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Did you or your children go to summer camp? If so, do you remember the songs you or they sang? For me, my childhood soundtrack of classic summer camp songs is filled with silly ditties like \u201cI Said a Boom-Chicka Boom\u201d and \u201cSippin\u2019 Cider through a Straw.\u201d Throw in a \u201cZum Gali Gali\u201d and a \u201cShalom Rav\u201d or two, and it always made me smile that my kids are singing those same summer songs \u2013 a joyful summer soundtrack filled with ruach (spirit) and a camp legacy.

Last week, I visited our Temple Emanuel kids at Camp Ramah and found them singing a very different tune. After lunch, they gathered in the middle of the dining hall, swaying in large circles, serious and spiritual. Mournfully, they belted out Acheinu, a prayer for the hostages: \u201cAs for our brethren, the whole house of Israel, who are in trouble or captivity\u2026 May the Almighty have mercy upon them, and bring them from trouble to abundance, from darkness to light, and from subjection to redemption, now speedily and soon.\u201d

My heart broke, as all our hearts break. So proud. So moved. And yet, so broken that Acheinu is this summer\u2019s camp soundtrack \u2013 that the world our kids inhabit is one where hostages have been held in Gaza now for 295 days.

It was with the echo of the campers\u2019 plaintive prayers that I went this week to Washington, D.C., at the generous invitation of our Congressman, Jake Auchincloss, to hear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s address to a joint session of Congress. I don\u2019t need to tell you the hopes, the fears, and the politics that surrounded this moment \u2013 especially taking place, as it did, in the midst of our own historic moment here in the United States.