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To come for a bring with the chevrin On sukkahs In a beautiful sukkah here in Yerushalayim Is a very special thing. To for a bring with With the chevrin, with Rav Rafi, with Rav Glanz, with Rav Shlass Looking for you in that corner. Moving on up. A big yashar kayach and a tremendous amount of akhar shtov to Rabbi Zaidi. And to Camp Masorah for putting this together. I know everyone here is excited about the prospect of what will be the summer, and this is an amazing first entry into Bez Hashem. What can be an amazing summer? Not more than 10 minutes ago, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Hagler for the first time. When he walked in, I turned to Rav Rafi and to Rav Glanz. I said, 'Who is that?' And I want to share with you. We're gonna be good friends, you and I.
Especially. You're gonna call me Darrell, Amos. And my father's like that, so I'll be masking too. I want to share with you an idea that I think ties very beautifully into a story that we were told just literally seconds ago. There are three features of the sukkah that we can highlight. In terms of the architecture of the sukkah. It's already well known. The Alter Rebbe spoke at length about the idea that a sukkah is a hug. Smoylei taches l'roishiv v'imini tchabkani. That the three walls of the sukkah represent the three parts of a person's arm. So it's two and a half walls, really. The first wall is from your shoulder to your elbow. The second wall is from your elbow to your wrist, and the third wall, which is half a wall, is from your wrist until your fingertips. It's a hug from the Rebbe Anishlam.
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That's one aspect of the architecture of a sukkah. The second aspect of the architecture of a sukkah is brought down in the halacha. Is that a person needs to be able to see through the schach to see the koychavim gedolim, to see the very large stars that we sit under. And the third aspect of the sukkah, perhaps the more kabbalistic aspect of the sukkah Is the yoshpizen. Tzaddikim that come to visit us every night. Each night there's a different one of the Yeshpizen that's the leader, but the Yeshpizen come to sit with us every night in the sukkah. The question is: What's the inner meaning of all these three things? Why do we need a hug? Why do we need to be able to see through the schach? And what's the significance? We don't have Yeshpizen L'mashal on Pesach. We don't have Avram, Yitzchak, and Yaakov sitting with us by our Pesach seder.
What's the significance of the idea that the Yeshpizen are sitting with us here in the sukkah? There's something. That needs to be articulated—the very special role that a camp can and often does play in a person's development. I think for many of us, it was for me this way growing up. For many of us, school feels very unsafe. School comes with a tremendous amount of pressure. School comes with With tests, but I don't just mean tests in the sense of you're going to have to sit there and get a score back. School comes with a lot of pressure to be a very certain type of person. The reality is that school, in no way, at least in my experience, is a predictor of success in life. If anything, it's actually often the opposite—that the talmidim that don't do well in school are actually exceptionally successful in life.
Was that true of you? It was not true. You were excellent in school. Yes. I'm over two. But I think that's okay. Maybe that's a predictor of my success in life. The famous joke is that the A students are there to challenge the teachers, the B students are there to challenge the A students, the C students are there to pay tuition, and the D students are the ones who actually pay the endowments. But my discipline was pretty bad. I'm confident that that's true. I had hay and discipline. I had hay and discipline, and I had hay and Gemara. It's not true. I never went to Gemara often enough to be able to get a grade. The school asks us to be a certain type of person. Life is a lot more expansive. The mess is that for many young men growing up It's true for the women as well.
Camp offers an opportunity to shine in a way that school doesn't necessarily allow you to. Even though I know today the joke is that schools have become camps Maybe part of the reason that schools have become more camp-like is because schools saw that in order to allow people to be more successful, they needed to be more expansive. And what's celebrated in life is when a person actually becomes themselves and has the opportunity to really reach deep into the heart of who they actually are and express that. A moment ago, we were hearing the story of why you purchased Camp Masora. And the story that we were just told. I'm working my way into calling you down, so just give me a second. The reason why he bought Camp Masora was because it was going to close. That was the whole reason. That was the whole story. I was expecting a long story. Was the whole story that this camp is going to close if I don't buy the camp? The camp is going to close. I'll buy the camp to keep it open.
There's a lot of things that a person can do with their money. To have the opportunity to invest in a camp Not because the camp makes money. In fact, we were told quite openly that camps are basically not profitable businesses. But to buy it because kids need a place to go. That's actually the right hashkafa of why we should be running camps. I grew up in a camp. Simcha Day Camp in the Five Towns, and Richie Altabey, who ran that camp. He didn't run it to make a profit. In fact, it never made enough of a profit to justify its existence. He ran it because it was a place for kids in the community to flourish. That was the camp that I grew up in. Honestly, it's the camp that I flourished in. Ten months a year, I was a miserable kid. For two months a year in camp, I shined because I was outside of the normal restrictions of what life expected of me.
And if I've done anything in my life, it's because of the summers, not necessarily because of the year. And I have tremendous hakaras hatov to my rebbeim and to the hanhala of my yeshivas, but I have at least as much hakaras hatov, if not more, to Richie Alteby, who ran Simcha Day Camp. He had every opportunity to ask me to leave camp, and he never did. In fact, I'll tell you a maysa. Years later, when I was already frum and I was back in camp. Paying it forward So there was a young man who was in camp, and he was doing very inappropriate things behind the campus, in an area where kids couldn't see. And I went to Richie and I said to him, "I don't understand how you're keeping this guy in camp." And without even flinching, he looked at me. It's the same way I kept you in camp.
