Camp Obama and Shavuot

Aaron Keyak — May 28, 2009 – 9:24 am | Obama Comments (0) Add a comment

Rabbi Paul Steinberg has a piece in JTA that talks about Camp Obama and Shavuot. Steinberg was impressed by how Camp Obama and its leaders approached the camp’s participants.

Here is the beginning:

Hundreds of young people gathered to become a part of Camp Obama for intensive three-day weekend retreats throughout the months of July and August of 2007. Several of the retreats were led by Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor of sociology, and son of a rabbi and World War II Army chaplain.

Although these weekends were associated with a political campaign, for Ganz the objective of the experience was not simply to develop political organizing skills for volunteers but to “put into words why you’re called, and why we’ve been called, to change the way the world works.”

These are fairly lofty ideals upon which to spend such considerable campaign dollars and time, especially considering that in the summer of 2007, Obama was still a long shot for candidacy, let alone the presidency.

What is most fascinating, however, is how Ganz and Camp Obama accomplished their goal of inspiring these mostly young and new voters to fulfill the camp’s goal, which was to mobilize a political campaign with an injection of emotion and renewed faith.

The central experience of the retreats was to inspire hope and activism through stories. Not stories of the past—not biblical stories, history or even mythology—but each participant’s own story.

Each person at Camp Obama was invited to share three stories: the story of self (their personal story); the story of us (their story of being part of the collective); and the story of now (what they see in the world that needs healing).

No matter where each of us stands on the political spectrum, we can all appreciate the wisdom of Camp Obama’s approach to developing invested, motivated and committed campaign organizers. After all, seeing the world through our stories and how our personal experiences interweave with the world’s story is very inspirational. More than that, however, it is very spiritual. And, by the way, it is very Jewish.

Take the Jewish calendar, for example. There are three pillars upon which the Jewish calendar stands, each originating from the Torah. One is the fall holidays of Tishrei: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. The second is the spring holiday of Passover. And the third is Shavuot, falling seven weeks after Passover, at the start of summer. Each of these seasonal pillars tells a story that colors and animates the Jewish spirit.

Steinberg continues by detailing each of those pillars in the Jewish narrative. Click here to read on…

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