Tranquillity at 106
Nonprofit Jewish summer camp is all in the family
Tranquillity Camp — yes, that’s how you spell it — opened more than a century ago, and the family that created the nonprofit summer refuge owns and loves it still.
As it enters into its 106th summer, let’s take a look at it.
“In 1919, my great-great-uncle, Elias A. Cohen, lived in New York,” Dan Cohn of Tenafly — who represents the sixth generation of the camp-owning family — said. “It was the time of the plague” — the flu pandemic that began in 1918 and killed an estimated 17 million to 50 million people around the world, many of them young — “and he was looking to get his family out of the city.”
Elias Cohen was young, wealthy, and unmarried. (About that middle initial — “I’m not quite sure what it stands for,” Mr. Cohn said. “I think maybe it’s August, but I’m not sure.”) His family included his parents and his sister, Bella Cohen Cohn, as she became when she married Charles Cohn. Elias bought some land in upstate New York, in Earlton, a little town about half an hour south of Albany, not far from “the worst named town in the world, Coxsackie,” Mr. Cohn said. (To be fair, New Jersey offers many contestants for that title.)
“My family on my father’s side came to this country in the early to mid 1800s, and they were founding members of the Eldrige Street Synagogue, and we have stayed involved with it,” Mr. Cohn said. The synagogue, on the Lower East Side, is now both a functioning shul and a museum.
“My family always has been in the real estate business,” he continued. “They lived uptown, in Harlem or around there, which is where all the Jews lived then, when Elias bought the farm.”
Elias was around 20 then.
“He moved upstate for at least part of the year, and lived there with his parents, brothers, and sisters. He never married, and never had children. But the first summer he was upstate, he brought 10 boys from his old neighborhood, the Lower East Side, to the farm, and the next summer he brought 10 boys and 10 girls, and that’s how the camp started.
“Elias ran it until he died, in 1952,” Mr. Cohn continued. He had a full-time job too, so he didn’t run it alone.
The camp always has been nonprofit. The family didn’t need the money, and its members felt strongly about helping others. “They wanted to do good in the world,” Mr. Cohn said. “They wanted to give back.” On the other hand, they weren’t extravagant. “They made the camp as low cost as possible” — they spent and charged as little as possible — and they supplemented it with scholarships and donations and fundraisers through the year.”
Soon, what started as appropriate frugality became a selling point. The camp doesn’t offer anything fancy, Mr. Cohn said. That would be beside the point, which is to spend time away from the outside world, away from distractions, in nature, and with each other. Most camps have become more dependent on electronics and other products — and it also is true that many campers not only love their electronics but also learn and grow from using them. The spartan-with-love approach isn’t for absolutely everyone, just for most kids, Mr. Cohn said, and that’s what his camp offers.
Elias Cohen died in Egypt, on a trip first to see the pyramids and then to go on to Israel, Mr. Cohn added. He had been an ardent Zionist; his first trip to Israel had been to Mandatory Palestine, in the 1920s. Because the Cohen/Cohn family doesn’t have all the documentation Mr. Cohn wishes they had, he’s not sure whether or how or how much Elias and his generation helped the nascent state. “I would like to believe that they were among its advocates,” he said.
Elias’s sister, Pearl Cohen Miller, took over the camp in 1952 and ran it until she died in the 1990s.
“When my aunt took over the camp, we modernized a bit,” Mr. Cohn said. “We were no longer swimming in the lake — we added a pool. We added a big sports center. We have a large, open dining hall. And we are one of the few camps I know of to have a working farm, with cows and chickens and turkeys and pigs. The kids can interact with the animals. And we turned an old chicken roost into where the waiters live. It is not an exaggeration to say that they get woken up by roosters every morning.
“We have the old-school essence. We try to keep the basics. That’s what kids care about.”
He compares it to a toddler who’s given a wrapped present. Often, “they just play with the box,” he said. “I’m not saying that we’re just a box! But I am saying that when you have good people and good values, you don’t need anything more. So keeping the essence, keeping our values alive and our costs down is very important to us.
