The Centre for Judaism of the Lower Fraser Valley is looking for nominations for its annual Lamplighter Award, which honours a child who has performed an outstanding act of community service. Candidates must be between the ages of 6 and 18 and submission of potential recipients must include two references describing the child’s community service.
The chosen Lamplighter will receive the award, as well as a monetary gift, on Dec. 9, 7 p.m., at Semiahmoo Shopping Centre in a ceremony led by Rabbi Falik and Simie Schtroks, directors of the Centre for
Judaism, with various official representatives of the cities of Surrey, White Rock, Langley and Delta in attendance.
Last year, twins Emily and Jessie Miller received the award for spearheading the Live2Give program in their NCSY chapter. They also managed to get many other teenagers to get involved in projects focused on helping others.
To nominate a candidate for the award or to sponsor the gift or event, contact Simie Schtroks as soon as possible at [email protected].
Left to right: The Bayit president Michael Sachs, Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie and Marc’s Mensches winner Taya Benson. (photo from the Bayit)
Marc’s Mensches winner Taya Benson fundraised more than $7,500 for the Richmond SPCA, where she also volunteers every week. She was awarded the cash prize on Sept. 26 at the Pizza in the Hut event for Sukkot, which was co-sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and Marc’s Mensches. The event brought out a diverse crowd of more than 200 people, including many local officials and civic election candidates.
While the Marc’s Mensches initiative continues, the program is in the process of switching objectives: instead of being a contest, it will be focused on working as a group to do acts of chesed (loving kindness) around the city and community. “People can still nominate [youth] for the monthly gift card draw,” Bayit president Michael Sachs told the Independent, “but the main focus in Year 2 is harnessing the power of these mensches and doing good all over.”
The Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver has partnered with BBYO to provide expanded opportunities for teens around the Lower Mainland. The partnership will enhance the connections of Greater Vancouver Jewish teens and link the local community to BBYO hubs across Canada – in Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg – and in more than 30 countries around the world.
The JCC-BBYO connections were forged earlier this year at the JCC Festival Ha’Rikud closing party hosted by BBYO. With more than 80 teens from Vancouver, Miami and Israel, the JCC set the stage for fun and teen involvement. Since the party, a group of teens from Vancouver, White Rock and Richmond formed a leadership team and the JCC is looking for a professional to support them.
In partnership with BBYO, the JCC is currently seeking to fill the role of BBYO city director and JCC teen coordinator. The role will focus on programs that foster engagement and create meaningful connections among high school teens in the community. The professional will liaise with Jewish and secular community organizations working with youth, and will build BBYO chapters throughout the Greater Vancouver area.
“Each year, I get to see teens around the Jewish community grow and connect,” said Shirly Berelowitz, director of children, youth and camps at the JCC. “The JCC teen department looks forward to expanding these opportunities in our new partnership with BBYO. Our goal is to become a hub for Jewish teens to connect with each other in Vancouver and around the world. I couldn’t be more excited for the JCC to take on this role!”
This year, the JCC celebrates 90 years in Vancouver as BBYO celebrates 90 years in Canada – it is only fitting that the organizations celebrate together.
For more information on the coordinator position, contact Berelowitz at 604-257-5111 or [email protected].
Beth Israel Synagogue, 1972. (photo from JWB fonds, JMABC L.09793)
If you know someone in this photo, please help the JI fill the gaps of its predecessor’s (the Jewish Western Bulletin’s) collection at the Jewish Museum and Archives of B.C. by contacting [email protected] or 604-257-5199. To find out who has been identified in the photos, visit jewishmuseum.ca/blog.
The Pacific Torah Institute’s Rabbi Noam Abramchik, left, and Rabbi Aaron Kamin. (photo from PTI)
As Vancouver’s only Orthodox yeshivah, Pacific Torah Institute (PTI) holds a unique place in the community. Since the talmudic era, when the rabbis of what is now Iraq gathered to debate Jewish law and texts and created the intense intellectual culture at the heart of traditional Judaism, the house of study (beit midrash) has been at the heart of Orthodox Jewish religious culture. In recognition of this, even non-religious Jews have long prided themselves on the presence of a yeshivah in their community and been willing to materially support it.
Located at 41st Avenue and Oak Street near a cluster of Jewish community organizations and services, PTI teaches traditional Jewish textual learning, including Talmud b’iyyun (with in-depth analytical study) and musar (the practices of ethical self-discipline and character transformation), thus carrying on the centuries-old twin focus of the Lithuanian-style yeshivah. So, when news spread that PTI, which has operated in the community since 2003, was considering relocating to Seattle, ripples of urgent concern spread throughout some quarters of the Jewish community.
