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Jan. 20, 2006
Getting a real life experience
Counselling becomes a gateway to community involvement.
EVA COHEN
Ben Feferman of Toronto has a very diversified Jewish camp background.
As a youngster, he attended two sleep-away camps, but it is primarily
his experience as a camp counsellor that puts him in a unique situation.
Feferman has been a staff member at six separate Jewish camps in
Canada and the United States. He has learned a lot about youth programming
and Jewish involvement from his experiences and, as summer 2006
approaches, said he will consider counselling again.
Many Jewish youth attend the same camp every year. Often it is the
same camp that one or both of their parents attended in their childhood.
For Feferman, the camp experience is enhanced by sampling everything
that is out there.
"Even if I like a camp a lot, I don't like to go back to the
same one every year," he said. "It's like visiting the
same city every summer – it's good to go other places."
One aspect from which Feferman said he feels he has benefitted is
experiencing the different programming techniques of the various
camps. Each camp has a different affiliation and programming varies
greatly.
In the summer of 2005, Feferman was a counsellor at Biluim in Quebec.
This camp has a very Zionist tone, while other camps that he has
staffed at do not have a specific affiliation.
Almost all of Feferman's positions have been at Canadian camps,
except for one in Maine and one in New York. These camps, said Feferman,
were no different than the Canadian camps as far as the youth were
concerned.
"The kids here were no different than at any of my other camps,"
he said. "These were the richest kids in the country and you
never would have been able to tell. They were accepting and nobody
thought any different of anyone else."
Feferman said, however, that it was much more difficult to go down
to the United States because of security and liability issues and
that everything was prolonged due to paperwork. Because of this,
he returned to staffing at Canadian camps.
Being a part of so many different camp organizations has allowed
Feferman to learn programming techniques that he has applied to
his life during the rest of the year. He graduated from Carleton
University in Ottawa with a law degree this past December and, during
his stay at university, became very involved in Jewish campus life.
During the 2004-2005 school year, Feferman was president of the
Ottawa chapter for the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi and first
semester before graduation this past fall, he was president of Hillel
at Carleton.
In these positions, Feferman was able to use skills learned as a
counsellor and further broaden his involvement in the Jewish community.
Feferman also travelled in the past year with both Birthright and
Hasbara, which is a two week Israeli advocacy leadership trip in
Jerusalem.
The Jewish camp experience is the threshold for involvement in the
larger Jewish community. Feferman said that counselling is like
doing tzedakah, because the pay is minimal, but the experience is
worth it.
Eva Cohen is a freelance writer living in Ottawa.
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