Keeping Her Word

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It happened two years ago at GirlZone, but the impact of the episode remains on counselor Dassi Kolko’s mind. The camp schedule allowed a half-hour after dinner for open discussions between small groups of counselors and campers. One evening, Dassi settled down with her two campers to address whatever was on their minds. One camper said she had a question, but she couldn’t ask it. Dassi persisted, reassuring the girl that no question was off-limits. Finally, the girl sputtered out her challenge: “I want proof.”

“Proof of what?” Dassi asked.

“That Mashiach is really coming.”

Dassi recalls the utter surprise the question stirred in her. It was by no means the typical question, and she was not at all prepared to answer it. Therefore, she responded as she had been advised: “I don’t know the answer,” she told the girl, “but I will find out and get back to you.”

“Promise me you’ll get back to me,” the camper urged.

The camper kept pushing to hear the words “I promise,” until finally, her counselor relented. Then Dassi asked the camper why whe was so insistent on securing a promise.

“Because I’ve asked this question so many times, and every time I ask it, people say they’ll get back to me and no one ever does. I don’t believe they have an answer. In fact, right before I left, my mother asked me if I wanted to go back to public school and go back to eating treif. I thought to myself that if I don’t get someone to answer this question, I can’t believe anything, and I would go back to public school this year.”

Now Dassi knew she had a vital mission on her hands. She went straight to Rabbi Davidowitz, the camp rabbi, and explained the situation. He gave her an answer that was suited to the camper’s level of understanding.

“He told me to go straight to the camper’s bunk and call her out and speak to her,” Dassi recalls. “But it was after curfew and I was positive the counselor would not let me take her out. Rabbi Davidowitz told me that if the counselor didn’t allow the girl out, I should tell her that he would come himself and take her out.”

Dassi went to the girl’s bunk, and as she expected, the counselor was reluctant to let the girl break curfew. But the importance of the situation was explained to her, and the camper was soon walking off with the Dassi, deep in discussion.

“She was amazed that I had gotten an answer for her,” Dassi said. “She said that even though I had promised, she still hadn’t believed me.”

When the conversation was over, the camper told Dasi that she now knew how she would answer her mother’s question about returning to public school. “I’m going to tell her that I never want to go back to public school, and I never want to eat treif again.”

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