Last Shabbat, 48 campers joined 70 Chai Lifeline staff members at Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck for the Chai Lifeline sixth grade girls shabbaton, which is now an annual event. The Chai Lifeline campers were joined also by 165 community-based sixth grade girls, including, for the first time, girls from Yeshivat He’atid and Solomon Schechter of Bergen County. This year’s event was the largest such shabbaton to date.

Chai Lifeline is an organization dedicated to bringing joy and support to the lives of young people and their families beset with serious illness, such as cancer and blood disorders, or lifelong conditions, such as sight, hearing or physical impairment. The Teaneck sixth grade girls Chai Lifeline shabbaton brings together Chai Lifeline girls from many communities and bat mitzvah-age girls from Teaneck, Bergenfield and New Milford to meet each other for a special, memorable, chesed-filled shabbaton, and is organized by Faigy Ort, who got to know Chai Lifeline over the course of the illness of her daughter Sari, z”l.

“This year, the Chai Lifeline shabbaton focused on being thankful. All the girls got sweatshirts that said “12 Things I’m Thankful For,” correlating to the bat mitzvah age of the girls attending the shabbaton and the emphasis on being thankful for what we have,” explained Ort.

“There were many more campers and local sixth grade girls this year, so that made for many more opportunities for the sixth grade girls to interact and hang out with Chai Lifeline campers,” she added. “Each table had five local girls and three campers with staff at each table throughout all the meals, and was another way for the girls and campers to spend time together.”  

Ort shared some additional highlights she noticed about this year’s event. “A few campers spoke during the shabbaton about their journey, and it made the girls look at kids with disabilities differently. Instead of defining someone by their disability, the girls were able to look at kids who are disabled as a person who overcame a challenge.” Ort shared two such examples: A girl who was blind sang a song for everyone, and one of the ideas in her song was that she can see, just not physically, and that her heart guides her. Another girl, an 11-year-old amputee, addressed the congregation at Keter Torah and told the story of how she battled cancer, losing her leg, but attributing her source of strength to Chai Lifeline.

Learn more about Chai Lifeline at https://www.chailifeline.org/.