Camp Jewish News March 26, 2018

2o18 Summer

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Supplement to Jewish News March 26, 2018 jewishnewsva.org | March 26, 2018 | Camp | Jewish News | 19

HAPPINESS. WELLNESS. DEVELOPMENT.

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20 | Jewish News | Camp | March 26, 2018 | jewishnewsva.org

11/16/17 3:01 PM

camp At summer day camps, ‘fun’ Hebrew immersion program catches on

Dear Readers,

A

sk anyone who has ever been—there’s nothing like summer camp.

A Girl Scout, I went to Camp Apasus on Granby Street

(adjacent to Forest Lawn Cemetery—go figure). In spite of its unusual location, it was a great day camp experience. We raised

Ben Harris

and lowered the flag each day, made sit-upons and generally had a wonderful time. For my overnight camping adventures, I travelled all the way to Suffolk to sleep under mosquito nets at Camp Matoka. There, I took horseback riding lessons, learned to make all sorts of meals over campfires, sailed on the lake, and performed in the musicals.

When it was camp time for my daughters, they had many more options. Their youngest summers were spent at JCC’s traditional day camp on Newport Ave. where they learned to swim, did arts and crafts, frolicked outside on the playground, and sang a lot of songs. As they grew older, they signed up for specialty camps where focuses were as diverse as a popcorn business, journalism, tennis, gardens, and bicycle riding. At overnight camp, they, too rode horses, played sports, swam, sailed, hiked, made camp fires and wrote a few (very few!) letters home, which at first included lines such as, “Sorry if this letter is wet, I’m just crying so much.” At pick up time, of course, they were always happy and didn’t want to leave.

Today’s camp age kids have even more alternatives. Just consider the variety within these pages. Without leaving town (and writing those delightful letters home about being homesick!), campers in Tidewater can learn to surf, feed goats, put on a show, learn to surf, sail, and kayak, go on fieldtrips, fine tune their robotic skills, and on and on. They can expand their minds or have fun learning a new sport. And, in most instances, they can register one week at a time.

If you’re deciding now where to send a child to camp, this section offers some of the best options in Tidewater. And, if you’ve been to camp and want to reminisce, these pages have a couple of articles that might stir up some memories, for better or worse!

Whether you’re packing and shipping duffels or backpacks and lunches for your camper, it’s the memories that are packed in with each session of summer camp that cause people to say, “There’s nothing like summer camp!”

Terri Denison Editor

O

n a warm summer day at a Jewish day camp east of Cleveland, an Israeli counselor instructs his charges in Hebrew to get their water bottles.

The kids, none of them fluent Hebrew speakers, strain to comprehend. One of them, misunderstanding the instruction entirely, returns with a container of sunscreen.

Using exaggerated pantomimes, the counselor makes a face as he pretends to slake his thirst with the lotion. It’s a bizarre performance, but it does the trick. Without a word of English spoken, the child turns around to fetch his water bottle.

So it goes at Kayitz Kef, a program in Hebrew language immersion running at 10 Jewish day camps across America that its backers hope will grow to 48 camps in the next decade. For six hours a day, a staff of mostly Israeli counselors speaks only Hebrew to the campers as they participate in the routine activities of summer camp.

English isn’t used unless there’s a safety concern.

“Camp is a place so rich in language opportunity,” says Rabbi Ami Hersh, director of Ramah Day Camp in Nyack, New York, the first summer camp to pilot the program in 2013 with 17 kids participating. This year, the camp is expecting nearly 100.

“Kids at camp learn language in a very natural way,” he says. “This is not sitting in a classroom learning. This is learning language naturally as if you were a baby learning a language for the very first time.”

As with parents teaching children to speak, Kayitz Kef relies on repetition, hand gestures, playacting and other visual cues to build Hebrew vocabulary among campers who sometimes have zero background in the language. The one thing counselors never do is translate a word into English.

If a camper needs to go to the bathroom, she will be prompted to ask if she can visit the “sherutim.”

