Mar 22, 2023·edited Mar 22, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
Wow wow wow.
I went to a Jewish summer camp for probably about 7 consecutive years of my childhood, and I was absolutely obsessed with camp. It felt like a totally separate universe I entered each summer, for a little over a month, which felt like a lifetime.
It's an experience I reflect on a lot as an adult, as there were so many oddities surrounding the experience, and it was SO impactful on my development.
It's also something I think about for a similar reason as one that the author stated - I've done a lot of reflecting on the urgent zionist propaganda that was infused in so many of my experiences of Judaism as a child, and the extreme political conservatism tied up in a nationalist identity more broadly. Detangling the cultural, religious, and political teachings and experiences of Judaism is complex for a lot of people as they grow up and become more critical of what their families and institutions taught them. Some of those teachings are ideas I now find totally appalling and in complete opposition to my worldview, but they were positioned as being fundamental to Jewish identity. The economic piece was huge in my experience too - I grew up in a Jewish community that was very proud of wealth accumulation, and wore class status on their sleeve both literally and figuratively. I felt a lot of shame around "not being really rich". (so wild)
For me, all this ultimately resulted in my feeling totally and completely alienated from my Jewish identity, even though it defined my schooling as a child (I went to a day school!) and my summers (I went to a Jewish summer camp!). I grew up with SO MUCH Jewish tradition, and it is not AT ALL a part of my life in any way anymore. I feel okay about that, but I do wonder if things would have turned out differently if some of those formative features were different...if there was less unquestioning zionism, less affluence and materialism, less social and political conservatism around gender and sexuality, etc.
Re: the part about romance/sexuality/marriage simulation at camp - We lived in "villages" based on age, separated by gender. Then, eventually, you ended up in a co-ed village in your final year, which I believe was the summer before 9th grade? We had two counselors who were dating in this co-ed village - I will never forget them, even as so many important details of my childhood drain from my brain as I age. Their names were Bryan and Haley (I think.). We did a "mock wedding" for them as a real event. It is SO bizarre to me looking back on it, and I am so struck to learn that "wedding simulations" were a common event at Jewish camps! Ahh! This is something I've always been like, "...well that was weird" remembering back on, but it was actually a typical Jewish camp thing?!
God, I have so many thoughts about Jewish summer camp. Hello to any other Tamarack campers who read the AHP newsletter.
EDIT with additional thought: It occurs to me how interesting it is that for older generations, Jewish camp was perhaps supposed to make me more connected to my Jewish identity and more likely to carry it on, and yet it ultimately did the opposite (though in the immediate sense as a child, it was effective). My experiences at Jewish camp and Jewish day school actually made me feel more alienated from the Jewish community in the long-run. I know it's something I could explore now as an adult in different contexts and environments, but just thinking about "the goal" of camp...it backfired for me completely.
This is such an interesting story Alyssa, thank you for sharing! I have so many friends with a similar experience of the Jewish elements of their upbringing turning them off from diving deeper as an adult.
And then I ended up with the opposite experience - besides holidays with my stepmother, my upbringing has no Jewish elements, I was raised Buddhist. I approached Judaism slowly, and it happened because my "godmother" was in the Native American Church and I spent time on different reservations with her. It was being around Native American culture that started this conversation, people saying - "Oh, you're Jewish! That means you have your own language. You have songs, a calendar, holidays, food. You are not just a Hallmark/Disney cultural amalgam. Here are our songs, can you tell us some of your songs? Can you tell us some of your holidays?"
And I had no answer. But slowly over ten years, starting when I was about 22, I became *very* invested in Jewishness, through this lens. Now I co-lead a women's Torah study group at my Temple lol. Even though I do sometimes feel different than them, as a queer witchy kind of chick. For me, coming into Jewishness was an act of resistance, of resisting assimilation.
Jewish summer camp was not only a huge part of my Jewish upbringing as a child/teenager, I also worked at Jewish summer camps as a counselor and social work intern. It was such a complex experience! Thank you for writing about it so clearly.
