Who knew that some of our favorite songs were color war’s fight to the finish?
At Camp Ma-Na-Vu, the way color war worked was that the head counselors would pick two generals, who would then, one at a time, alternate picking members for their team in every age bracket. Back when Rabbi Ephraim Wachsman was a bochur, each team wanted him as their first pick. He was so valuable, not only for his learning but also for his musical abilities, his song-writing skills, and his prowess in sports — basically a number-one draft pick. Rabbi Shlomo Klein, the camp director, agreed that whichever team got first pick had too much of an advantage over the other team. Therefore, he made a rule that the team who picked Ephraim Wachsman would forfeit the next eight picks for their team. When I heard this story years later, I was very curious to know who won that year. So I called up Rabbi Motti Zions, that year’s general who picked Rabbi Wachsman, and asked about the outcome. He smiled and said, “We did, of course.”
Camp Munk, as with other camps, had a rule that both teams would have to let the judges know which songs they were using beforehand, to prevent two teams from using the same tunes.
In the summer of 1998, the color war generals were Yitzchak Rosenthal and Simcha Sussman. There was one song they both wanted to use, and when that happened, they’d flip a coin and the winner would keep the tune for his team. And so, Simcha Sussman won the coin toss and Yitzchak Rosenthal was left looking for a tune.
In the end, he decided to use one of several tunes he’d created but never publicized, and — you guessed it — he decided on his masterpiece “Esa Einai,” which until then had been in his pocket under wraps.
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