When campers are heading to the pool, counselors will tell them they are going to the “breichah.” If ice

cream is on the lunch menu, campers need to ask for “glidah” if they want to be served.

Campers learn not just the Hebrew words but also to incorporate them into full phrases and sentences.

“The kids want ice cream,” Hersh says, “so they’re able to respond pretty quickly to that.”

The approach can be challenging, particularly at the beginning. The program currently caters to campers entering kindergarten through the fifth grade, and the immersion in Hebrew begins on day one, from the moment they arrive.

Camp directors often caution parents to be prepared if their child doesn’t love the program at first and encourage them to stick it out. Data from a study commissioned by the program’s backers show that kids and parents quickly experience the program as fun and engaging, resulting in high retention rates at each camp.

“In all the three years we’ve done this, we’ve only had one kid really leave the program,” says Meryl Rindsberg, director of day camps at the Marcus JCC in Atlanta, whose Hebrew program has roughly tripled in participation in three years.

“We’re very upfront with parents,” Rindsberg says.

“We tell them: The first day is sometimes very difficult for the kids. Don’t be surprised if your kid comes home in tears.”

The Kayitz Kef approach is rooted in a language acquisition methodology known as the proficiency approach, which was developed in the 1950s by the U.S. government for its own purposes, then expanded to academic settings in the 1980s. It was adapted for Hebrew language instruction in the early ‘90s by a team at Brandeis University and implemented under the leadership of Vardit Ringvald, then director of the Hebrew language program at the Boston-area school.

“The proficiency approach is really about asking the question: What can learners do with the language in terms of functioning in all language tiers?”

Ringvald says. “It’s not a question of what they learn.

“The kids want

ice cream, so they’re

able to respond pretty quickly to that.”

continued on page 22

jewishnewsva.org | March 26, 2018 | Camp | Jewish News | 21

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camp continued from page 21

It’s a question of what they can do with the language in real-life settings.”

In an academic environment, the approach needs to be simulated, with instructors prompting learners to respond to imagined real-life scenarios and then hoping they can bring that knowledge with them into the real world. In summer camp, those scenarios emerge all the time, affording learners opportunities to hone their skills in real life.

“Camp is really the ideal setting for this,” Ringvald says. “People need stuff, they need to eat, they need to go from one place to another, they need to react and connect. It’s actually the essence of what proficiency is all about. In a classroom, you need to artificially create this setting.

In camp it’s natural.”

Ringvald initially helped implement the proficiency approach at Hebrew Public, a nationwide network of Hebrew

language charter schools, before adapting the method for summer camps with the creation of Kayitz Kef in 2013. The camp staff receives training before and during the summer in using the proficiency approach. Last summer, over 300 campers were enrolled in 10 camps, and three more camps will be added this summer.

Sponsors hope to expand the program to overnight camps, too.

Kayitz Kef is a project of The Areivim Philanthropic Group, a consortium of seven Jewish philanthropies, in partnership with the Foundation for Jewish Camp. To its backers, the program offers a potent means of Jewish engagement to a North American Jewish community that is predominantly secular.

“We believe that Hebrew language facility gives American Jews a new focus for Jewish identity that is content rich but theologically neutral,” says Rabbi David Gedzelman, president and CEO of The

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22 | Jewish News | Camp | March 26, 2018 | jewishnewsva.org

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ummer is better when it is spent at Summer at the Academy. Join Norfolk Academy for an unforgettable summer camp experience. With camps for students in grades K-9, Summer at the Academy makes it easy to build friendships, find new interests, and discover surprising talents.

This year, more than 90 camps are being offered—including 30 new camps— in a variety of disciplines, including academics, adventure, crafts, engineering and robotics, and sports. Children can reaffirm a love for nature in Kayak Explorers, or discover a niche for numbers in Magic of Math. Many new camps are targeted with teenagers in mind, so there is something for everyone.

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camp Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, whose chair, Michael Steinhardt, co-chairs Areivim.

“Giving kids real, modern Israeli Hebrew proficiency gives them a deep connection to Israeli culture and life.”

