Jewish summer camps forge lifelong Jewish identities

As we brace ourselves for winter, it’s nice to fantasize about next summer. One way of hastening the realization of our fantasies is by registering our kids for camp.

Last summer, we took our daughter to visit sleepover camp for the day. She loved it.
“What exactly did you love about it?” I asked. I loved it too, but I was curious to get her take.
“Five words,” she responded. “I really want to go.”
Many nights she listens to the camp theme song, carefully learning the Hebrew lyrics. She watches the camp’s YouTube channel, absorbing the programs and jokes.
One evening, a couple of weeks after we returned, she sat up in bed, frustrated.
“Ah! I just want to go now!” she wailed.
Waiting a whole year can be hard for any seven-year-old. I pretended to comfort her while secretly mouthing the word, “Yes!”

When I was growing up in two Canadian cities, it seemed that kids wanting to go to Jewish camp had to choose between a camp with excellent recreational activities and facilities or a camp with superior programs, creativity and content – what I like to think of as soul. My family chose the latter me.

I was thrilled with the programs, ruach and general sense of purpose that we all shared. And, somehow, we wore our lacklustre facilities and limited waterfront program as a badge of honour. We had the camp with ruach and intense sense of purpose, where we were sometimes inspired to think up the perfect cabin song tune and Maccabiah themes months in advance. (For the record, I understand that my camp’s facilities, and the sports, aquatics and boating programming, have improved markedly since my time there as a camper and counsellor.) But, at Camp Ramah in Canada, located on Skeleton Lake in the Muskoka region, my jaw dropped.
This was a camp that seemed to have it all. No Solomonic choice was required between waterskiing and Judaic wellness, basketball and Beit Midrash, or pottery and prayer.

The camp director, who opened his address to the parents of prospective campers gathered in a wooden gazebo nestled in the woods – makom ba’ya’ar (place in the wilderness), he called it – stressed this summer’s theme of friendship. Despite Facebook seeming to have created the social network trend of friending, he said it’s the Hebrew root that gives rise to the word l’hitchaver, which means both to befriend and to connect.

We toured the ceramics studio, where campers press collected leaves into their clay creations, the sewing room, where one camper was working on a multicolored woman’s tallit, the woodworking studio, where they make yads for Torah reading, the enchanting outdoor shul overlooking the lake, the sports fields and the extensive waterfront for swimming, canoeing, kayaking, sailing and waterskiing.

I felt in awe. I even bumped into my rabbi who comes annually to join the teaching faculty for several days.
The data about the importance of Jewish summer camp in forging lifelong Jewish identity is well known. Choosing the right camp for each kid is important.

But I have heard some parents say they give high-Jewish-content camps a wide berth because they simply don’t practice much Judaism at home. To me, this misses the point. For kids, camp is a world unto itself. It’s precisely the place where you don’t have to compare and contrast how your family practices ritual relative to the families of other kids.

If a child arrives less knowledgeable of prayers or Hebrew, it’s no big deal. In two or three days of the kind of repetition and immersion that camp programming entails, he or she will be a pro. You’re all in this together, helping to create – and be created by – a world of Jewish passion and commitment.

In my estimation, the best Jewish camps are the ones which deliver kids home with a strong sense of individual and collective self, new-found confidence in tackling private and group challenges, new and deepened friendships, and a honed sense of Jewish identity – including the breadth of Jewish knowledge that constitutes the building blocks of Jewish peoplehood. Hebrew, prayer, history, Israeli folksongs, Israeli dances, and even nuanced and age-appropriate discussion of theology, are all keys to unlocking the lifelong Jewish conversation.

If we can imbue our kids with the kind of experiential knowledge so powerfully delivered in a summer camp context, Jewish life is bound to continue far into the future, and be lived as richly as it ever was.

Written by: Mira Sucharov – New Ramah Parent
Published by: Ottawa Jewish Bulletin – Dec 12, 2011