From the beginning, prospective campers were interviewed; the goal was less to check out their families’ finances than to see whether they’d fit in, be happy, and add to the general happiness. “They were always looking for kids who were deserving, who didn’t just want it but needed it,” Mr. Cohn said. “Kids who needed to get out of the way at home. Those were the first children who got in.
“The children could come from divorced families, families with two working parents who still couldn’t afford much, parents from a military situation,” where one of them — back then, always the father — “couldn’t afford camp.
“And we still interview campers,” he added. “We are not looking for kids whose families can afford expensive camps but want to send them to us just because we cost less than half of what they do.”
Tranquillity Camp “was founded on Jewish values, and we use Judaism as a guiding light,” he continued. “It is not an exclusively Jewish camp — we welcome all kids, of all different faiths and backgrounds — but it is led by the Jewish values that welcome all.’
The food is kosher, and meat and dairy are kept separate, but there is no maschigach on hand to ensure compliance, Mr. Cohn said. “We have Friday night services. We have had them for over 100 years. It’s great to see kids get dressed up. We say prayers before and after every meal. That’s part of the Jewish life of the camp.
“We have been perceived as not Jewish enough, and we have been perceived as too Jewish.”
Tranquillity Camp is affiliated with the Foundation for Jewish Camp, and is part of its One Happy Camper program.
Starting the summer after Russia invaded Ukraine, Tranquillity brought Ukrainian kids to camp. “We had about 50 Ukrainian kids,” Mr. Cohn said. “They didn’t speak English, so we brought in Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking counselors. About 30 of them came back last summer, and the difference in them was huge. Their English is fluent and they are fully assimilated. It is a beautiful thing to see.
“After October 7, we brought in Israeli kids. We saw some differences. The kids from Ukraine wanted to stay in this country, and the kids from Israel wanted to go back. They didn’t have the same needs as the Ukrainian kids had.”
We’ve heard a great deal about how kids now have more mental health issues than earlier generations have had — the stresses of social media, the pandemic, and now, for Jewish kids, antisemitism have taken their toll. “We take that very seriously,” Mr. Cohn said. “We do everything that we can. We give support to everyone who needs it. But we also believe that being in the outdoors, without your electronics, is a fantastic way to reconnect to yourself, to unwind, to reprioritize.
“We are very supportive of individual children’s needs. We pride ourselves on making sure that each camper has the experience and support they need.” As a result, he said, “we have more homegrown counselors and staff than most other camps.”
Although it was the family’s camp, Mr. Cohn went there only for a few years, when he was very young, before he switched to a baseball camp. “But when we had our children, my wife, Stephanie, who is a big camper, wanted to get involved.” Ms. Cohn is an art history teacher who now is a professor at Bergen Community College during the year. “We have four children,” he said. “They’re now 15, 13, 10, and almost 8. When the older ones” — their two sons — “were 10 and 8, we were looking to send them to sleepaway camp. We got sold on all the stuff other camps had, so we sent them there.”
That was 2020. There was no camp anywhere that covid summer.
“Stephanie worked at a camp that summer, and I stayed up there too. There was no internal staff, so I got involved. That experience was good. But by the time we wanted to send our girls to camp, we realized that we don’t need all that other stuff.
“We thought about Tranquillity, and I had memories of my early childhood” — and of course family stories and memories and connections — “and we wanted a different environment for our girls, so we sent them there.
“That was in 2023. And when we got there, I said yes. This is what we were looking for. This is the kind of place we want our girls to be. It’s traditional, warm, kind, and welcoming. This is what we want.
“So we started to become more involved.”
The camp had gotten by on word of mouth for its first century, but “we realized that we have to modernize,” he said. “We have to use social media, to show our unique values. So I spent 2024 figuring out what I thought we should do.”
The changes in branding and market positioning — but not in the camp itself — that Mr. Cohn was proposing came at a good time. “We are going through a transitional period; we will have a new director for the fourth time in our 105 years,” he said.