Bill Magaliff, Areivim’s national director of the Kayitz Kef program, says, “The appeal extends well beyond Areivim, as local funders partner with us to make Kayitz Kef possible at camps in their communities.”

The camp directors who have adopted the program say the benefits are obvious. In Atlanta, the program has created a mini-community of Hebrew speakers within the larger camp community, according to Rindsberg. At Nyack, Kayitz Kef has piqued interest among U.S.-born staff in enhancing their Hebrew proficiency.

“We have American staff members whose Hebrew is good but not great who have worked hard in a number of cases to increase their

Hebrew level enough so they can work in this program,” Hersh says. “It’s had a beautiful ripple effect to carry over into camp in general.”

At some camps, Kayitz Kef has impacted the regular camp experience, too. Abbey Phillips, who directs the Anisfield Day Camp outside Cleveland where the counselor pretended to drink the sunscreen, said she initially was skeptical of the entire idea.

But after three seasons, she has become a believer. Eschewing English has forced her Kayitz Kef counselors to up their game.

“The staff are so high energy,” Phillips says.

“They are one of our most spirited groups at camp because they are always singing and dancing and acting out the language.”

(This article was sponsored by and produced in partnership with the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. This article was produced by JTA’s native content team.)

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JCAMP also offers a CIT, or Counselor-in-Training program for teenagers entering grades www.norfolkacademy.org/summer 9-11 that focuses on accountability and responsibility, decision and confidence Wheremaking studentsskills, grades 1-12 grow into responsible and responsive citizen-scholars. and self-esteem building. Through its YACHAD program, an all-inclusive camp experience 1585 Wesleyan Drive • Norfolk, VA 23502 1585 Wesleyan Drive I Norfolk, Virginia 23502 for children with special needs is created.

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about our distinctive educational program. jewishnewsva.org | March 26, 2018 | Camp | Jewish News | 23

camp Summer camps offer kids an immersion in Israel’s tech prowess Ellen Braunstein

CHICAGO (JTA) -- Sam Rosen, a 10-yearold Minecraft player, builds virtual castles at his computer and protects himself from monsters. His mother, Carrie, a

high school math teacher, knows the game teaches tech skills and engineering – valuable skills he can build on in school.

So when JCC Chicago announced plans to roll out a tech day camp for the first time this summer, Carrie signed up

Sam, understanding that he would learn programming or, as she calls it, “the back end of games.”

The new specialty camp, offering different tech workshops for second- to ninth-graders, is one of the first North American partnerships for BIG IDEA in Israel. BIG IDEA, a 10-year-old tech sleepaway camp located on the outskirts of Zichron Yaakov, is where 1,000 elementary to high school-aged children from around the world get a taste of Israel’s culture of innovation every summer. It also runs travel trips and a gap year program.

“This is pretty new and exciting for us,” says Dotan Tamir, the 34-year-old founder and CEO of BIG IDEA Educational Projects, of the Chicago spinoff. “It’s part

of our mission to help kids in the Jewish world dream of a better world through innovation and creativity – things Israel is known for.”

A second BIG IDEA day camp is starting this summer at the Bender JCC of Greater Washington in Rockville, Maryland. And this summer will mark the third year for a BIG IDEA program at the Kaplan JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly, New Jersey. In its first two years in New Jersey, an all-Hebrew track drew day campers from an Israeli-American community already familiar with the BIG IDEA brand.

This year, an English track will open up the program to more families who don’t necessarily want Hebrew immersion,

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Campers have the opportunity to gain expertise in specialties that include sailing, scuba diving, surfing and seaside media, make new friends and experience Shabbat on the beach. Campers and staff are traveling from across the U.S. and Israel for this inaugural season.

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24 | Jewish News | Camp | March 26, 2018 | jewishnewsva.org

camp says Aaron Atlas, the camp director at the Kaplan JCC on the Palisades.

The U.S. camps offer two-week workshops in 3-D modeling, coding and computer programming, web design, DJ mixing, digital photography, robotics, jewelry design, graphic design, video production, animation and virtual reality.

Campers can enroll in one or more for multiple sessions. No experience with the technology is necessary.

