A summer of healing
Local Jewish camp leaders look back at a challenging, emotional, joyful season
It’s not as if American Jewish summer camping has remained unchanged since it first began, more than a century ago.
To overgeneralize broadly, summer camping — which, without overstating, had not been a thing at all back in the old country — began as a way to get kids out of their broiling tenements and off their eggs-could-cook-on-them sidewalks and into the wholesome country, if just for a week or two.
It was a useful respite for both campers and their parents, whose lives, in general, were hard.
Summer camp chugged along like that for decades.
And then, after World War II, with the assimilation of Jews into American culture, with the understanding that Jewish culture had been decimated in Europe (even without a full understanding of how systemic, strategic, and evil that decimation had been), Jewish summer camp began to be a place where full immersion in Jewish culture, and an introduction to the idea that the culture offered not only obligations but also community, friendship, and joy, began to attract large numbers of parents and their children.
In the past decade or so, though, camp has been battered by events in the outside world. As social media began to extend its reach, teenagers, and increasingly preteens as well, began to have mental health issues that made camp both more important and more complicated. Camps responded by increasing the mental health care available to campers and counselors.
Then there was covid; camps closed for a year and then opened, gingerly, as fortresses armed against the tiny, invisible enemy.
Things got better over the next two years.
And then October 7 happened, and the world of Jewish camping, like the rest of the Jewish world, changed.
The camps adjusted, Michael Schlank said.
Mr. Schlank is the CEO of the New Jersey Y camps, which have — spoiler alert! — just ended a season that was both successful and unusually challenging, even given recent history.
This summer, camp became even more of a refuge from the outside world than usual, and in more specific ways, Mr. Schlank said. “The American kids — all our kids, really, but here I’m talking about our American kids — who experienced the trauma of October 7 vicariously, and then saw the protests in their own towns. Maybe they live in Teaneck, or Montclair. Or maybe they’re staffers on college campuses with encampments.”
One thing to note before continuing in any story about Jewish summer camps is that camp leaders see both campers and staffers as their constituency; they undertake the responsibility of providing for the safety, happiness, and education of counselors as well as their charges.
Another piece of necessary background is that most, but far from all, of the campers and counselors are American; they are joined by some Israeli campers and many Israeli staffers, and to a lesser extent by staffers from other countries.
“So our kids saw what happened, and then they had the trauma of seeing antisemitism all of a sudden rear its ugly head in our country, in a way that we hadn’t seen it here in 80 years,” Mr. Schlank continued.
“Camp is always a warm, welcoming Jewish place, where you can be as Jewish as you want to be. This year, we just saw more of it. We saw more kids wearing chais and magen davids; more kids with dogtags and yellow ribbons.
“It’s hard to quantify, but on erev Shabbat they invite kids to come up and light Shabbat candles, and the number of kids who came to light Shabbat candles was two, three, sometimes even four times more than last year.”
He described standing on the “spine road” that connects many of the camps on the campus in Milford, Pennsylvania. “We made beautiful signs naming the seven values that we have adopted as an organization,” he said. “I was next to a sign that says Ahavat Israel. Love of Israel.” It was even more core a value than ever, he said, and it expressed a love for both the people and the state.
“You can see it in our young people, both staff and campers,” he said. It was particularly visible on Yom Yisrael — Israel Day — and when we had musicians from Sderot. The kids were mesmerized watching this concert.
At the end of this season, a caravan of Israeli Scouts stopped for a performance at Nah-Jee-Wah, the sleepaway camp for younger children. The Scouts tour and perform at Jewish summer camps, he said; “they’ve been doing it for 50 years. It’s like a Disney show.” Nah-Jee-Wah is a frequent but not constant stop on the annual tour, he added.
“Our kids were so engaged, dancing and singing. You could see the pride and the joy. And you knew that there was some wistfulness, particularly among the college-aged kids. They knew that they were going back to a world where being unabashedly Jewish is not so easy.
“People came to the concert who didn’t have to come. Adult staffers came. And they were blown away. Adults literally had tears streaming down their cheeks. Not tears of sadness. Tears of joy.
“They could be in this space, watching young Israelis and young Americans being Jewish joyfully. This is not a show made for adults. It is for kids. But the adults loved watching our kids react. They loved watching them be loud and proud and unabashedly Jewish.”
Next, Mr. Schlank talked about the Israeli staff. He recalled the Shabbat of staff week, at the beginning of the summer, before the campers arrived.
