Summer’s starting to end
It’s that time of year when change starts sneaking in.
The days get shorter; it’s easier to wake up to morning darkness. It is so humid that even stick-straight hair starts to frizz and even to curl. It’s been so wet this year that it’s still lush and deeply green outside, and it seems to get greener and swampier by the day. It’s just about time for fireflies, insects that are grossly ugly until they light up and turn stunningly beautiful, in a way that’s so metaphorically obvious that it’s almost embarrassing.
It means that the summer will end soon, school will start, and first Labor Day and then, shockingly soon after it, the High Holy Days will be here. So much planning. So much inviting. So much organizing. So much buying. So very much of everything.
This hasn’t been a good year for the Jewish people. Antisemitism is rising. Abe Foxman always used to say that antisemitism is toxic sludge that constantly runs beneath our feet, but until about a decade ago it was contained. Then the sewage covers were removed, and now it’s sucking at our ankles.
This is also the year that we lost Abe. I’ve been tempted over and over again in the months since he died to ask him what he thinks about what’s going on now, only to be reminded, oh yeah. Too late. He was a proud optimist. What would he say now?
But — there’s almost always a but — there’s also much joy in the world. Our cover story is about kids at camp, a place where joy is the default. I downloaded the photos that Sam Aboudara sent me from the NJY Camps. There were far more of them than we could use here, and simply looking at all of them was pure joy. I sat at my computer, beaming at them. Just looking at them made me happy (and I hope looking at the ones we’ve been able to use makes you, readers, happy too).
Camp also is about not being divided. It’s about regrouping, finding yourself, your tribe, your friends, your passions, and bringing all of that back home with you. Kids get to do that, adults not so much, but we adults can remember that feeling of challenging newness.
The summer’s end brings a new school year, a new Jewish year, even a new legislative year. It brings in a season of change. Let’s hope that it’s a season of less divisiveness and more unity; an understanding that arguing also can bring joy — there’s real pleasure in feeling your wits sharpen as your mouth moves — but you’re not arguing with your enemy, but with your partner.
We hope our readers enjoy these last few weeks of summer.
—JP