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Jan. 17, 2014
The lessons from Camp Tawonga
We take a leap of faith when we release our children into the arms of summer camp.
MIRA SUCHAROV
Two Jewish summer camps were thrust into the news last summer for reasons of tragedy. First, lightning struck the Goldman Union Camp Institute, a Reform Jewish camp near Indianapolis. Three campers were injured, one critically. Then a counselor was killed, and four others were injured, by a falling tree at Camp Tawonga near Yosemite Park in California. When the lightning struck, there had been neither rain nor storm. When the murderous black oak had been examined, it appeared healthy.
When nature unleashes its fury on our vulnerable selves, we have good reason to want to run for cover and lock the door. It is especially unnerving when sudden and uncontrollable tragedy strikes at the sort of place that is engineered to be the kind of intentional community where shelter and mutual protection rules the day.
For many campers and counselors at Jewish camp, the camp to which they return year after year feels like home in a most specific way. While it’s far from one’s family house, it’s a place where social interaction and creativity reign, where collective spirit and informal education are keys to personal growth, and where deep and textured connections are made to Hebrew, Israel and Judaism. Most of all, it’s a place where, when it’s working as it should, campers and counselors report feeling like they can truly be themselves. As Ethan Calof wrote in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin last year, recalling being tearful and frightened when he began his first year at Camp Ramah, “When I decided to open my eyes, I saw everyone welcoming me into the ironclad Ramah community with open arms.” Soon, as he said, he “didn’t want to leave.”
These tragedies remind us about the most precious commodity of all: the people involved in creating the sense of community that defines Jewish camp. I decided to take a peek at Camp Tawonga’s website to see how it describes its camping philosophy. I was struck by a couple of things.
The first is that “Tawonga counselors are kid specialists, with no secondary responsibilities outside their bunks, and are empowered to prioritize the quality of the group dynamic over any activity.” Parents send their kids to camp – an experience outside of the comfort zone of many kids as they first contemplate it – precisely for these reasons. Feeling part of something larger than oneself, operating within a group when the dynamics are at their best – represents the best kind of community.
Yet, it’s not always easy to put campers front and centre, particularly when much of camp demands various time-crunched feats of creativity by counselors expected to shine in their multi-tasking roles. As a parent, I find Tawonga’s self-described approach – assuming it actually works – to be touching.
The camp’s description of its philosophy closes with this: “you haven’t really seen it all until you’ve been to a Tawonga Torah service.”
I haven’t experienced a Torah service at Tawonga, but I can well imagine. Praying outside in Hebrew, surrounded by campers and counselors who are experiencing Jewish life singly and together is the kind of platform from which inspired Jewish leadership is launched.
As we release our kids into the arms of summer camps, we are taking a leap of faith. We hope they aren’t homesick, we hope they don’t catch poison ivy and we hope the food’s OK. When an extremely rare instance of tragedy strikes, there is not much we can do but hold the grieving families in our hearts and support each other in sustaining these summer havens. And when the precise form of tragedy is due to an act of nature, there are no policies to challenge, no sides to be taken, no lawsuits to be launched, no personnel to be faulted. There are only our precious children grouped together in cabins, screaming their hearts out in evening programs, banging on the tables as they recite Birkat Hamazon, slicing through the lake with their canoe paddles, falling in and out of love, eking out meaningful lives against the backdrop of unpredictability, and becoming who they really are.
Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at haaretz.com. A version of this article was originally published in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.
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