“They did skits in the evening, and all the kids — and I noticed particularly all the Israeli kids, all of them between 17 and 22 years old — got up and they were dancing and singing. They were acting like kids their ages should act. They were dancing the way they should be dancing — dancing like no one was looking.
“I got emotional watching them. I knew that many of them had been in combat a month or maybe six weeks earlier.
“I went up to some of them and said, ‘It is amazing, watching you be so happy.’ And one of them said to me, ‘I haven’t been happy for five or six months. This is the first time that I’ve been able to be happy.’”
Staffers and educators addressed the ongoing situation in Israel in developmentally appropriate ways, Mr. Schlank said. “At Nah-Jee-Wah, we talked about the hostage situation very delicately. As we move to Cedar Lake,” summer home to many teenage non-Orthodox campers; the Orthodox campers go to Nesher, “we talk more about it. We did a Run for Their Lives,” a consciousness-raising activity about the hostages Hamas is holding in Gaza that’s going on across the country, mainly on Sunday mornings. “Before the run, two Israeli staff members came up and read the stories of a former camper, Liri Albag, and a former counselor, Sagui Dekel-Chen, who are hostages now. Then we sang ‘Hatikvah’ and did the run.”
As glad as the Israeli staffers were to be in camp, “there was some tension, too,” Mr. Schlank said. “They loved being there, but many of them felt guilty. Some of their friends were still in army services, and their parents and family were at home.”
During the last few weeks of camp, they particularly worried about the threatened attack from Iran in reprisal for the assassination of a key Hamas figure.
Because camp leaders knew that the pressures on Israeli staffers could lead to increased need for mental health services, they had support for them. They also were surprised at times by unanticipated problems. “We did a balloon-popping thing,” Mr. Schlank said. Normally, that’s just fun. “Who would have thought that the noise of that popping could be triggering?” But it was.
Very often this summer, Mr. Schlank said, “I felt like I was walking amongst giants, in Nesher and in the camps in Milford. My son is 20 years old. He’s no different from the 20-year-olds in these camps. A young person who is a tennis instructor or a lifeguard or a cooking teacher today maybe two or three months ago was fighting in Gaza. They had such responsibilities in life-and-death situations, on a daily basis.
“Books will be written and movies will be made about these Israeli soldiers. It was humbling to look at these young people, in their T-shirts and shorts, and remember that a short time ago they were in uniforms, carrying guns, crawling through tunnels.
“I felt privileged to walk among such people.”
Not all of the staff is Jewish, Mr. Schlank said, and “it humanized Jews and Israelis for them. I heard staff say over and over again, ‘I didn’t know anyone who is Jewish, and now, meeting them, I know that what I hear, what I see on TikTok or Instagram, isn’t true.’
“Yes, there is some self-selection in the staff” — virulent antisemites wouldn’t chose to work in a Jewish summer camp — “but there was, say, an Irish kid, and remember that antisemitism is rife in Ireland, who was able to go back to his country and say that this is not true, that he spent time with them, that they were friends.”
The differences between the covid summers and this one were profound. Camps had to be turned into bubbles both times, but covid demanded constant, vigilant separation. It was about distancing yourself. Communities were tiny, even within camp. And, as Mr. Schlank said, “covid was scary and challenging, but the whole world was living with it, and we knew that at some point it would be over.
“Now, we have a sense in the Jewish community that this is the first chapter in what will be a very long book. We have to figure out how to provide safe spaces, both emotionally and physically.” It’s about coming closer as a community.
“Fifteen years ago, keeping our kids safe was about the waterfront, not what was outside. We struggled to keep our kids safe with covid, but we knew it wouldn’t be a pandemic for the rest of our lives. But I don’t think that any responsible Jewish leader thinks that this antisemitism will end, or that Israel will not be under threat, any time soon.
“We have to recalibrate what we do. We have to be intentional, and that is something that we think about all the time.”
But the point of camp is the joy that it brings; the essence of Jewish camp is specifically Jewish joy.
“We have to figure out how to meet the needs of a wide variety of people — who come to camp with a wide range of experiences — in a moral, ethical, spiritually infused way,” Mr. Schlank said. “That is the challenge of our times.
“Whether you are a Jew who goes to shul every day, or on Shabbat, or only three times a year, or never, you need community. Whether or not you want to be part of the community, you are. Our job is trying to figure out how to make it a safe space for all sorts of people.”
Jeremy Fingerman of Fort Lee is the CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Camp, an organization to which the Jersey Y camps belong.
