OP-ED: Weeks and weeks of oaths
By ALAN SMASON, Exclusive to the CCJN
Last week I spent the week prior to this holiday week of Shavuot doing work for Scouting America, the organization that, since 1916, has been formally chartered by an act of Congress as The Boy Scouts of America.
New Scouting America board chair Ricky Mason, left, and National Commissioner Devang Desai flank CCJN editor and Jewish Scouter Alan Smason. (Photo courtesy Alan Smason)
Scouting America has been in the news recently due to the announcement that Ricky Mason would become its newest board chair, the first Jewish volunteer to hold that position in 95 years. That was when Mortimer Schiff, one of the founding members of the Boy Scouts, was selected to become the organization’s president. Sadly, Schiff suffered a fatal heart attack only three weeks later and no other top volunteer leader that followed has been Jewish.
In his acceptance speech at the National Annual Meeting on Wednesday, May 13, at the Dallas Sheraton, Mason acknowledged his grandparents’ Jewish immigrant past, his Scouting career as a youth in Virginia that had him achieve the rare rank of Eagle Scout and a special trek to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico with an interracial group that taught him the value of cooperation between minorities. Ironically, the trek was sponsored by two local councils named for Civil War generals, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
As painful as that might be to the Black Scouts on the trip at the time, Mason said, he learned the valuable lesson that change sometimes takes a lot longer to accomplish than what we might hope. Mason’s trek took place in the 1970s and the merged councils became the Heart of Virginia Council in 2003, almost three decades after his trek.
But the celebration for Jewish Scouting was not all about Ricky Mason. At the Duty to God Breakfast on Thursday, May 14, the keynote address was delivered by the CCJN’s own Rabbi Joseph E. Prouser (“Say Little, Do Much”), who is a former National Chaplain of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting (NJCOS) and an Eagle Scout himself. His delightful speech was at times funny and poignant, relating times he enjoyed as both a youth member and an adult volunteer.
The National Religious Relationships Committee (NRRC) and its sub-committee dedicated to the Duty to God Breakfast went out of its way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Jewish Scouting and the NJCOS, founded in 1926. A 15-member choir from Temple Emanu El greeted the more than 1,000 guests at the Dallas Sheraton singing variations of “Ma Tovu” (“How good it is for brothers to gather together.”) and sang other Jewish songs during the meal.
In addition to the current NJCOS president receiving a National Duty to God Award, two young Jewish Cub Scout sisters received re-presentations of the Aryeh religious emblem they both achieved as kindergartners in 2025 and 2026, respectively, and a Dallas area couple – a husband and wife Scouting team – received re-presentations of their Shofar Awards for adults for which they were nominated by their peers and approved by both their council and the Awards and Emblems Committee of the NJCOS. (Later that night, a former member of the NJCOS received Scouting America’s highest national honor, the Silver Buffalo Award.)
Jewish Scouter and CCJN editor Alan Smason with Rabbi Joseph H. Prouser at the National Duty to God Breakfast. (Photo courtesy Alan Smason)
I am proud to acknowledge that I was instrumental with suggesting Rabbi Prouser to the committee as the event’s keynote speaker and at their request also helped to secure the services of the Temple Emanu El Choir, as part of my volunteer work with the NRRC, which is made up of dozens of diverse religious faith groups.
A series of Zoom sessions and an in-person meeting of the NJCOS were held at Camp Wisdom, one of Dallas’ Circle Ten Council’s many Scout camps, prior to the National Annual Meeting. Much of what was discussed spoke to a need to reach out to the Jewish community-at-large and ramp up recruitment and retention. All of Scouting America saw a sizable dip in membership last year, which would have been offset had adult volunteers also stayed with the program.
Rabbinic sages tell us the Festival of Weeks we are about to celebrate – Shavuot – stems both from the Hebrew word shavua for “week” which has the same lettering as shevuot for “oaths.” The two words – weeks and oaths – intertwine and give added meaning to one another.
The date of Shavuot is set by a period of seven weeks, the counting of the Omer, which begins on the evening of the second night of Passover. But the holiday also requires us to recall the vows we take to God and to one another. It is the acceptance of the Torah that binds us closer to God and gives us the moral compass by which to live our lives. We became a people at Mt. Sinai, it is said, when we accepted all of the Law.
Scouting offers our young men and women a program that aligns very closely with the values of Judaism and allows for the direct interaction of parents, something rarely occurring in organized sports. I encourage more parents to consider it as a way to engage their children with the traditions of experiencing the wilderness and giving them skills that will last throughout their lifetimes, just as it has for national chair Ricky Mason.
Quite frankly, I cannot think of a more wholesome organization than Scouting America, by which its members take the Scout Oath and live their lives by the Scout Law. There is no better combination for living purposeful and productive lives than connecting the Ten Commandments with the 12 Points of the Scout Law and the three promises of the Scout Oath.
As we consider oaths on this Shavuot, let us also consider the great work being done by Jews on behalf of Jews, week after week, across this great nation. Chag sameach Shavuot!
