What is ‘Crazy’ Camp YEKA

Mendy Pelllin: Do you have someone named after you even while you are alive?

Camp YEKA is holding a 24 hour campaign to raise $400,000, all donations are quadrupled!

Click here to Donate now!

When I first heard about Yeka as a teenager, it sounded like the craziest thing on earth. A 3rd world country, dilapidated campsites with olden-day “toilets”, eating kasha every day and simply just letting loose 24/7 in a bochur-only environment. But that was only half the story.

A couple of years later, there I was. After spending about 4 weeks fundraising my brains out, I was on the way to the camp that I’ve always dreamed of going. The director/head counselors were just like me, young, vibrant guys who did every ounce of work themselves together with the staff from start to finish. My first camp was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life.

Although it was a third world country, we had ok grounds (for UKR standards at least) with functioning toilets (though the toilet-paper was pretty shvach). We made Brissim, I’ll get back to that later. The food was pretty-bad, but not so bad, if you know what I mean. Camp showed me what it means to give your entire energy, time and patience over to kids who don’t have homes full of love and care, who don’t have exciting yiddishkeit to live by, who don’t feel much meaning in their life to live life meaningfully, and that is what our job was over the summer.

Back to my first year. from the beginning, I did not speak a word of Russian beside the standard “privyet-kak-dela-charosho-slava-bogu” routine. After a week, I had a few sentences down-pat. Kids would cry on my shoulder, give me a hug and I would not know what they were crying or happy or I had no clue what about. After two weeks, I could already carry basic conversation, and when my kids would cry, laugh or speak with me, we could converse with a sense of understanding between us. The funny thing was, however broken my Russian was, the kids would somehow understand (most of the time) what I was saying. Then, after two-and-a-half-weeks, camp was suddenly over.

Let me tell you about a boy I had in my bunk that year. His name was Dima*. Socially, he was the most outgoing kid in camp. But emotionally, he was cold as ice, very introverted. He wasn’t shy or afraid, just very closed. At the end of camp, when his mother came to pick him up, he just walked away holding his mother’s hand with a small wave. My co-counselor and I were about to turn around to be with the rest of the bunk while we waited for the busses to drive them home, but after about ten steps, Dima turns around and runs straight back into my arms bursting into tears burying his head on my shoulder. Later I found out from his mother about their situation. Abusive father, barely making ends meet, has barely any friends in his Jewish school and his only meaningful connection to yiddishkeit was me (he’s actually having his bar-mitzva this year to which I plan to attend). She told me that he considers me an older brother.

Another year, also the last day of camp, a counselor was giving out candy. You must understand, American candy is worth more than gold in Ukraine. To put it into perspective, a jolly rancher would motivate an entire bunk to be at their best behavior. Anyway, this kid came over the counselor and started tearing up. Tearing turned to sobbing, sobbing to crying. All-throughout, the counselor tried to console the kid with candy, but he wouldn’t relent. After asking a few times what was wrong, the kid replied, “I don’t want candy, I only want you not to go home.”

There is this child in camp, Avraham*, with complex anger management issues, complaining and bickering with his friends and stuff like that. One night, as his counselor sang his campers to sleep, he heard a boy sobbing into his pillow. He looked around and saw Avraham. His counselor asks what’s up, and with tears in his eyes, breathing heavily, he says in broken Hebrew: “I am like this” (describing his behavioral issues), “because my life is tough” sniffle…. sob… “my father died” …and then he lost it crying bitterly, and put his arms around his counselor.

One of the most special things about YEKA is the fact that we organize brissim in camp. In Ukraine, and a lot of former Soviet Union countries in general due to communism and anti-Semitism, most Jews do not have brissim at 8 days old. So, part of our shlichus is that in camp we teach the kids a lot about Judaism, and especially Avraham Avinu, about choosing to embrace your Jewish identity in a place where embracing it is tough. The child chooses whether he wants to get a bris milah with his parents, and we fly in the best mohel in Ukraine to perform the surgery with all proceeds straight to tzedakah. The children then pick their very own Jewish name, which a lot of times they choose after their “older brother” counselors who inspire them and get officially named in a beautiful ceremony. Some parents even take the long and arduous trek down to camp to see their children receive their name. The bris-milah kids are the bravest people I know.

A lot of yeka changed in 2016. We officially partnered up with the Ukrainian Chabad organization Shiurei Torah Lubavitch or STL. They provide state-of-the-art facilities that any CGI around the world would envy, along with world class torah learning programs and professional teachers to take the learning in yeka to the maximum quality possible. No more broken toilets, sub-par food and stinky camp grounds. From now on, we are taking this camp to the next level. Ever since then, we have never looked back. This is the next stage in our Shlichus, providing the best possible physical environment which opens doors and makes proper vessels to be able to give over the best spiritual experience for the kids that we can. This year, we are asking you to help us raise $400,000 in 24 hours for all our camps, YEKA, and Sonya’s and your STyLe camps by STL, so that together we can make this year an unbelievable success!

Donate here at Charidy.com/Yeka