A town hall meeting was organized, which took place at Schara Tzedek Synagogue. The discussion elicited strong support, both emotional and financial. Heads of school Rabbi Noam Abramchik and Rabbi Aaron Kamin left the meeting determined to save the yeshivah by attracting more students from beyond the Pacific Northwest, as well as from closer to home.
“There was never a desire to pick up and move,” Abramchik told the Independent. “There were enrolment questions, which coincided with the opening of a similar school in Seattle. Students from Seattle have been a consistent part of our student body, and we were worried – with them staying there and competition from another nearby school, we might not have enough students to be viable.”
Although PTI is affiliated with the Rabbinical Seminary of America, part of the community commonly known as the Chofetz Chaim network, it is an independent yeshivah that relies entirely on direct support from donations and fees. In recent years, enrolment has decreased because of families moving out of Vancouver, creating what Abramchik called “an existential issue” in the yeshivah’s high school program.
Kamin said affordability in Vancouver is a major factor. As well, the community is small, so, when members leave, it has a destabilizing effect. “When some families move,” he said, “you lose critical mass and it gets harder for an Orthodox Jewish community to function and have what everyone needs.”
Both rabbis talked about the opportunities and challenges that come with operating a yeshivah here.
“Vancouver’s strength is its openness,” said Abramchik. “Students here get the benefit of living a Torah lifestyle while interacting with all kinds of people and ideas, being a part of the wider world.”
Yet, the nature of the community also means “we don’t have the strength in numbers, we don’t have as many institutions and services,” said Abramchik.
One common challenge for smaller Orthodox communities is the need for young people to go elsewhere for advanced Torah study or to make a shidduch (marriage match). PTI offers higher level Torah learning until the age of 21 or 22, but those who want to continue their studies will have to move to another city, as will many of those seeking a life mate. Both Abramchik and Kamin have children who have gone to New York to find a shidduch, though some of them would like to eventually return to Vancouver with their families and make a home here.
Both rabbis are deeply embedded in the local Jewish community.
“Fifteen years of being here is fantastic,” said Abramchik. “My children couldn’t have been raised in a healthier, more wholesome environment, with such breadth of experience. As a rabbi who values religion above all else, I couldn’t be prouder of who they are as Jews and people, and directly attribute that to the incredible education they received in Vancouver through Vancouver Hebrew Academy (the Orthodox day school), PTI and Shalhevet (the Orthodox girls high school), as well as the wide range of people they’ve come into contact with, as we have hosted many diverse people at our Shabbat table over the years.”
Asked why they want to stay here, the rabbis were in agreement. “If we were looking to best serve our institution per se, the move to Seattle makes sense,” said Abramchik. “There are 300 Shomer Shabbos [Orthodox observant] families versus probably 60 here. We had a number of supporters saying we should go, but, after giving 10 years to this community, we feel it’s our home … we weren’t ready to leave it if there was any possible way to stay here.”
After the community town hall, the rabbis’ commitment to stay was strengthened, Abramchik said. “Is Vancouver a better city for having this institution or not? We heard a resounding yes, we heard this from people who do not send their children here, never will. We heard this needs to get done, we need to find a way to make this happen.”
“Our first priority is to do what we feel is God’s will,” said Kamin. “We believe this is the best thing for ourselves and our spiritual advancement, we want to do the right thing. The right thing transcends the institution, it transcends our own personalities. It was very much a feeling of this is the right thing to be doing, to make this decision to stay – the right thing for the community and the right thing for the boys now and the future boys.”
For Toviah Salfinger, a student at PTI, the news they are staying is welcome. The yeshivah plays “a huge part in my life,” he said. “It enables me to be able to really grow in terms of religious life. It would be pretty hard to have a solid foundation as a religious Jew without a yeshivah.”
Salfinger sees the challenges of Vancouver as holding a hidden blessing. “The fact that you’re in a community where there isn’t a strong Jewish religious presence, it helps you in a way,” he said, “because it puts the responsibility on you to live up to that, to be an example as religious person.”
Salfinger said he’d like to go on to study at the Rabbinical Seminary of America yeshivah in New York, and maybe become a rabbi who teaches kids. Maybe, he said, if there is an opportunity, he will one day be able to return to Vancouver.