Hey Alyssa! Thanks for this comment. I'm so sorry that camp and other things in Jewish communal life left you alienated. I REALLY get it. There *are* cool, alternative ways to engage with Jewishness these days in big cities, but I also get if you're just good with where you're at. -- Sandy
Yes, I love all of the communities, groups, organizations and temples that have a radical justice-oriented foundation to their Jewish practice. I think that for me, I'm pretty happy with the community I have and the lifestyle I live, and "adding" in Judaism just isn't an authentic urge I feel at this time in my life. I don't feel any responsibility to carry on Jewish practice or community or identity, but maybe that would change if I had kids - I could see that happening, but who knows. It's something perhaps I will explore later in life, or maybe not! Thanks again for your response!
This post is absolutely speaking my language. I went to Ramah Poconos for four years, followed by two at USY summer programs, and every bit of this scholarship rings accurate to my experiences. I liked the Slate excerpt too when I saw it. I definitely noticed the tacit encouragement of teenage heterosexual romance and felt very weird about it as a nerdy queer kid. The politics were also markedly notable, definitely including those camp Tisha b'Av observances! I'll be getting the book - the only debate about it in my household is whether it's an ebook just for me or a print book to share with my spouse.
What a great read! I have always been Jew-ish, but I came to my Jewishness later in life after being raised by a family that had multiple generations of secular atheists. My mom is a Buddhist. My husband and I are both Jewish and I am an active participant in my Temple. But there are pieces that are very difficult for me, like Zionism. I always feel on the fence about Jewish camp for that reason, we haven't tried it for our kids yet. This book sounds like it highlights a very transformative time for American Jews, and this is a period I wonder about a lot as someone who studies statehood (more as it relates to agriculture and labor than nationalism). I grew up so saturated with stories of Jewish diasporic anarchists and communists (stories like Becca references below). As an adult I have often wondered, where are these people at my Temple? We are a Temple of (liberal) thousands, but thousands very in-step with nationalism and militarism. Even besides anti-Zionism, what about just being an anarchist? What about nationalism in general? What happened to all those Jews? I feel like this lens, of summer camp, is an excellent view into the last century.
For another take on Jews and camp, you might be interested in my brother's book about communist summer camps, Raising Reds: The Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture in the United States. Do links work in comments? http://cup.columbia.edu/book/raising-reds/9780231110457
Sandra Fox asks how many readers have heard of Tisha B’Av. Well, I haven't. I grew up in the S.F. Bay Area, and had some Jewish friends, but most of them lived pretty secular lives. This type of summer camp just wasn't a thing on the West Coast. Practically everything I know about Jewish culture and holidays I learned from the <i>All of a Kind Family</i> series. I don't recall Tisha B’Av being mentioned in those books.
Yes it was! I went to a Reform Jewish camp outside of San Jose in the '90s that had been around since the early '50s I believe (any Swig/Newman alum in the AHP world?). There are also Jewish camps in Malibu that have been around for decades, and I'm sure many others.
So much about this rings eerily true from my eight summers of Jewish camping, including the fraught, on again, off again relationship I've had with Judaism as an adult...and definitely the romance, lol. Those redwood groves in Northern California provided some good privacy...
I sit corrected. I'll revise my comment to say that none of the six Jewish kids in my friends group went to summer camp. Hebrew School, yes. Summer camp, no.
I didn't go to a Jewish sleep-away camp, but I worked for as kitchen staff for one summer in a pluralistic zionist camp, and what the camp director referred to euphemistically as "continuation" (rumor was a couple was found in a compromising position on the playground) was everywhere amongst staff even, in 2011 - and lord help you if you identified as LGBTQ+. None of the staff in my year got married to each other, although I do believe quite a few long term relationships occurred.
I will say that what struck me most that judging by the social media of the staff I do keep in touch with, what lasts are the friendships formed at camp, and I do wish that was discussed a bit more.
Funny enough that camp solidified my conviction that halachically Jewish men don't find me attractive... But I did marry a fellow paternal jew a few years later.