At the end of the two weeks, campers present a final project. All the software links are sent home for campers to keep working on projects.

Omer Kariv, 19, is typical of the Israeli shlichim, or emissaries, who teach the workshops. He spent one summer in Tenafly after being released from the Israeli army’s Intelligence Corps. A counselor at BIG IDEA in Israel, Kariv came to New Jersey knowing the latest technologies it offered back home. He is studying mechanical engineering and competes

in robotics competitions. He hopes to attend MIT and then the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

The specialized workshops of no more than eight kids are combined with unplugged time for swimming, arts and sports.

Jewish summer camps have been adding specialty camps at a fast clip in recent years, in everything from tech to targeted sports training, the arts, sciences and filmmaking. The Foundation for Jewish Camp, which runs an incubator for specialty camps, said the options are necessary for attracting youth who are bombarded with competing programs and responsibilities.

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jewishnewsva.org | March 26, 2018 | Camp | Jewish News | 25

camp Seven works of fiction set at Jewish sleepaway camp Andrew Silow-Carroll

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26 | Jewish News | Camp | March 26, 2018 | jewishnewsva.org

NEW YORK (JTA)—Long before Wet Hot American Summer, the Jewish summer camp has fired the literary imagination.

A summer away at camp provides escape, romance, nature, slapstick, self-realization, and a varied cast of characters thrown together in a hothouse atmosphere—all grist for a fiction writer.

Camps also kept pace with the generations of writers who spent their summers there. The first wave of camps offered inner-city kids fresh air and a break from their often overcrowded homes. The next wave offered Jewish education and acculturation—from left-wing, politically conscious Workmen’s Circle camps to Zionist camps like Habonim Dror’s Camp Naaleh to denominational camps like the Reform movement’s Union Institute in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Modern camps come with more bells and whistles, but at their core are factories for Jewish memories.

Here are seven works that capture the summer camp experience, for better and for worse.

City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder

by Herman Wouk (1948) The author of The Caine Mutiny looks back on the pains and pleasures of growing up in the Bronx in the summer of 1928. Chubby, awkward Herbie Bookbinder connives to spend the summer at Camp Manitou in the Berkshire Mountains, which is run by by his school principal, in hopes of wooing the red-haired girl of his dreams.

The plot revolves around Herbie’s attempt to construct a crowd-pleasing attraction for the camp’s annual Mardi Gras carnival.

Key quote: “Herbie’s vision of Camp Manitou had been woven of rainbows. He had dreamed of smooth, grassy playing fields freshly marked in white, luxurious cottages, a wide, gleaming lake with a sandy beach, and sundry other charms compiled from books of English school life and movies laid in summer resorts. The

reality was a mud puddle after the rain.”

The Break-up of Our Camp

by Paul Goodman (1949) Goodman was a leading Jewish New York intellectual who in the 1960s became a guru of the anti-Establishment. He is less well known for his fiction, which includes this collection of autobiographical stories set at a soon-to-go-broke Jewish summer camp on Lake Champlain. There the children are taught Yiddish and Zionism, and the young narrator, Matthew, struggles with the demands of Jewish practice and belief. Instead he is drawn to a FrenchCanadian canoeist and outdoorsman who kindles his homosexual desires.

Key quote: “I feel at home, as if I had been staying here all summer, though everything is strange and new; I seem to recognize everyone, rather than to be seeing them for the first time.”

The Horse is Dead

by Robert Klane (1968) Klane is best known for the blacker-thanblack humor of his 1970 novel Where’s Poppa? and the George Segal film it inspired. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1989 movie comedy Weekend at Bernie’s. His debut novel—long out of print but still vouched for by loyal readers as one of the funniest novels ever written—was a sex romp featuring the dyspeptic Nemiroff, the only Jewish counselor at the rundown Camp Winituck. The book gets its title from the “gentle” horse used at the camp riding school (it’s actually dead).