Matthew Gindinis a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.
Estimates of the number of people – most of them teens and young adults – who rallied in Washington, D.C., last Saturday range from 500,000 to 800,000. They called for sensible gun control legislation and mourned lives lost to gun violence, mobilized particularly by the memory of the mass murder of 17 in a Parkland, Fla., school Feb. 14. Many more rallied across the country and even in Canada. A small group gathered in solidarity at Vancouver’s Jack Poole Plaza.
Despite the horrors that inspired the marchers, the day was uplifting and inspiring. Survivors of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas school shooting – who have become the faces and voices of the movement – proved youthfulness was not a barrier to eloquence or to courage. In fact, they may have proved it was a prerequisite.
After nothing changed when 20 children, 6 and 7 years old, plus six adults, were killed at Sandy Hook elementary in Connecticut, in 2012, many of us concluded that nothing would ever be done to confront gun violence and the monetary and grassroots power of lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association. What the Stoneman Douglas students determined was that, if the adults of the world were not going to protect them, they would take matters into their own hands. The movement they have launched – and the dialogue they are fomenting – is being compared with the anti-Vietnam War movement that mobilized their grandparents’ generation.
It will take time to see if the power they seem to have unleashed develops into something long-lasting. Voters aged 18 to 29 consistently have the poorest turnout record among American (and Canadian) voters.
While it is encouraging to see the political waves being made by the movement, it is a cause of additional naches to witness the role of Jewish young people. Synagogues and JCCs became makeshift hostels for Jewish students piling into D.C. last weekend.
Zoe Terner, a Florida leader in the Reform movement’s North American Federation of Temple Youth, spoke at a Shabbat event the night before the march. “This is how we grieve,” she told JTA. “Tomorrow I will pray with my feet and, with every step, I will think of those few hours a month ago when I didn’t know if my friends were alive or dead.”
Students from Minnesota, who traveled 21 hours to the capital, wore T-shirts reading “Dayenu,” repurposing the Passover refrain to echo the anti-gun movement’s chant “Enough!”
We can’t help noting with a bit of disappointment the appropriation of the term #NeverAgain, which the movement adopted in good faith. Perhaps they were unaware that it has been the rallying cry for Holocaust remembrance and education for decades. It is one oversight in what has largely been a seamlessly orchestrated affair. Of course, groups cannot claim monopoly on sentiments like “Never Again,” but we wonder if it loses some resonance when used for other purposes. Perhaps parents and teachers have not sufficiently educated successive generations on the lessons of the Shoah. Or, just as likely, it may be that a familiar refrain expressed the urgency of the moment: the Jewish population of Stoneman Douglas high school is estimated at about 40%. (Several of the murder victims were and a number of the vocal activists are Jewish.)
The movement for sensible gun legislation in the United States faces hurdles. While last weekend’s rallies were an important start, and this fall’s midterm elections a crucial testing ground, it is difficult to foresee the trajectory of the cause.
A commentator on CNN over the weekend noted that the issue of marriage equality reached a tipping point, from where opposition to same-sex marriage reversed to majority support in a remarkably short time. By contrast, the debate over reproductive freedom has seen two sides dig in their heels for decades, with little middle ground.
Moreover, gun control is a more complex matter than the comparative yes-or-no approach one can take to gay marriage or abortion. There are dozens if not hundreds of permutations that gun regulation and control legislation could take.
But, for whatever challenges the youth movement for sensible gun policies faces in future, last weekend was the sound of millions of feet marching in the right direction.
Temple Sholom is hosting Inspired to Act. The event will feature the comedy of Yuk Yuk’s co-founder Mark Breslin, plus the music of young local artists Liel Amdour and Adrienne Robles, and will honour the winners of the 2018 Tikkun Olam Youth Awards.
This annual spring fundraising event will take place the evening of May 6 at Performance Works on Granville Island. It will be an uplifting night of entertainment and inspiration, and the recognition of Vancouver’s Jewish youth’s efforts to repair the world, or tikkun olam.
Yuk Yuk’s is the largest chain of comedy clubs in Canada, and Breslin will keep the audience in stitches. He will also share his view that comedy is a way of life. “You don’t just perform comedy; you live it,” he said. “It’s something you do onstage and off; whether you’re in the business or not.”
After Breslin’s performance, the 2018 Tikkun Olam Youth Awards will be presented to two teenage members of the Metro Vancouver Jewish community. These young community leaders will be honoured for their vision to heal and their passion to make the world a better place. The winner of the Dreamer category will have envisioned an action plan to address an issue in need of repair, while the winner of the Builder category will have volunteered at the grassroots level to cause change.
