Beauty

"It's beautiful!" someone exclaims over a something that I've painted. The feelings of excitement content and wonder fill me with confusion. "What do they mean?" I think to myself, why is this simple comment so hard for me to understand? When people say something is beautiful, do they mean it's pleasing to the eye, the effort put into it makes it beautiful, what do they mean? When people look at me and say to me " look at you, you're so beautiful!" Do they mean that i have a beautiful mind, personality, or looks? To me what i want people to see in me that is beautiful is a mind that can learn, explain and tell many things as i feel them. Hands that are eager to create paintings that will please your eyes, a heart yurning to know what love is really like. A voice eager and excited to help you connect in prayer even closer through the sounds that it can create. A mouth eager to speak those sacred and ancient words that connect us to G-d and make us feel in ways that words can not describe. Ears ready to listen to what ever you have to say, and a mind ready to think of a solution to whatever your problem may be. But most importantly a person, ready to do what is right. I hope you can see this in me, and if you can, than i have become the person that I've always wanted to be.

Parenting

Parent's seem so confused on how to treat their kids after they reach the age of 13. They're not kids, and they're not adults, and worst of all very few of them can even manage to act as mature as most adults can. They seem stumped when it comes to trying to find the right way to treat them, or what responsibility's they can be given. I don't see what's so difficult about it, when the answer is looking you right in the face, literally. Treat us like teenagers, we're not adults or kids, we are right in the middle. The responsibility's you give to us should be based on what you think we can handle, not what we are suppose to be able to handle. We can write and act and sound mature, but we may not be mature. It's a difficult thing for us to want to become adults when you make it sound or look or feel so horrible. Give us the opportunity to look at the good and the bad. Let us experience the joys of freedom, and pressure of having to take responsibility for our actions. We need to feel this in order to want to grow up. We can't live at home forever can we?

letter from camp #3

Camp is my sanctuary. God is all around me - I can feel the presence resonate throughout by body. With every breath of air, sip of water, bite of food, word I speak and word I pray, my connection becomes tighter, stronger and closer to God. When I sing, I know that it was God's blessing to me. I know from the joy I feel that singing Hebrew songs and speaking those sacred words is what I want to do. I want to study Torah and learn how to read and chant it, and help other people to learn and chant it too.
Here at camp it's cool to help out in services, discuss Torah, run around like crazy when you hear that limud (Torah study) is going to be extended another half hour.
The energy you get here is so strong that it pulses through you. It's contagious. You can't stop it, and I want to bring it back home with me.
No one cares if you like sports. They care if you are crazy enough to stand up and start singing Michamocha to the tune of "In the Jungle". It's cool to be Jewish and to run around singing songs from services. It's cool to be yourself.
This is Neverland, somewhere over the rainbow, a magical place. It's unbelievable. I'm connected to all the other girls in a way that is like none other. I want so badly to come back next year and to join NFTY so I can see all my new friends. They're all in NFTY too.