Where Simcha Meets Torah
While it is well known that Camp HASC is a place that over 300 special campers and their devoted staff affectionately call their summer home, it is less known that many call it their “Simchas Torah home” as well.
That’s right! When the chagim roll around, hundreds of members of the Camp HASC family, campers with special needs, staff, and guests, bring life back to the empty campus at 361 Parksville Road to spend a beautiful Simchas Torah Yom Tov together.
The Camp HASC Simchaton gives the campers a Simchas Torah experience that they wouldn’t be able to have anywhere else in the world. The program is fully catered to the wide-ranging needs of the campers and includes special themed hakafos, camper-centered shiurim, and fun, hands-on activities like making an edible sukkah and candy sifrei Torah, and much more.
There was even an all-camper choir,“The Simcha-tones,” which had try-outs, rehearsals, and a grand performance at the end of Yom Tov. The staff enjoyed dancing and singing with their beloved campers and friends, and they took advantage of the many programs geared towards them, including tischen, siyumim, and several shiurim by phenomenal teachers of Torah. The Simchaton also gives the parents of the campers a much-needed break and the ability to focus on themselves and their other children.
Moshe Rabbeinu says at the end of the Torah regarding the Torah itself, “Lo baShamayim hi” (Devarim 30:12), meaning that the Torah is accessible to every single Jew. Seeing the campers under the tallis at Kol Hane’arim, getting excited about their aliyos, and dancing with unparalleled joy with the sefer Torah during the hakafos really brings that assertion of Moshe Rabbeinu to life. All summer long, Camp HASC is a place of simchah and Torah, so it’s very fitting that it would be the best place for SimchasTorah as well.