Community members have until April 9 to nominate a candidate, who is a member of the Jewish community between 13 and 19 years of age. The Dreamers Award is $1,800, while the Builders Award is $270, and the awards are funded by the generosity of the Neil and Michelle Pollock Family Foundation. For more information and the online application, visit templesholom.ca/youth-award.
The entire community is invited to Inspired to Act. For more information, tickets or to make a donation, visit templesholom.ca/inspired.
Kids on the Block uses a puppet show to teach kids about juvenile arthritis. (photo from Cassie and Friends)
Juvenile arthritis (JA) affects three in 1,000 kids in Canada, making it one of the most common chronic conditions affecting children today. Yet, JA is still relatively unknown and often misunderstood.
According to Jennifer Wilson, executive director of Cassie and Friends Society for Children with Juvenile Arthritis and other Rheumatic Diseases, “Arthritis has been mislabeled as ‘an old person’s disease,’ leaving kids who suffer from JA misunderstood for their differences and the disease’s complications.”
In 2006, David Porte and Debbie Setton discovered that their then-20-month-old daughter Cassie had JA.
“When Cassie was not quite 2 years old, she woke up one morning and couldn’t walk,” recalled her mom, Debbie. “I took her to the children’s hospital and, after X-rays, blood work and several visits by specialists over the next few weeks, we received the diagnosis of JA, a painful, lifelong autoimmune condition.
“Despite being a physician, I remember feeling very scared and alone, especially as Cassie’s disease progressed to involve more and more joints. Both David and I struggled to find information and support to cope with Cassie’s condition.
“About six months after Cassie was diagnosed,” she said, “David entered the Scotiabank Charity Challenge Run. We were overwhelmed with the support we received from family and friends, raising over $18,000 in a few weeks. We decided to do something long-lasting and create a charity that would help other kids and families like us.”
Debbie and David named the Vancouver-based charity Cassie and Friends, and it has been working to transform the lives of kids and families affected by JA and other rheumatic diseases locally and across Canada.
“Cassie’s disease has followed a pretty typical course of flares and remissions,” said Debbie. “At her worst, she had 16 joints affected (knee, ankles, toes, wrists, fingers). During the flares, she was unable to do the things she loves, like dance. In fact, at times, she found it hard just to walk or hold a pen. Thankfully, she is in a remission phase right now, on two different injectable medications to control the inflammation.”
According to Debbie, Cassie sometimes gets sad or frustrated because of her arthritis or its treatment. But, for the most part, Cassie is exceptionally positive and does not let her arthritis stop her. Further, Cassie’s condition has had an impact on her older brother, Ben, making him a more empathetic person after observing his sister’s struggles, said his mom.
“In the beginning, it was difficult for David and me, not knowing anyone else with a child with JA,” said Debbie. “But, now we feel like we have a whole community around us to share in the ups and downs of Cassie’s disease.”
To help kids learn about JA and other rheumatic diseases, David and Debbie created Kids on the Block (KOB) in 2009. And the KOB puppet show has been traveling, mainly around Metro Vancouver, to raise awareness about childhood arthritis, and to educate students and teachers about the issues these children face.
“The life-sized puppets – decked out in Cassie’s toddler clothes – act like real children,” said Debbie. “They help students understand what it’s like to live with JA and their skits illustrate some of the challenges a classmate with JA (or really any disease or challenge) might be facing: pain, isolation, depression and mobility challenges. Students have the chance to ask the puppets questions at the end of the performance. The puppets also help children feel positive about themselves, accepting individual differences and learning valuable personal skills.”
Kids on the Block was at Vancouver Talmud Torah on Jan. 24. (photo from Cassie and Friends)
The first-ever performance of KOB was at Vancouver Talmud Torah, when Cassie was in kindergarten. With Cassie about to graduate from the school, the show was brought back for another performance earlier this year. Cassie suggested it would be more special and have a greater impact if she were to introduce the program with her own story. At the show, there were two other children in the audience with either JA or another rheumatic condition.
“It was my suggestion to bring Kids on the Block back to VTT on Jan. 24, 2018, for the younger kids, including my Grade 1 buddy,” said Cassie. “It was fun to introduce the puppet show to the kids. They all know me and I could explain it to them in an easier way, because I am a kid and they are, too.