And I was like, it was such a drop the mic moment. I had nothing left to say. And he explained to me, there were people over the years that said you shouldn't be here, but I stuck with you. Camp gives a person the opportunity to flourish, and camps have the ability to be patient and to allow people to become who they're meant to be. That's what's special about a camp. It's literally the model of what a sukkah is. The model of what a sukkah is, it's a hug. It's a place that tells you you're safe. It's a place that tells you. We want you here. This is a place of belonging. We surround you with amazing people. That's the yeshpizen. It's not just anybody that gets to come to camp. You guys who grew up in camp have a responsibility, and I mean this with every fiber of my being.
To be in camp is not just a privilege; it's an obligation. You have an obligation to be the people that We're the same people for you. You have to be those people for the next generation of Klal Yisrael. That's your responsibility. We owe it to Klal Yisrael to keep this thing going. That's the nature of what it means to be a yid. There's that famous line. An Israeli politician. What does it mean to be a Jew? He whose grandchildren are Jewish. The primary responsibility of a yid is to keep it going. And to improve every generation to make the community stronger. We are all the beneficiaries of a tremendous amount—tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars—that went into every one of our education, and not just our education, but our entire Jewish community. Think about the people that poured lave v'nefesh into you. Those people are now asking you—not overtly, but with all of their actions—to be that same person for the next kid.
And you might think Can I really have an impact on a ten-year-old, on an eleven-year-old, on a twelve-year-old? Profoundly and dramatically, the ability to be mashpia on a child is enormous. In camp this summer, we're beis Hashem going to have so many different models of how we impact these campers. I think part of the brilliance of what the Zayitis are putting together is that we're going to have two models: a model where there's going to be a beis medrash with vibrant learning, and the campers are going to be drawn like mosquitoes to the light. They're going to come to our beis medrash and see guys seriously sitting and learning and growing, and that's going to provide for them role models to look up to. That one day I could be a guy who also has a chelak in Torah and a place in the beis medrash.
And then we're going to have another model. Also where guys will be in the beis medrash, but taking the beis medrash out onto the courts, out into the fields, out into the chadarocha. And it's really the perfect blend of what impact looks like. Some people shine so brightly that people are drawn to them. Some people take their light out into the streets. Both are amazing models. And everyone clares back and forth, what's the right model, what's the wrong model? I don't know what's right or what's wrong. I just know that the Zaydis were smart enough to have both And that says a lot about the camp that's being built here. And on that note, I just want to jump off and say this publicly. This whole project really started because Hashgacha practice led me to Camp Masorah on a Friday morning where I wasn't supposed to be, or at least I thought I wasn't supposed to be, Friday morning in Camp Masorah. When I went to visit camps last summer And even though I had a little bit known that Zaydi's only through only by proxy through their son, but having the opportunity to sit with Rabbi and Rebbitz and Zaydi on that Friday morning was a game changer.
I like following people who have unbelievable integrity. I like following people who have unbelievable humility. In yeshiva, that's why I bought into Rav Isaac so early on. He leads with 100% integrity and 100% humility. And I saw those very same features in the Tzaddis. Just the gentle nature of the Tzaddis. It's not surprising to me that people with such integrity, such humility. The way that they're approaching the camp is how can we have the greatest possible impact? How can we look for every avenue of impact? That's why I'm so excited to be a part of this project And I know that's the way that Rav Rafi and Rav Glantz feel as well. I know it's the way Rav Shlomtz feels, and I'm really excited and exceptionally passionate about bringing people into camp that have the same hashkafa as we do. That yes, you're going to have an amazing time, and of course, there's going to be tremendous growth.
But we're looking for people that are coming because they're saying, "I have an achrayus." I have an achrayus. I have an achrayus to something larger than myself. And I'm here not because I'm focused on my own growth. I'm here because I'm focused on somebody else's growth. There's no room for selfishness in Yiddishkeit. There's no room for it. There's some room for a person to take some time in their life to be inwardly focused, so that they can then take that and share it with the world. But there is no room for selfishness, and there is some movement today in Yiddishkeit. I don't know where it came from, but there's some movement, very, very different than the Yiddishkeit I grew up in. There's some movement that makes this like It's my year to be selfish. This is my time to be selfish. There is no time in a yid's life where we have any right to be selfish. Oyel mechesed Yibane, the Rebbeinu Shlom created the world with giving, and that is our entire tafkid. Our entire tafkid is to be a giver.
When, not if When we surround these campers with the hug of the sukkah and amazing influences, we will see the final step, which is that we will naturally see these campers look up. They'll gaze upwards, and as they gaze upwards, they're going to see through the ceilings of their life. Everyone thinks that they have a ceiling. Everyone knows this is what I can become, and I can't become anything more than that. And everyone thinks this is who I am. We live in very limiting belief systems about what we can achieve and accomplish. And actually, the great ones are the ones that they're able to look at the ceiling and see through, and they're able to see what you think I am is not even close to what I could be. A great rebbe sees that in his talmud, he sees who he could become. A great talmud is someone who sees it in himself.
When we give these campers an amazing environment, you're going to see they're going to naturally start to look up. They're going to peer through and they're going to see unbelievable stars. They're going to see the kaihavim gadolim. Who are the kaihavim gadolim? That's themselves. They're going to be able to look inwards and see their own greatness. I want to bless every one of us that this is just the first of many fabragnens. Bez Hashem, perhaps we'll have more over the year, but certainly we will have many in the summer. I'm sorry, frankly, that I'm only coming for two weeks of it. I really am. Betz Hashem, it's going to be an unbelievable thing. I'm exceptionally excited about this. Yiratzimuf ne'avinu shabashamayim, that the iris of the Sukkot should be the iris that we take with us into the rest of this year. And Betz Hashem, all the growth that we do this year, we should have the capacity to give it back to our campers this summer.
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