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Szarvas Spirit: "Those 12 days were like a dream for me"
Although he grew up in a completely assimilated family, Tomas always knew that he was Jewish. Still, as he turned 13 in the waning years of Hungary’s Communist regime, he decided it was time to get in touch with his Jewish roots.
"I was longing for a community," he remembers. "I didn’t want to feel like a stranger any more." Living in Budapest, he heard about the growing popularity of the Lauder/JDC International Jewish Summer Camp in Szarvas, and was certain it was the perfect place to launch his personal return to Judaism. But the summer session was just around the corner by then, and registration for the Hungarian group had already been closed out for weeks. By the following July, though, Tomas was on his way to camp. "Those 12 days were like a dream for me," he says, reflecting on that first summer. There he met other Jewish children, learned about Jewish tradition, sang Jewish songs, and enjoyed himself immensely. "The biggest thing was the freedom to be, feel, behave, dress, and speak as a Jew in the most natural way," he adds. For Tomas, the Szarvas experience - that feeling of belonging to global Jewry and of a deep connection with Israel - a had just begun. With each passing summer he grew more and more committed to Jewish life. And when he returned to camp as a madrich for the first time, he knew he had found his place in the Jewish world - sharing the wonder of Szarvas with the next generation of campers. But the camp had far greater influence on his life than he could ever have imagined. Not only did it help shape his Jewish identity as he entered adulthood, but it enabled him to create a circle of friends almost exclusively from the "Szarvas community." And within that social circle Tomas met his wife - a madrich he had known for years from camp -a and the two now have two Szarvas children of their own. Today, Tomas, age 27, teaches at a Jewish school in Budapest and participates in a JDC - sponsored training initiative for young community leaders. He also trains Szarvas madrichim and works as a unit head at the camp each summer. "Szarvas is one of the most important foundations of the Jewish future in Hungary," offers Tomas. "If somebody is ‘infected’ with the Szarvas virus, he has no chance (nor the will) to escape." |