Key quote: “Ever since the first day of camp, Mr. Hartley had been unable to locate the group that had been assigned to him. Rumors had it that the entire group had defected to another nearby day camp, where they were busy plotting a coup to take over Camp Winituck with the intention of killing Mr. Hartley the minute they were in command. It was supposed to be a mercy killing. A few of the parents had started to complain about Mr. Hartley’s losing their children, but none of them

camp insisted on an investigation right away.

They did not want to risk finding their kids until the summer was over.”

Nemesis

by Philip Roth (2012) Roth’s slim novel looks back on a polio epidemic that falls hard on the storied Jewish community of Newark, New Jersey, in 1944. Although largely set on the streets and playgrounds of Roth’s old Weequahic neighborhood, the novel’s action shifts to a summer camp, Indian Hill, in eastern Pennsylvania. Protagonist Bucky Cantor has joined his girlfriend Marcia to escape the disease, but even when alone with Marcia or leading kids in athletic contests, he can’t shake off the guilt he feels about surviving an epidemic that has struck down others.

Key quote: “As for God, it was easy to think kindly of Him in a paradise like Indian Hill. It was something else in Newark—or Europe or the Pacific—in the summer of 1944.”

The Path of Names

by Ari Goelman (2013) The debut young adult novel by an award-winning Canadian author takes place at Camp Arava, a Jewish sleepaway camp where the supernatural has a way of breaking into the everyday. Thirteenyear-old Dahlia encounters two girls who are dressed in vintage clothing—they may or may not be ghosts—and sets out to unravel their identities on the basis of Jewish folklore, kabbalah, and old-fashioned campfire tales. Summer camp is a “great setting for a coming-of-age story because for lots of kids, summer camp is the first time in their lives that they are really free to define themselves outside of the umbrella of their family,” Goelman told an interviewer.

Key quote: “Her father maneuvered their minivan around the periphery of the central sports field, pulling up in front of

a double cabin next to the bathrooms. He turned off the engine and said, ‘Here we are: Tzrif Grofeet. Tzrif means “bunk.”

You’re going to learn a lot of Hebrew without even knowing it.’” “‘And you say magic camp is useless,’ Dahlia said.”

On Blackberry Hill

by Rachel Mann (2016) Mann self-published this novel, which went on to win the 2016 National Jewish Book Award for Young Adult Literature. Reena, 14, is a reluctant newbie at Camp Tova, where her parents met 20 years before. Reena’s summer away is an opportunity to learn more about her late mother, whose story is also told in an

alternating narrative.

Key quote: “Behind the photo was a box of yellowing letters and ancient glossy photographs. She picked out a letter addressed to Mara, and put it back, feeling she probably shouldn’t go through her aunt’s personal things. But she was curious, so she flipped through some of the photos. There was one of Aunt Mara and her mother in one-piece bathing suits, with a lake behind them. And there was one of Mara laughing with a guy with shoulder-length straight hair. It took her a moment to realize it was her dad.”

4321

by Paul Auster (2017) Auster’s latest novel offers four alternative takes on the life of a Jewish man, Archie Ferguson, born, like Auster, in Newark in 1947. In one of the four versions of Archie’s life, the boy returns to Camp Paradise for another summer, where he reads Mad magazine and J.D. Salinger,

writes letters to his best friend back home and learns about sex from older bunk mates. The chapter concludes with an incident Auster says came straight from his own summer-camp days: At the age of 14, while hiking in the rain with other campers, he saw a boy killed by lightning.

Key quote: “Ferguson was happy at camp. He had always been happy there, and it was good to be reunited with his New York summer friends, the half dozen city boys who kept going back year after year as he did. He took pleasure in the eternal sarcasm and humor of their fast-talking, high-spirited selves, which often reminded him of the way American soldiers spoke to one another in movies about World War II….”

This article was made possible with funding by the Foundation for Jewish Camp. The story was produced independently and at the sole discretion of JTA’s editorial team.

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camp There’s a podcast about Jewish summer camp Ben Sales

( JTA)—Many Jews attend overnight camp. But growing up, Micah Hart was so Jewish that he attended two every summer.