Thank you all for these interesting comments! I'm the author of the book and would be happy to field any questions you might have. And if you happen to live in Brooklyn, you can buy the book in person at Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Greenlight Books in Fort Greene/Prospect Lefferts, and Books Are Magic on Montague. -- Sandy
Mar 23, 2023·edited Mar 23, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
I'm not Jewish, but I've worked for 17 years at a Reform Jewish Temple, so I found a lot of this interesting. Promoting Jewish camps - and one we're affiliated with most - is a huge part of the culture. I've heard of the issue of Zionism teachings at camp come up with former students. I also wanted to say, we host a Tisha B'Av service every year! I'm not sure how well attended it is or if half of our congregation knows about it, but we've had one for as long as I've been working here.
Looking forward to reading the book soon! Just want to say - so glad you and AHP created this moment for our group to talk. I so much enjoy my Temple people, even though there are places where things are jarring sometimes, that I didn't realize how much I really needed to kvetch with other Jews about being queer or radical or otherwise more on the "wrestling" side of "wrestling with G'd".
As a gentile with Jewish neighbors, I was fuzzily aware of Jewish summer camps. My crowd went to Girl Scout camp, horse camp and music camp. I asked one of my neighbors if they went to camp and they said, “We have our own camps.” I thought maybe it had something to do with preparation for bar and bat mitzvahs. As for Tisha B’av, I never knew about it until it was part of the Catskills episode of Mrs. Maisel. It was played as kind of a joke and obviously it is very serious to observant people.
If you are Jewish and born after World War II, you lived in the shadow of the Holocaust. There were always a few people of the older generation that one encountered with a concentration camp tatoo on their wrists, and when you were little they were just something vaguely horrifying, but more horrifying as you learned the details years later. When I was a child, I always found it reassuring that my synagogue had an American flag and and Israeli flag. It made me feel safer. Of course, if you were Jewish and born after, let's say the revolution of 1848 or 1870, you had your own stories, and there were stories before that, likely just as horrifying. Jews were cursed with literacy thousands of years ago, so a lot of things got written down and remembered. Other cultures, I am sure, had their Tisha B'Av, now long forgotten, and others never did, having no one to remember.
P.S. There were Jewish summer camps before the war. Oppenheimer attended one, a dude ranch camp outside of Santa Fe. When he was put in charge of the Manhattan Project, he sited it there in what is now Los Alamos.
I was a Montessori kid and many Jewish kids went to Montessori in my hometown. They were all my friends. So of course, though I am not Jewish, I went to day camp with them. Camp Hilbert! Because it’s just how I grew up, I had no idea that Jewish summer camp was a thing until I saw this piece.
I never thought about Montessori being a Jewish thing, but reading your comment I realize more than half the kids in my Waldorf school were Jewish! All the Waldorf kids who stayed through 12th grade went on to a Montessori high school.
I'm not Jewish at all, I did not go to camp. Working-class gentile Midwesterners MAYBE did a week at Scout camp, or a sports camp, or a 4-H camp, or church camp, but that was usually when you were a teenager and wasn't the norm. For younger kids, anything other than day camp was pretty much unheard of.
That said, this book was an absolutely fascinating read.
As a Jew of Summer (Camp Towanda, 72-82) I was and am still, in my fifties, obsessed by camp. I have attended the bar and bar mitzvahs of my camp friends. I have attended their weddings and the brises of their sons, the bar and bats of their kids, their weddings, funerals of parents, Olympic break-outs. In my second book I wrote about a 1977 Friday night at camp while my parents were home in NY attending a key party. Always a Jew of Summer. 🙏🏻
Wow wow wow.
I went to a Jewish summer camp for probably about 7 consecutive years of my childhood, and I was absolutely obsessed with camp. It felt like a totally separate universe I entered each summer, for a little over a month, which felt like a lifetime.
It's an experience I reflect on a lot as an adult, as there were so many oddities surrounding the experience, and it was SO impactful on my development.
