At this time of year, countless American teenagers are returning home from summer camp, and some percentage of them will be returning home from Jewish camps, which were an outsize feature of American Jewish life in the second half of the 20th century, and have not yet lost their influence. Yeshua Tolle reviews a history of these institutions, titled The Jews of Summer, by Sandra Fox.
Jewish camping dates back to the turn of the 20th century, when “fresh-air reformers” in Europe and America invented summer camp to combat the apparently baleful effects of city living—but campers like me ended up at camp, according to Fox, because of what it became in the postwar decades. The Jewish educational summer-camp experience that emerged from that time struck parents and experts, communities and institutions as something that worked. A consensus developed over the decades, which was eventually confirmed by social-scientific research, “that Jewish camps largely succeed in their goals in transforming young Jews.” Indeed, studies show that camp alumni are more likely to marry Jewish, stay in the community, and feel connected. Outside the overlapping worlds of Orthodoxy and day school, there is hardly anything else with that effect.
The irony is that the camping experience in the age of abundance largely grew out of disapproval of mainstream American Jewry and dissatisfaction with its ways. Building on the research of historian Rachel Kranson, Fox points out that leading midcentury Jewish figures worried that “authentic Jewish life” was “incompatible” with suburban prosperity and lowered barriers to Jewish assimilation. The memory of the Holocaust compounded the feeling that American comfort was disreputable, even immoral. Like the fresh-air reformers before them, camp founders and leaders wanted to protect children from the long-term dangers of their environment. In this case, however, the principal danger was a loss of Jewish character.
Too often, Fox’s approach turns quotidian behavior into acts of ideological rebellion, often with unconvincing results. The chapter on Jewish languages, as you might expect, is full of kids griping about the language learning that their counselors believe will transform them into proud, self-assured Jews.
Read more on Jewish Review of Books: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/american-jewry/14417/those-days-are-gone-forever/