“I also really enjoyed watching the show again, because I didn’t remember it from kindergarten. After I had done the introduction, I also got many compliments on it because it was in the weekly email.” (Cassie’s presentation can be seen on YouTube.)
“Arthritis in kids is much more than aches and pains,” said Wilson. “JA is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by uncontrolled inflammation and pain that can occur in any and often several parts of a child’s body. Children with JA will spend countless hours treating their condition and are often confined to the sidelines in sports, school and even life – especially during painful flares.
“For many children,” she said, “JA will also involve complex medical interventions, such as joint replacements, surgeries and aggressive, immune-suppressing medications, like chemotherapy and biologics. There is no cure and there are few treatments that are safe and specific for a growing child. Sadly, that can lead to feelings of embarrassment, social exclusion and even bullying … for a child who is already dealing with a painful, chronic and sometimes invisible disease.”
KOB is 100% free to schools and is intended for students in kindergarten through Grade 4. The show travels to 40 to 50 schools in British Columbia every year. It is supported in part by the sponsorship of Mardon Insurance and Gore Mutual Insurance Foundation.
According to Wilson, Cassie and Friends is the only charity completely dedicated to kids and families affected by juvenile arthritis and other rheumatic diseases. For more information, visit cassieandfriends.ca or email [email protected].
Land-based activities at Camp Hatikvah form a large part of the summer experience. (photo from camphatikvah.com)
Like most everything, camp enrolment goes in cycles. And, for the past few years, Camp Hatikvah has had a waiting list for its first session, a full second session and has closed off the summers with the highly popular Family Camp experience that sells out within hours of registration opening in October the year prior. With the largest-ever single age group of campers rising through the ranks, Hatikvah is looking to expand its facilities to accommodate these campers as they move toward the counselor-in-training program.
Camp Hatikvah has a formula that seems to be working well. In order to fill every bunk, current board president Joanna Wasel worked closely with camp director Liza Rozen-Delman to make some changes in programming. In addition, they have brought the concept of camper care front and centre, and the programming is more flexible than the camp experience of yesteryear. As but one example, Hatikvah has been bringing in specialist instructors for activities such as tennis or mountain biking to run weekly sessions, and such initiatives are drawing campers. Once their interest is piqued, the kids tend to come back year after year.
“Liza does an excellent job ensuring that the campers are well cared for, safe and happy,” said Wasel. “I believe her reputation of providing exceptional camper care is the primary reason we are seeing the success we are today.”
Camp Hatikvah, 1972. Sailing was one of the writer’s favourite camp activities. (photo from Jewish Western Bulletin fonds, Jewish Museum and Archives of BC L.09596)
While Camp Hatikvah has been known for years as a watersport camp, the land-based activities have been overhauled during Wasel’s tenure as president. “We are now able to offer expert instruction from professionals in a plethora of land activities including tennis, football, basketball, fitness, yoga, dance and more,” she told the Independent. “The change has been dramatic and campers are now equally engaged on land and water.”
Those who remember their own experiences of the “good old days” of camp continue the tradition, and send their children, according to Rozen-Delman. “Many of our campers are second- or third-generation participants,” she said. “Our camp is rich in traditions and many of the programs we offer our campers today are based on programs their grandparents participated in during the ’50s and ’60s and their parents did in the ’70s and ’80s. We are very proud of this dedication to our roots and traditions and believe this makes our camp experience even more meaningful.”
The list of former campers reads a bit like a who’s who of the local Jewish community, something that shows the link between camp attendance and Jewish community involvement. Many of the children from Camp Hatikvah are already well ensconced within the community; many are students at Vancouver Talmud Torah. Rozen-Delman noted that campers also come from Alberta, Ontario, Washington and California. Hatikvah has combined a number of initiatives to draw a diverse group of campers, some of whom have no other connection with the Jewish community.
The effort to diversify and attract unaffiliated Jews this year has been aided by the Laskin Outreach Fund. This initiative, created and entirely funded by Elliot and Megan Laskin, provides $1,800 (almost the full fee) to first-time campers from British Columbia with little or no Jewish communal engagement to try Camp Hatikvah in its second summer session.
Both Wasel and Rozen-Delman stress that the programming at Camp Hatikvah is oriented toward helping children develop as members of the community. As a pluralistic camp, children from all sorts of Jewish backgrounds are introduced to and experience the camp’s motto: “Leadership by example.”
Although the programming for younger campers is focused on fun and socializing, with some Zionist and Jewish learning, it is the staff-in-training (SIT) program that begins the leadership training in earnest.