It's also something I think about for a similar reason as one that the author stated - I've done a lot of reflecting on the urgent zionist propaganda that was infused in so many of my experiences of Judaism as a child, and the extreme political conservatism tied up in a nationalist identity more broadly. Detangling the cultural, religious, and political teachings and experiences of Judaism is complex for a lot of people as they grow up and become more critical of what their families and institutions taught them. Some of those teachings are ideas I now find totally appalling and in complete opposition to my worldview, but they were positioned as being fundamental to Jewish identity. The economic piece was huge in my experience too - I grew up in a Jewish community that was very proud of wealth accumulation, and wore class status on their sleeve both literally and figuratively. I felt a lot of shame around "not being really rich". (so wild)
For me, all this ultimately resulted in my feeling totally and completely alienated from my Jewish identity, even though it defined my schooling as a child (I went to a day school!) and my summers (I went to a Jewish summer camp!). I grew up with SO MUCH Jewish tradition, and it is not AT ALL a part of my life in any way anymore. I feel okay about that, but I do wonder if things would have turned out differently if some of those formative features were different...if there was less unquestioning zionism, less affluence and materialism, less social and political conservatism around gender and sexuality, etc.
Re: the part about romance/sexuality/marriage simulation at camp - We lived in "villages" based on age, separated by gender. Then, eventually, you ended up in a co-ed village in your final year, which I believe was the summer before 9th grade? We had two counselors who were dating in this co-ed village - I will never forget them, even as so many important details of my childhood drain from my brain as I age. Their names were Bryan and Haley (I think.). We did a "mock wedding" for them as a real event. It is SO bizarre to me looking back on it, and I am so struck to learn that "wedding simulations" were a common event at Jewish camps! Ahh! This is something I've always been like, "...well that was weird" remembering back on, but it was actually a typical Jewish camp thing?!
God, I have so many thoughts about Jewish summer camp. Hello to any other Tamarack campers who read the AHP newsletter.
EDIT with additional thought: It occurs to me how interesting it is that for older generations, Jewish camp was perhaps supposed to make me more connected to my Jewish identity and more likely to carry it on, and yet it ultimately did the opposite (though in the immediate sense as a child, it was effective). My experiences at Jewish camp and Jewish day school actually made me feel more alienated from the Jewish community in the long-run. I know it's something I could explore now as an adult in different contexts and environments, but just thinking about "the goal" of camp...it backfired for me completely.
This is such an interesting story Alyssa, thank you for sharing! I have so many friends with a similar experience of the Jewish elements of their upbringing turning them off from diving deeper as an adult.
And then I ended up with the opposite experience - besides holidays with my stepmother, my upbringing has no Jewish elements, I was raised Buddhist. I approached Judaism slowly, and it happened because my "godmother" was in the Native American Church and I spent time on different reservations with her. It was being around Native American culture that started this conversation, people saying - "Oh, you're Jewish! That means you have your own language. You have songs, a calendar, holidays, food. You are not just a Hallmark/Disney cultural amalgam. Here are our songs, can you tell us some of your songs? Can you tell us some of your holidays?"
And I had no answer. But slowly over ten years, starting when I was about 22, I became *very* invested in Jewishness, through this lens. Now I co-lead a women's Torah study group at my Temple lol. Even though I do sometimes feel different than them, as a queer witchy kind of chick. For me, coming into Jewishness was an act of resistance, of resisting assimilation.
All of this! And I was a Tamarack camper in the 1960s!
Jewish summer camp was not only a huge part of my Jewish upbringing as a child/teenager, I also worked at Jewish summer camps as a counselor and social work intern. It was such a complex experience! Thank you for writing about it so clearly.
Oh wow! So cool! I was there in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Hey Alyssa! Thanks for this comment. I'm so sorry that camp and other things in Jewish communal life left you alienated. I REALLY get it. There *are* cool, alternative ways to engage with Jewishness these days in big cities, but I also get if you're just good with where you're at. -- Sandy
Thanks for responding to my comment!
