u/Tsirah

I grew up in a very atheist household so we never went to shul and I never had a bar mitzvah. When I left home for uni I started attending shul and I still do now where I live.

This week I was at the Danish National Jamboree - for the non scouts out there, think week long camp with 30000 scouts, I was there as a leader with a group of youth.

I’m used to being the only Jew in my group and I always bring candles with me for kabbalat Shabbat, but I was hoping to meet others through the religious tents at camp. Again for non scouts, faith and spirituality are one of the scout values even for non religious groups. There were a church and mosque on site but no synagogue unlike Gilwell Park.

The first night we attended the opening ceremony during which one scout from each represented country at camp paraded on stage with their country’s flag. Lo and behold, the Israeli flag is there!!

The next morning I started my quest of meeting the Israel scouts so I could maybe do kabbalat Shabbat and kiddush with them. It didn’t take too long for me to meet some of them and by the end of the week most Israeli kid at camp knew me by name 🤣

So I learnt that they were actually organising a big kabbalat Shabbat in the international tent for Jews and non Jews alike to come together.

When I got there, a few minutes early, I probably stood out from the group of teenagers so one of the Chabad rabbis came up to me and we spoke in Hebrew until he was going way too fast for me and I asked him to switch to English. As soon as he knew I was Jewish he took the tefilin out and started to lay them on me making me repeat the blessings after him. I told him it was my first time so he was very happy and told me “ah so this is your bar mitzvah!!”

We took a picture and he sent it to me :) so I guess I can now say I had my bar mitzvah at 36 at a scout jamboree in Denmark and that’s pretty cool (to me at least!)

Then we had a lovely kabbalat Shabbat. The kids were on fire! There’s no party like an Israeli teen party 🤣 one of them had waited all week to trade neckers with me too so I am now the proud owner of a beautiful Israeli national necker - again for non scouts, many countries have a national necker that scouts wear when they go to international camps, swapping badges and neckers is a big scouting tradition 😊

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.