“This program is designed specifically to enhance the leadership abilities and traits of our campers. Participants engage in almost daily hadracha (leadership) sessions or discussions where they learn the importance of leadership, citizenship and community,” said Rozen-Delman of SIT.
Both Wasel and Rozen-Delman are alumna of Camp Hatikvah, with Wasel starting as a camper in 1988 and Rozen-Delman in 1979. Both have worked and volunteered within the Jewish community, in addition to their work at Camp Hatikvah.
While local Jewish life is part of the formula, Hatikvah’s Zionist roots are as strong as ever. Last summer, there were 14 Israeli schlichim (emissaries) on staff.
This year’s camp sessions are both looking like they will be full, said Rozen-Delman. For more information on the camp, subsidies to attend or the Laskin Outreach initiative, call the camp office at 604-263-1200.
Michelle Dodek is a freelance writer who spent one summer at Camp Hatikvah a long time ago and loved the sailing program.
(photo from teenlife.com/summer-program/urj-camp-kalsman)
Going to camp was a rite of passage when I was growing up. Everybody went to camp. In my day, it was the B’nai B’rith camp that all Jewish kids went to, in Sandy Hook, past Winnipeg Beach.
I don’t recall much detail of my really young days as a camper, but we never missed a summer. As small kids, we went with our mothers. It all had to do with getting away from the oppressive summer heat and time at the beach, wading and swimming, sunning on a blanket, playing the games on the boardwalk. I would have an ice cream cone every day, even though, back then, all you could get were vanilla and strawberry flavours. There may have been chocolate, too.
I enrolled in Young Judaea in my early teens. In the heady days leading up to and after Israel declared its independence, movements of every political stripe in Israel had a youth group and camps in Canada and in the United States.
At camp, we built our Jewish consciousness and reinforced our Jewish identity. We were part of larger society, of course, but the one that was becoming central to our lives was the Jewish one, and the camp experience strengthened all that. Everything around our activities focused on our life as Jews, intellectually and emotionally, in our developing teen years. It was easy to pick out the future leaders – assertive, confident, basing their arguments on material accepted as fact. That was the stuff we brought forward into our adult years, colouring what we would become and the messages we would transmit to our children.
Aliyah to Israel was an enormous focus of the Zionist camps I associated with. This possibility, went the argument, was why we had to study our history, our customs, our holidays. We were building a new kind of Jew, unapologetic for his striving nature, determined to never again be a victim. History’s lessons were clear and we had to take heed and take our future into our own hands. The camps I attended were the educational vehicle.
In those days, we pretended we were chalutzim (pioneers), so we went out into the bush and made like we were going to live off the land. We built lean-tos to sleep under, chopped down trees, built things, learned how to make a campfire even without matches, and engaged in marches, canoeing, the whole megillah.
The years I spent as a camper – learning to be a scout, learning to create things with my hands, to develop myself physically, to compete for excellence – we were modeling the new Jew. We were not content with just being students, we knew we could do that – we were going to be doers. We were building pride in ourselves and in our accomplishments.
In turn, I became one of the leaders trying to transmit the messages I had absorbed to others. The young people I grew up with at camp worked in their own communities in the same way. All across the country and across the United States, we were a network fighting assimilation, building loyalty to Israel and a consciousness of being Jewish and the values it represented.
One of the best experiences I had was when I was invited to be a Camp Shalom program director in Gravenhurst, Ont. I spent six months preparing programs and then threw them all out on my second day on the job. I spent the next two months preparing different programs on the fly, built around Jewish holidays or events in Jewish history. We organized camper teams, choosing names, uniforms and cheers, and had athletic competitions, colour wars, talent competition skits, swimming competitions or just fun at the beach. I don’t know about the campers, but I had a great time exploring my creative capacities. We set up a pattern that was followed for years at that camp.
Some of us became community leaders. A few of us even got to Israel, at least for a time. Many of the associations we made have withstood the test of time. Some of the best friendships I have today are ones I made in those years. A good number of marriages came out of those experiences, including one of my own.
What a wonderful institution camps are, whatever their nature! Bringing kids into a healthful environment with responsible supervision, living lives completely different from what they are accustomed to, meeting people they would not normally meet, exposing them to alternative behavioural norms, has to be good. And getting away from the city into a natural environment, who has to be convinced that that is a good thing? Let’s hear it for camp days. Rah, rah, rah!
Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.