Yes, I love all of the communities, groups, organizations and temples that have a radical justice-oriented foundation to their Jewish practice. I think that for me, I'm pretty happy with the community I have and the lifestyle I live, and "adding" in Judaism just isn't an authentic urge I feel at this time in my life. I don't feel any responsibility to carry on Jewish practice or community or identity, but maybe that would change if I had kids - I could see that happening, but who knows. It's something perhaps I will explore later in life, or maybe not! Thanks again for your response!
totally -- that makes sense! thanks for your response to my response! haha.
This post is absolutely speaking my language. I went to Ramah Poconos for four years, followed by two at USY summer programs, and every bit of this scholarship rings accurate to my experiences. I liked the Slate excerpt too when I saw it. I definitely noticed the tacit encouragement of teenage heterosexual romance and felt very weird about it as a nerdy queer kid. The politics were also markedly notable, definitely including those camp Tisha b'Av observances! I'll be getting the book - the only debate about it in my household is whether it's an ebook just for me or a print book to share with my spouse.
What a great read! I have always been Jew-ish, but I came to my Jewishness later in life after being raised by a family that had multiple generations of secular atheists. My mom is a Buddhist. My husband and I are both Jewish and I am an active participant in my Temple. But there are pieces that are very difficult for me, like Zionism. I always feel on the fence about Jewish camp for that reason, we haven't tried it for our kids yet. This book sounds like it highlights a very transformative time for American Jews, and this is a period I wonder about a lot as someone who studies statehood (more as it relates to agriculture and labor than nationalism). I grew up so saturated with stories of Jewish diasporic anarchists and communists (stories like Becca references below). As an adult I have often wondered, where are these people at my Temple? We are a Temple of (liberal) thousands, but thousands very in-step with nationalism and militarism. Even besides anti-Zionism, what about just being an anarchist? What about nationalism in general? What happened to all those Jews? I feel like this lens, of summer camp, is an excellent view into the last century.
For another take on Jews and camp, you might be interested in my brother's book about communist summer camps, Raising Reds: The Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture in the United States. Do links work in comments? http://cup.columbia.edu/book/raising-reds/9780231110457
Link does work Becca! Thanks for the recommendation, I have been collecting books on the history of Jewish radicals lately and this looks great.
Great book!
Sandra Fox asks how many readers have heard of Tisha B’Av. Well, I haven't. I grew up in the S.F. Bay Area, and had some Jewish friends, but most of them lived pretty secular lives. This type of summer camp just wasn't a thing on the West Coast. Practically everything I know about Jewish culture and holidays I learned from the <i>All of a Kind Family</i> series. I don't recall Tisha B’Av being mentioned in those books.
Yes it was! I went to a Reform Jewish camp outside of San Jose in the '90s that had been around since the early '50s I believe (any Swig/Newman alum in the AHP world?). There are also Jewish camps in Malibu that have been around for decades, and I'm sure many others.
So much about this rings eerily true from my eight summers of Jewish camping, including the fraught, on again, off again relationship I've had with Judaism as an adult...and definitely the romance, lol. Those redwood groves in Northern California provided some good privacy...
I sit corrected. I'll revise my comment to say that none of the six Jewish kids in my friends group went to summer camp. Hebrew School, yes. Summer camp, no.
Swig alum here. And Camp Tawonga!
I write about Swig quite a bit in the book! Really solid archival collection at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. :)
that's amazing! i'm sure my mom already ordered it for me :)
I grew up in Seattle and went to our Temple’s camp up here but my family is all California and if my mom is right, the Swigs are our cousins!
I didn't go to a Jewish sleep-away camp, but I worked for as kitchen staff for one summer in a pluralistic zionist camp, and what the camp director referred to euphemistically as "continuation" (rumor was a couple was found in a compromising position on the playground) was everywhere amongst staff even, in 2011 - and lord help you if you identified as LGBTQ+. None of the staff in my year got married to each other, although I do believe quite a few long term relationships occurred.
I will say that what struck me most that judging by the social media of the staff I do keep in touch with, what lasts are the friendships formed at camp, and I do wish that was discussed a bit more.
