Grand Finale    

“I was color war general in Camp Agudah of Toronto in the early 1990s,” BARUCH LEVINE shares. “The names of the teams were Yissaschar and Zevulun. It was a very close race that year, and for our alma mater, I decided to use the tune to the Six-Day War Israeli classic ‘Sharm-El-Sheikh.’ The performance came out amazing and I was sure I nailed the win for us. But I hadn’t anticipated the other team’s move. They decided that instead of the usual heartfelt emotional song, they would go with MBD’s ‘Yidden,’ a fast, rock-style song that got the camp all excited and riled up, singing, ‘Agudah! Agudah! The place to be!’ Well, I lost that year.”

SHLOIME DACHS remembers the year he was leading the Grand Sing in Camp Torah Vodaath. “I got up onto a bench and began the song with my team, and as we reached the crescendo, I stomped my foot on the bench in excitement, only to have the bench snap in two, and I went flying. All of a sudden, I saw Mr. Newhouse a”h, the camp director who we all knew was extremely dedicated to saving money for the camp, come running toward me. Of course, I assumed he was there to help me get up, which he did, but he also made sure to whisper in my ear, ‘Shloime, you know you’re paying for that bench you broke…’”

I asked keyboard player ELI COHEN, who was a Camp Munk camper for so many years, for his favorite Grand Sing moment. He said it was when ALI SCHARF got up with his guitar and for his Hebrew song, he began Yigal Calek’s London Pirchei “Shimu Melachim.”

“The whole song was very different, more of a majestic piece as opposed to a Jewish sing-along song,” Eli Cohen remembers. “Ali did the adult solo, and the entire camp answered the repeated choruses of ‘…Zeh Sinai…’ Then, Berish Braunstein, the child soloist, brought the house down. Yigal would have been proud.”