{"id":29183,"date":"2023-08-07T11:31:44","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T15:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lilith.org\/?post_type=articles&p=29183"},"modified":"2023-08-17T10:21:44","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T14:21:44","slug":"camp-goes-to-school","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/lilith.org\/articles\/camp-goes-to-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Camp Goes to School"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
If you\u2019re wondering if you are currently, or have ever been, involved in an immersion experience, here are some ways to tell (in no particular order):<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re away from your normal life\u2014not necessarily geographically, but in a different environment.<\/em> Time seems to work in a way that it doesn\u2019t in the \u201creal\u201d world\u2014it slows down, speeds up, a day feels like a year, a month feels like a week.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The people around you, regardless of age or role, feel like family, or at least label themselves and your group as such.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The rules inside the experience aren\u2019t the same as those outside of it, and when you leave, there might be a rocky period of adjustment as you attempt to return to normal.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n This list might seem familiar to those who have worked in Jewish education, and especially in the world of Jewish camping, which until now, has remained relatively unexplored from a historical and academic standpoint. Sandra Fox\u2019s Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America <\/em>(Series: Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture, February 2023, $28.00) investigates the past and present of Jewish camping through the lens of the historical moment in which camping became a thing\u2014the thing\u2014for Jewish families in America. In the wake of the Holocaust, the Cold War, the Sexual Revolution, the pressures to assimilate solidly into American life, modern moral conflicts with Israel and Zionism. If you never went to Jewish camp (I\u2019m in that group), Fox\u2019s book proves useful in explaining what happens to a place when young people devote their summers and their identities to it These \u201cislands of Judaism” have been compelled to contort and adapt to the circumstances of the young people who spent their summers there, influencing the way prayer, history, and sexuality (among other things) were and are approached at camp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, a 1963 study of sixty-one Jewish summer camps revealed that 32 percent included prayer as a fundamental part of their morning routines. At Ramah, the camping arm of the Conservative movement, as well as at Reform movement camps, prayer wasn\u2019t a rote experience, but one in which campers were encouraged by counselors to find their own meaning. The catalyst for this more experimental approach to prayer (including more gender inclusivity) was likely the result of counselors\u2019 involvement in the Havurah movement at home, which they sought to replicate at camp. \u201cThe younger generation\u2019s approach to gender also made Ramah\u2019s morning prayer services more egalitarian than the Conservative movement from which it emerged,\u201d writes Fox. In spite of what was happening at camp, the Conservative movement lagged behind in gender equality. Rabbinic ordination for women didn\u2019t come to fruition until 1984.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anxiety about that old bugbear, Jewish continuity, particularly intermarriage, dictated much of camp programming for decades. In spite of efforts by camp administration to craft young Jews who would adhere to the values presented to them at camp, even when they were out side the bubble, the truth, Fox writes, was that \u201ccamp leaders could never ensure it…and the unity that they worked to build did not win over every child.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Zionist summer camps, where pride in and allegiance to Israeli culture and history made up the curriculum, campers would meld into secular college campuses and get conflicting information about the Israel which they\u2019d been taught to revere and aspire. The result is a movement, led by alumni\/ae of Jewish summer camps, to foreground a complicated Israeli reality, especially IfNotNowWhen\u2019s #YouNeverToldMe campaign. In addition to this pushback against