Funny enough that camp solidified my conviction that halachically Jewish men don't find me attractive... But I did marry a fellow paternal jew a few years later.
Thank you all for these interesting comments! I'm the author of the book and would be happy to field any questions you might have. And if you happen to live in Brooklyn, you can buy the book in person at Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Greenlight Books in Fort Greene/Prospect Lefferts, and Books Are Magic on Montague. -- Sandy
I'm not Jewish, but I've worked for 17 years at a Reform Jewish Temple, so I found a lot of this interesting. Promoting Jewish camps - and one we're affiliated with most - is a huge part of the culture. I've heard of the issue of Zionism teachings at camp come up with former students. I also wanted to say, we host a Tisha B'Av service every year! I'm not sure how well attended it is or if half of our congregation knows about it, but we've had one for as long as I've been working here.
Looking forward to reading the book soon! Just want to say - so glad you and AHP created this moment for our group to talk. I so much enjoy my Temple people, even though there are places where things are jarring sometimes, that I didn't realize how much I really needed to kvetch with other Jews about being queer or radical or otherwise more on the "wrestling" side of "wrestling with G'd".
Thank you so much for this interview! I just requested that my library purchase a copy of the book - I’m very excited to read it!
This was a great interview. Thanks for posting it!
As a gentile with Jewish neighbors, I was fuzzily aware of Jewish summer camps. My crowd went to Girl Scout camp, horse camp and music camp. I asked one of my neighbors if they went to camp and they said, “We have our own camps.” I thought maybe it had something to do with preparation for bar and bat mitzvahs. As for Tisha B’av, I never knew about it until it was part of the Catskills episode of Mrs. Maisel. It was played as kind of a joke and obviously it is very serious to observant people.
If you are Jewish and born after World War II, you lived in the shadow of the Holocaust. There were always a few people of the older generation that one encountered with a concentration camp tatoo on their wrists, and when you were little they were just something vaguely horrifying, but more horrifying as you learned the details years later. When I was a child, I always found it reassuring that my synagogue had an American flag and and Israeli flag. It made me feel safer. Of course, if you were Jewish and born after, let's say the revolution of 1848 or 1870, you had your own stories, and there were stories before that, likely just as horrifying. Jews were cursed with literacy thousands of years ago, so a lot of things got written down and remembered. Other cultures, I am sure, had their Tisha B'Av, now long forgotten, and others never did, having no one to remember.
P.S. There were Jewish summer camps before the war. Oppenheimer attended one, a dude ranch camp outside of Santa Fe. When he was put in charge of the Manhattan Project, he sited it there in what is now Los Alamos.
I was a Montessori kid and many Jewish kids went to Montessori in my hometown. They were all my friends. So of course, though I am not Jewish, I went to day camp with them. Camp Hilbert! Because it’s just how I grew up, I had no idea that Jewish summer camp was a thing until I saw this piece.
I never thought about Montessori being a Jewish thing, but reading your comment I realize more than half the kids in my Waldorf school were Jewish! All the Waldorf kids who stayed through 12th grade went on to a Montessori high school.
Camp Kinderland definitely loomed large in the 90s Greenwich Village / Soho!
My mom is from Greenwich Village! Horatio Street :)
I'm not Jewish at all, I did not go to camp. Working-class gentile Midwesterners MAYBE did a week at Scout camp, or a sports camp, or a 4-H camp, or church camp, but that was usually when you were a teenager and wasn't the norm. For younger kids, anything other than day camp was pretty much unheard of.
That said, this book was an absolutely fascinating read.
As a Jew of Summer (Camp Towanda, 72-82) I was and am still, in my fifties, obsessed by camp. I have attended the bar and bar mitzvahs of my camp friends. I have attended their weddings and the brises of their sons, the bar and bats of their kids, their weddings, funerals of parents, Olympic break-outs. In my second book I wrote about a 1977 Friday night at camp while my parents were home in NY attending a key party. Always a Jew of Summer. 🙏🏻