I’d like to share a personal story that happened to me many years ago when I was a senior counselor at a sleep away camp.

At camp, the counselors had a 12:30am curfew everyday but on Saturday nights we had a 1:30am curfew. I was always in bed well before the curfew and usually asleep before midnight. My junior counselor and two specialists that slept in our bunk usually were not in bed by curfew. Usually they were not even inside of the bunk. They would walk in a few minutes after the curfew. Then they’d start their nightly routine of taking a shower and talking on the porch. Around an hour after curfew, they would finally make their way to bed. In the morning, they would then sleep late while I took our campers to line up and davening. Since we had eight year olds, they listened nicely in the morning, and I rarely needed the help of these other counselors. Therefore, it usually did not bother me that these guys were still sleeping.

One night near the end of the summer though, I was greatly bothered. There was a counselor Melava Malka (meal after Shabbos ends) where we had Chinese food and dancing. I had a headache in the middle and went to sleep around 11:30 or so. Then at 2am, which was after curfew, I heard the bunk door open. But it did not only open. It was slammed open pretty loudly. I woke up (luckily the children were still sleeping) and noticed that it was my junior counselor, Yitz (not his real name). Yitz was walking loudly in the bunk and then walked out. I was upset that he was going out again after curfew, but I fell back to sleep. Then about 45 minutes later, I was awoken again and it was Yitz again. Yitz entered the door again and then left again. I decided at that point that I was not going to let him sleep late the next day. I was going to force him out of his bed. He is running around over an hour after curfew! It’s crazy that I have to take care of the children the whole morning while he sleeps. If he got to sleep at a normal time, he would be able to wake up.

In the morning, my alarm went off fifteen minutes before the announcement was made for the children to get up, which is what I did every morning (this way I could prepare myself for the day before anyone else was awake). When I heard the wake up announcement on the speaker system, I ran up and down the bunk (which is how I woke up the children every morning), but came to a halt at the far end of the bunk. One of the specialist’s beds was empty. Not only that, it was made neatly. This bothered me because for the past seven weeks, this guy had never once made his bed. The children made his bed for him every day. It was like he did not sleep in his bed. I was so bothered by seeing this that I decided not to wake up Yitz.

And am I happy I decided that! I arrived at line-up and one of Yitz’s friends came to me and asked how he was doing. I said he was sleeping as usual. The person sounded surprised and asked me if I knew what happened last night. This friend then explained that the specialist that slept in my bunk had an allergy to peanuts. He did not realize that Chinese food had peanuts in it and ate some of it. In the middle of the night he was rushed to the hospital and Baruch Hashem survived. But while we were waiting for the ambulance, Yitz ran back and forth between the nurse’s station on one side of the camp to my bunk on the other side to get this specialist’s allergy medicine and supplies. If Yitz did not do that, this specialist might have had a more serious health issue and might have even died.

Here I thought Yitz was just being his normal self, but he was really being a hero. I learned at that moment that you need to be very careful when judging others. This week’s parsha says we are to judge other’s righteously. We should try our best to give others the benefit of the doubt and see them positively. I learned this lesson from Yitz.

Good Shabbos!
-yes
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