After October 7 but before camp began this summer, “there were four areas of challenge and concern confronting the field,” Mr. Fingerman said. “The first was mental health and wellness; the second was staffing; the third was security, given the rise in antisemitism; and the fourth was the Israel connection.”
“Mental health was an issue before October; some aspects of those issues were exacerbated on October 7,” Mr. Fingerman said. “Kids in some public schools were attacked or ostracized, and some on college campuses have faced a very tough number of months and were exhausted, feeling like they’d been on the front lines of a battle. Did they have to hide their Jewish identity?
“They were playing defense, not experiencing joyous Judaism.
The foundation now offers its Yedid Nefesh initiation. It’s a mental, emotional, social, and spiritual support program to which 180 camps — “more than half of our network,” Mr. Fingerman said — sent participants to a two-day session at its New York headquarters about best practices and available resources.”
Staffing was less of a problem than it had been in other years. “We created an ambassador program to help staff members recruit others, who hadn’t been planning to work at camp,” Mr. Fingerman said. “We probably had more college-age counselors working in camp than ever before.”
Overall, there were about 1,600 Israeli counselors in Jewish camps this summer, he continued. “There also were about 1,500 Israeli teens from displaced communities” — kids whose families had left their homes near Israel’s southern or northern borders because it’s too dangerous to stay there.
“The embrace that North Americans felt that they had to give Israelis was powerful, and so was the embrace that the Israelis felt that they had to give to North Americans,” Mr. Fingerman said. “Before they came here, the Israelis knew about the challenges on college campuses, and that we were fighting our own battles here in North America.
“I am not comparing the levels of trauma here and there, but the power of the Israelis wanting to embrace North Americans allowed for beautiful friendships to blossom, and I’m sure that those friendships will continue for many years.”
He quoted a counselor at one of the camps he visited. “He said, ‘Being at camp gives me time to disconnect from the challenges surrounding me on my college campus, and to focus on myself, to recharge my energy.’’
Camps, supported by the foundation, stepped up their security protocols. “Added resources from SCN” — the Secure Community Network, a national nonprofit that works with Jewish institutions — “and security officers from local Jewish federations provided us with additional resources,” Mr. Fingerman said.
Although Jewish camp professionals worried about whether young Israelis would want to come to camp in North America, and whether they’d be free to come, given the constraints posed by IDF service and travel availability, among other issues, Mr. Fingerman echoes Mr. Schlank in his assessment that those young Israelis not only came to camp but benefitted from the respite it gave them.
“They needed a sense of joy, and they got it,” he said.
“There were also concerns about managing diverse viewpoints. About being able to use camp as a safe place for conversations, for learning, and for dialogue. I think that the trainings we did on managing and facilitating conversations among people with diverse viewpoints was well received this summer. We had an open exchange of ideas, built on understanding and respect, despite differences.”
And yes, there are differences of opinion, he added. “The camps are a mirror that reflect the diversity of the community. A broad range of families send their kids to camp. Think about the diversity of the Jewish community.”
There is a limit to the diversity — the camps are Zionist. “Many camps were clear on their policy position before camp started, and some staff members who got that information decided they couldn’t abide by it, and didn’t go. That was part of the preparation that we in the field shared. It was very successful, having people articulate their positions.”
On a more practical level, some Israelis at camp had problems getting back home because the airlines canceled flights in response to the threat from Iran, and that also meant that the seats that were available became more expensive. “The camp communities have been very generous, and local federations and the federation system stepped up,” Mr. Fingerman said.
“That is not normal, but the camp system knows how to deal with abnormalities like that. We also suffered with extreme heat, excessive rain, and flooding in different parts of the country, but camp professionals know how to deal with that.”
In the end, Mr. Fingerman said, camps provided “the joy that so many counselors and staffers, Americans and Israelis, needed. The joy in being together in community. Camps really stepped up, and they shined.
“The joy and the collective healing that took place this summer helped solidify camp’s role as a central vehicle for nurturing Jewish identity.”
That’s true not just in North America, Mr. Fingerman added; Jewish camps in Israel and Ukraine, “places of conflict, also had similar results. They had record numbers. In spite of all the challenges, they were able to run 10-day camps for these kids, to provide a break from all the turmoil and allow them some sense of normalcy.
“Camp builds community and joy and confidence,” Mr. Fingerman concluded. “It builds Jewish connection and Jewish identity and Jewish pride.”
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