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Feb. 23, 2007
The value of camping
Jewish identities grow from summer learning.
KELLEY KORBIN
If you want to start a movement to change the world, I suggest
you start a summer camp." That's the conclusion of Riv-Ellen
Prell, professor and chair of American studies at the University
of Minnesota, who is currently writing a book on the creation of
an American Jewish youth culture following the Second World War.
Prell, who was recently in Vancouver to give the Itta and Eliezer
Zeisler Memorial Lecture, posits that the North American Jewish
summer camp experience was responsible for creating a new culture
of youth-oriented Judaism in the second half of the 20th century
– a transformation that was designed to facilitate the survival
of the religion in the post-Holocaust era.
This was necessary, argued Prell, because many of the surviving
North American Jews in the late 1940s were not equipped to provide
a framework for the future of Judaism.
Parents of baby boom children, said Prell, are "characterized
by historians as the least religiously educated generation in the
history of Jewish civilization." This is because their immigrant
parents did not have the motivation or the means to send their children
to the few Hebrew schools that existed in North America at the time.
As a result, "That parent of the baby boom generation, through
the disruption of the Depression and the inner war period, just
didn't get much beyond fairly rote [Jewish] education," said
Prell. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that this same
generation was subject to the height of anti-Semitism in North America.
As a result, said Prell, for parents of baby boomers, "The
experience of being Jewish was a very complicated and, in many ways,
unattractive experience, with lots of discrimination and humiliation."
Yet this generation wanted their children to understand what it
was to be Jewish, even if they did not necessarily want to become
more religious in the home.
After the Shoah and the devastation of the world's Jewish leadership
in Europe, she said, it fell to the community in North America to
take the reigns as the stewards of the Jewish people, regardless
of the fact that community leaders at the time did not feel prepared
to take on that responsibility.
Prell said the community ultimately recognized it needed to create
"a saving remnant on whom Jewish civilization will rest, and
that saving remnant will be youth, because no one took adult Jews
of that generation very seriously ... they were seen as people very
good at making and hopefully giving up money ... but they were not
educated, serious Jews and they were not seen as people capable
of producing Jewish leadership. So their best role was literally
to give their children over and hopefully to find among them the
future leaders of world Jewry."
According to Prell, Jewish educators of the period decided that
the best place to start was with the development of Jewish summer
camps. There were some Jewish summer camps in existence at the time
– mainly Zionist camps – but, as a result of this tactic,
in the late 1940s and early 1950s, camps of all denominations and
their associated youth movements started springing up over the continent.
The idea was to get access to Jewish children at a young age, keep
them for extended periods of time and, ultimately, have a seminal
influence in their lives.
It was a strategy that worked, said Prell. "If you like camp
and you go year after year, there is no question that it completely
transforms your life."
During pre-adolescence and adolescence, camp is an environment where
you can develop autonomy and gain a positive relationship with authority
and a sense of freedom in a very safe environment, explained Prell.
She said that camp rituals like Shabbat and Havdalah made Judaism
fun and positive, even in the face of the Holocaust. But most importantly,
said Prell, camp worked to create strong Jewish identity for youth
because of the extraordinary peer relationships formed over those
intense, intimate summer months.
Of course, Jewish camping has had its challenges. During the sex,
drugs and rock and roll era of the 1970s, camps had to find ways
to embrace rebellion and challenges to authority. Prell said this
led to many novel ideas and practices, like egalitarian Judaism.
"Rabbis began to dread when kids came home from camp because
... they would challenge everything," she said. She added that
it was at this time that kids also began to bring the ideals they
learned at camp to their university campuses.
Prell acknowledged that, today, Jewish camps are also facing a challenge,
mostly in the face of increased competition for kids' time from
other options, like specialized summer camps, and the fact that
more children than ever are now getting a Jewish education through
religious day schools. But Prell is definitely an advocate of Jewish
summer camp and she said that parents and community organizations
should keep in mind that research has shown camp to be "the
most important thing in creating and building strong and positive
Jewish identity."
The biennial Itta and Eliezer Zeisler Memorial Lecture series was
established by Betty and Irv Nitkin in memory of Betty's parents,
through an endowment at the University of British Columbia.
Kelley Korbin is a freelance writer based in West Vancouver.
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