah.”
“So make a new one.”

This was taken to the extreme when we were directed to construct our own community – including shelters for sleeping, a communal living room, a kitchen, a workout space, and a shul – using only the rope we earned and whatever we could find in the forest.

Since the beginning of time, human beings have been capable of making things with their hands. For better or for worse, this gift has become more or less irrelevant in today’s world of economic prosperity, when everything is handed to you, ready-made.

When I first became reunited with this G-d-given gift of mine, the ability to make things with my bare hands, I could feel the creative power coursing through my veins. This is one of the ways Hashem made us like Him, and it allows us to be a partner with Him in creation.

Everybody deserves to be reunited with this gift. It doesn’t necessarily have to be at Yagilu. But for some reason, our campers don’t seem to discover this special superpower they possess anywhere else.

Sign up here for Yagilu 2019-Early Bird Deadline if you send in the deposit by Sunday, Oct 7.

Ezra Epstein is currently a Madrich at Yeshivat Aish Gesher, Aish HaTorah’s gap year program for Orthodox young men.