Joining the Marine [Park] Core!

Harav Chaim Yisroel Halevi Belsky, zt”l, with his Masmidim at a campfire a few years ago.

Summer Reveries, Part I: Bonfires

Ah, bonfires! What fantastic memories I have of great summer campfires, hertzige singing, inspired storytelling, and the like! I am not in the least surprised. After all, the term “bonfire” denotes a good fire, doesn’t it? I mean, we learned in high-school French class that “bon” in French means “good,” didn’t we? Therefore, a bonfire is in essence a “good fire.” Isn’t it?

Sorry, but that’s just not so. The word “bonfire” used to be spelled “bonefire,” and its definition was “a funeral pyre” (one at which bones are burned). Horrifying! On the contrary, the French term for “bonfire” is “feu de joie,” or “fire of joy.” Now that makes sense!

Fires of joy! And what unified simchah these campfires represent! The camaraderie of young Jewish kids staring as if hypnotized at the multicolored flames issuing forth from burning pine, gray-birch, or red-cedar (really, juniper!) logs has been welded by the campfire which they are observing. (No wonder that, as meforshim point out, we make a “borei m’orei ha-eish”—and not a “borei m’ohr ha-eish”—on the multi-wick-generated flames of our havdalah candles, since there is more than one color discernible in most fires!)

Camp Agudah’s Masmidim at a bonfire

Fires of joy! I can’t help but recall that the word for “enthusiasm” in Lashon Hakodesh is “hislahavus,” which really means something like “to set oneself ablaze.” Enthusiasm: What a perfectly apt way to describe the emotion necessary to perform our mitzvos properly in camp and at home—and with genuine feeling!<

It was just last month that we read Parashas B’ha’aloscha; that word “b’ha’aloscha” is defined by Rashi as lighting the wicks of the Menorah in the Mishkan until the flames ascended by themselves. Let’s apply this concept to Jewish summer camping. Counselors and staff members are able to utilize such a challenging opportunity to enflame their charges with a fiery Yiddishkeit—the likes of which is difficult to find during the regular school year, but which may be easily inculcated at a summer bonfire.

Yes, summer is assuredly here. The “fires of joy” have returned once more, redolent of similar “fires of joy” that I witnessed two months ago on Lag BaOmer in Eretz Yisroel. There I observed that children—and adults too, I might add—were veritably transfixed by the flickering colors, the massive heat, and the “b’ha’aloscha” of the bonfires kindled in Yerushalayim and Meron—indeed, all over the Holy Land. We are not speaking here about some perverse sort of pyromania, let me assure you. The deep-seated kiddusha which I experienced on that Yom Hilula D’Rashbi was almost palpable!

Fires of joy! Let us pray to the Eibishter that He grant our children the wherewithal to grow during the summer months—nay, not just to grow but to flourish and develop spiritually, intellectually, and physically. Then we shall all have the opportunity to see even in the tiny flickering of our Shabbos lecht the true essence of Divinely inspired peace and satisfaction.

Fires of joy: May they turn out to be the truest of bonfires in our ever-questing Yiddishe neshamos!

At a Yerushalayim bonfire near Zichron Moshe, Lag BaOmer night, this past year. {YARMOFOTO}

Questions or comments?
I may be reached at hillyarm@yeshivanet.com Have a great summer, dear readers!