ar Parents,

I hope you are all doing well and are enjoying your summer. Here at NCSY Camp Sports, we keep our days filled with meaningful and fun activities! 

As we head into our second Shabbos in camp, it has been wonderful watching friendships develop, sports teams compete, and seeing each camper enjoy the fabulous days at camp, even with some small bits of rain mixed in.

Last week I emailed you as we headed into Shabbos, and I must say we had a great first Shabbos here in camp! The davening, singing and dancing at the Shabbos meals were filled with incredible energy. We are all looking forward to another great Shabbos which we know will be even better!

Last Shabbos, on Friday night after the davening and Shabbos meal, each league team joined together for an Oneg where we got to know each other off the field. On Shabbos morning we heard an amazing Dvar Torah and later in the day a shiur (class) about Anti-Semitism from Dr. David Luchins. Dr. Luchins is a former assistant to senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and is currently a Dean at Lander Touro University. Dr. Luchins and his wife Vivian, who is the founding chair of NCSY’s Summer Committee, joined us for Shabbos and spoke to the NCSYers. It's always a pleasure having them join us for Shabbos in camp! The Shabbos day meal was also inspirational and full of the famous Camp NCSY Sports Ruach. In the afternoon we caught up on some much-needed sleep, we ate the third meal, and joined together for singing and inspiration. As Shabbos ebbed away, Rabbi Fried spoke about getting the most out of camp and not missing opportunities. On Saturday Night, we had a blast bowling and enjoyed late night pizza. 

Sunday was a late wake up from our busy Shabbos. Instead of the second learning group we had the privilege to hear from William Mehrvaz. William grew up in Tehran as a Muslim and converted to Judaism. It was awe-inspiring to hear his story as well as his insight into the recent war with Iran. The NCSYers asked many great questions and drew a lot of inspiration from him.   After some learning in the morning, we headed out to sports and played two league games. At night we had “open sports” with basketball, baseball, volleyball and pickle ball. 

On Monday morning we went back to our regular scheduled learning groups learning this summer’s topic, “Shabbos”. After learning groups, we went to the fabulous HersheyPark! The NCSYers had a "sweet time" with all the rides the park had to offer. Of course, they also invested heavily in the “basketball shoot” and many prizes came home on the bus! 

On Tuesday after we enjoyed our learning and some crazy day of league games, during the second game storms rolled in and we had to delay some of the games. In a very rare occurrence in camp we completed the games at night and had to postpone our “capture the counselor” night activity. 

Wednesday, we had a day filled with excitement! After hanging out at Topgolf and practicing our distance and driving we headed to the Baltimore Inner Harbor. Some boys played catch by the harbor, some walked around the harbor, and others rented scooters. We then arrived at Federal Hill park for Mincha and a BBQ dinner. The guys enjoyed playing frisbee and running up and down this beautiful and historical site. After, we hopped to go to the Baltimore Orioles baseball game but due to incoming storms the game was postponed, but it is hard to keep Camp Sports down and we got on the buses and headed for a great night at Dave and Busters.  

Going strong on Thursday with learning groups and one league game, we then headed out back to Camden Yards to watch the postponed Orioles versus Mets game. Everyone had a great time and adding to the excitement each NCSYer was assigned a random player on the two teams. If your player did any of the items listed on the list we gave out you won some great prizes. It was a game while watching the game and added to the excitement. The Orioles won 7-3 which is always great to root, root, root for the home team, but disappointed many of our NCSY Mets fans. Later, that evening we had a booming Mishmar program. Mishmar is optional late-night learning, but most NCSYers showed up and got rewarded with a raffle for awesome prizes, Hershey chocolate and twizzlers, stuffed animal prizes won at Hershey and much more. We ended the night with a kumzitz led by Rabbi Zucker followed by Yapchick and wings!

We are very excited for another great shabbos . As always, feel free to reach out to us here in Camp at any time and make sure you follow us on Social Media where you can “see” what is happening in camp. 

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