“Camp Gan Israel” of Moscow this year, saw hundreds of boys and girls in its various programs, which were held separately during the past summer months. The campers received a concentrated dose of profound Jewish lessons that will leave a deep impression on their souls, for the entire upcoming year and for the rest of their lives.
The vast majority of the participants are children for whom this is their only opportunity during the year to be exposed to real Jewish education. Much effort is invested through hundreds of dedicated counselors and staff to make good use of the special times and camp atmosphere, in influencing the campers in Torah and mitzvot.
Exactly 70 years after Rabbi Moshe Lazar, shliach to Italy today, opened the first Camp Gan Israel in the United States, and thirty-five years after his son – Chief Rabbi of Russia, Rabbi Berel Lazar, began establishing Gan Israel summer camps in Russia – the camp directors summed up this year with great satisfaction. The number of children has significantly increased in all the camps.
Moscow’s central Camp Gan Israel is located on a campus that formerly belonged to the Pioneer movement, a movement that persecuted Jews and Judaism. Today, after the Jewish community purchased the campus from the government, well-funded summer camps are run there, in large, spacious complexes, under the direction of Rabbi Yosef Moshe Weisberg, and a huge team of volunteer instructors.
“Camp Gan Israel” is an institution that the Lubavitcher Rebbe has personally nurtured since its opening in 1977 in the Catskill Mountains outside New York. In a very unusual move, the Rebbe came to visit it several times, a move that showed his great ambition and love for this project, which over the years has developed to gigantic proportions throughout all corners of the world.
Immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain in the former Soviet Union, the rabbi of Russia established such camps, which are expanding every year in quantity and quality.
This year, many brissim were held for children, by the mohel, Rabbi Yeshayahu Shaffit from the ‘Bris Yosef Yitzhak’ organization. Meanwhile, in the girls’ summer camps, Jewish names were given to girls who requested it. All of this is in addition to the thousands of hachlatos tovos in keeping Torah and mitzvot of the participants, whose camp memories will accompany them back into their routine life.
Photography: Mendy Turkov and Levi Nazarov
