Camp Ends with Shofar Factory

Beis Rivka Day Camp ended off the summer season with a Shofar Factory to kickoff the upcoming month of Elul. Camp Director Rivky Chazan treated the second to fifth grade campers to a hands-on workshop exploring how shofars are made from scratch.

The day before the last day of camp, Michoel Albukerk and Zalman Jaffe of the Tzivos Hashem Crafts Workshops set up a display featuring taxidermy mounted, lifelike animals and dozens of animal horns from horned animal from five continents.

To start, campers had to choose which horns were kosher and appropriate for the Rosh Hashana shofar, a skill that required much technical and halachic knowledge about various animal horns.

“It was very impressive that when we quizzed the girls during the presentation, they already knew a great deal about the deeper meaning of the call of the shofar,” said Rabbi Albukerk. “When these girls will be shluchos themselves, they will know how to run a Shofar Factory very well on their own.”

Volunteers from each bunk assisted in the shofar making process and had to do virtually all the shofar crafting themselves. Even a small mistake while measuring, drilling or polishing, could render the shofar posul, invalid, and they knew it.

At the conclusion the girls jumped at the opportunity to blow exotic shofars of one kind or another. There were shofars made from the horns of rams, sheep, gazelles, antelope, ibex, blackbuck, angora, kudu, and more.

When asked how things went, ten year old Chevy Raymond answered, “We learned a lot and had too much fun!”

Each camper received a souvenir ‘tip,’ cut from the end of a shofar, as a segulah. The actual shofars that were made by the girls will be raffled off on the last day of camp.

May we merit the imminent sounding of Moshiach’s shofar with the Tekiah BeShofar Godol to announce the Geulah Shleimah.

For more information on the Shofar Factory and other authentic hands-on crafts of the Jewish people please visit JewishChildren.com.