Write To Life     by Elana Horwitz

The Shabbos Chain

written by Elana (Goldstein) Horwitz in 1986, as a teenager

read aloud by Mrs. Miriam Greenwald, Director of Camp Sternberg, at the Gala Reunion in 2005


FIRST IT IS NOT THERE AT ALL. You wait with anticipation in Camp Sternberg’s Shabbos shul Friday night, flushed as much from fervent prayer as from the crowdedness. You are excited, on a high. Little girls in stylish, pastel-colored dresses, heart-spotted tights and white slip-on shoes exchange messages in loud whispers and then shush each other. You hurriedly collect the siddurim flying at you from all directions via soft, miniature hands and pile them high on the table, balancing them with your hands in an attempt to prevent them from toppling down. You return to your bench, squeezing your way through between the other benches occupied by anticipant girls. Your smile is reflected in twelve others as the campers in your bunk settle down. Their shining eyes radiate with the inner Shabbos peace that even a child knows. You can tell they are ready.

IT DOES NOT HAPPEN ALL AT ONCE; IT IS BORN. It seems to arise out of nothingness, or out of the shining eyes of little girls. Softly, a tune can be heard, but only by straining your ears towards the hearts surrounding you, only if their ears strain towards your heart. As the bunks are dismissed one by one, they file out the shul door, composed, singing. The tune becomes clearer and louder until you can recognize it - could it be anything but “Shalom Aleichem”, the song to the angels of peace, sung soulfully by Jews everywhere every Friday night?

HANDS GRASP EACH OTHER WARMLY, invitingly, in one long chain, turning in at the camp’s main road, stretching the many yards, unbroken, from the Shabbos shul all the way to the dining room. Voices of the young and of those a few paces older, pony-tailed seven-year-olds in bunk Aleph and hardy teenaged Pioneers, campers, counselors and division heads alike, blend together harmoniously as do the different instruments in a wedding band. The siddurim are left behind, piled high on the shul’s table, yet prayer continues in one unified voice, yearning for peace, making it happen. The centipede moves along at its own pace, in no rush, one body supported by many legs. The chain is unbroken. The links are music.

SUDDENLY YOU’RE IN IT, laughing out of sheer happiness, being pulled along past the trees and pulling others. You hear a familiar voice over the others, singing even more exuberantly than the rest, and realize it’s your own. The girl in front of you exchanges with you a look of delight in shared purpose, which you pass on to the girl behind you. You lean to the side and grasp the hand of a Mishkon camper, pulling her in with you. She is part of the chain too. After all, you are all blind in a sense. You take no credit for pulling along the girl behind you, as the girl in front of you takes no credit for pulling you along. You are all merely grasping the chain. Everyone needs to be pulled along, and everyone has the responsibility to reach out and pull another. Who is at the head of the chain? Perhaps only the angels can tell…

AND THEN YOU STEP OUT OF IT. It continues to move along beautifully; you let it. You lag behind with your friend, watching it pass, noticing its splendor, still part of its music. The setting sun is gold, orange, gray-blue, pink. You feel it in your soul. The voices grow fainter and fainter, the last reminders of the progressing chain now ahead of you. You inch slowly, very slowly, through the sunset after it with your friend, savoring every second. “Mah gadlu…” - “How great are your works, Hashem”, your friend sighs quietly. And you have a feeling she is referring to something more than the glorious sunset. And they are one - the sunset, your friend and the Shabbos chain, a moment in time, etched in your heart forever.

And the Shabbos chain continues…