All good camps produce campers who develop lifelong friendships at camp. Tranquillity is in that group.
“I was sitting at Shelly Levy’s retirement party at the JCC,” Mr. Cohn said. Ms. Levy had headed the special services department there. “In her speech, she talked about an experience she had as a child.” It was something that happened to her at camp, an experience that shaped her. “I have known Shelly forever, but I never made that connection. But my wife jumped up from the table when she heard the story about camp.” She knew the camp was Tranquillity, and she was astonished and thrilled. “So I started talking to more alumni, and they all had stories about how the camp had changed their lives. Now they know how to make hospital corners on beds. They still say the blessings they learned at camp. They still do the dances they learned there. They learned to fish there.
“They still feel all the love they felt there.
“So I was like, wow. Growing up in Tranquillity is the best part of growing up. This camp can shape you for the next 50 years or your life. So if you want your children to have life-changing experiences, we can help you. So can other camps, of course — and they can also teach you how to water ski, and we can’t. But we know that we help put kids on course for doing well in the world. We can help make them real mensches.”
Mr. Cohn went back to the camp’s history.
In the 1990s, Sherry and Richard Lerner started to work at the camp, gradually taking over its management from Pearl Miller. “They just announced their retirement, and now we have a new executive director,” Mr. Cohn said. She is Stacy Cohen Budkofsky of Closter. “Her father went to Tranquillity, and so did she. She’s the former director of the day camp at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades. She started in camping, and she’s coming back to it.”
Yes, her father did go to Tranquillity, Ms. Budkofsky said. “My grandparents had some friends who found out about it, and my dad, Paul Cohen, and my uncle, Arthur Cohen, both went. They fell in love with it.
“They both had children, and I was the fourth in line. My two older cousins and my older sister went, and then my younger cousin went. I started there when I was 6 years old. I was the one who really drank the Kool-Aid, and it ran through my veins. I was a camper, I was the girls’ head counselor.” She worked there for years, as a teenager and a young adult.
“After I left Tranquillity, I got my master’s degree, and at one point I was asked to join the board of directors of Tranquillity alumni. I have been on that board for many years, and for the last six years I’ve been president.
“In 1995, I moved to Edgewater. I was looking for a job, I interviewed at the JCC, and I started there, at the JCC day camp. I worked there for 19 summers.” She kept moving up at the JCC. She got married, moved to Closter, had two children. “Both of them went to the JCC until they were ready to go to Tranquillity,” she said. “They’re 23 and 25 now, and they’re both still involved with it.
“When I left the JCC, I said that I wouldn’t work at another camp — unless it was Tranquillity.
“This is full circle for me,” she said. “It is weird, and it is great. My heart lives there. It has been part of my life forever. What sets us apart is our intentional simplicity,” she continued. “It’s a world where you leave your screens behind. You are face to face with others all the time. There might be a movie on a rainy day, but otherwise everything is intentionally simple. All of our activities are kid-powered.”
The long list of activities includes sports, arts and crafts, swimming, boating, theater skills, performances, and evening and special events. None of it requires specialized electronic equipment or frills. “No horses, no motors, no water skis,” Ms. Budkofsky said. “Everything is powered by campers.
“And what also makes us unique is the strength of our community. My father went to camp with people whose children I went to camp with, and some of our children go to camp with some of their children. But we’re not an exclusive club. We are an open community. We are infused with Jewish values — the values of doing the right thing and being kind to others.’
Those certainly are not values unique to Tranquillity Camp. They are in fact shared with other Jewish camps, and all those camps produce happy, Jewishly connected, morally grounded people. But Tranquillity Camp has been doing it in its own special way for a very long time.
Oh — and that spelling. It’s Tranquillity, not Tranquility with just one l, because the camp’s founder, Elias Cohen, thought that using that second l was more British — he was right about that part of it — and therefore more proper. And it’s been Tranquillity ever since.
Learn more about Tranquillity Camp at tranquillitycamp.com.
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