Hart was the son of the director of Jacobs Camp, a Reform Jewish camp in western Mississippi. He went there every year, but to give him some independence, his parents sent him for half the summer to another Reform camp, Goldman Union Camp Institute in Indiana.

Hart did the same things every Jewish camper did. He played dodge ball and tetherball, wore white on Friday night and learned Israeli dances. But like many others, his favorite part of camp was what happened outside the structured time, when he was chilling and messing around

with friends.

Nearly two decades after his last camp summer, finding time to catch up with his camp friends was becoming more and more difficult. So he made a podcast about it.

All we do is reminisce about fun times from back in the day, and I wish I had more of an opportunity to do that,” Hart says. “Camp’s hilarious. We did things that were so ridiculous without context, and we found ourselves and grew up there and did things that were really embarrassing and amazing.”

Campfires and Color Wars, Hart’s podcast, has been airing every two weeks or so since the summer of 2016, and is now on its 41st episode. The podcast is, basically, Hart shooting the breeze with people who went to camp, most of them

Jewish. The conversations cover anything from camp food to the lake to awkward sexual encounters.

A recent episode featured David Wain, the director and co-writer of the film Wet Hot American Summer, the cult classic about a Jewish camp. Hart recalls the time his counselors woke campers in the middle of the night and told them it was the morning, but the sky was dark because there had been a solar eclipse.

From there they talk about Wain—who attended Camp Modin in Maine and Camp Wise in Ohio—sneaking around the lake to the girls’ cabins, a comedy skit where Hart and his friends all dressed up as Adam Sandler, how Wain wore a Jimi Hendrix shirt every day…. You get the idea.

Wain also reveals that a classic Wet Hot

scene—Victor crashing a camp van into a tree on the way to hook up with a girl— actually happened to him in real life.

He was 16, newly licensed and had just driven campers to a mountain excursion.

He was supposed to return to camp the next morning, but started driving back late at night so he could see a girl he’d just made out with. It didn’t end well.

“I was singing to keep myself awake, as was Victor in the movie, and I was driving through the windy Baxter State Park roads and smashed into a tree,” Wain says.

“I had no idea what to do ’cause it was pitch black. I had no clue where I was.

There was nobody around…. I honestly was like, ‘Maybe I’ll get eaten by a bear tonight.’ I just didn’t know.”

But of course, Wain eventually returned to camp—and unlike Victor, he

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Rock Band Visual Arts Social Media Squad Vocal Music

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hooked up with the girl.

(Lest you think camp is only about hijinks and hookups, Wain once told an interviewer that camp “was easily my most positive and lasting Jewish experience.”)

Other episodes depart a little from the Jewish camping world. Hart talks in one with Sara and Sam Richardson, two former Christian campers making a video series in which they visit and work at Christian camps across the country.

Unlike Jewish camp, which can stretch to two months, Christian camp is usually only a week long.

Hart also acknowledges that camp has changed since the dozen summers he spent as a camper and counselor in the 1980s and 1990s. Safety regulations are much tighter, and there are those little things called cellphones. Hart knows he’ll encounter all of that when he sends his own kids to camp in a few years. So for him, the podcast is as much about

nostalgia for a bygone era as it is about remembering his summers.

“I was fortunate enough to go before technology was really a thing,” he says.

“With social media, I feel like that has changed so much [in terms of] the ability to escape the outside world.”

The podcast is a labor of love for Hart, who works in digital marketing by day.

And while he thinks camp stories have value for everyone, he knows the quirky anecdotes are only really relatable to those who went to a camp. Or in his case, two.

“The things you do when you’re bored to make you not be bored is something I’ll always associate with camp,” he says. “If you didn’t go to camp, I don’t know what would interest you about it. You had to be there to understand it.”

At Jewish overnight camp, kids discover who they are—and who they want to become—while having the time of their lives. They sing under the stars, share jokes and meals and clothes, and build traditions. And they do it with an amazing crew of friends and counselors.

For more information or to apply, contact Barb Gelb 757-965-6105 or bgelb@ujft.org

This article was made possible with funding by the Foundation for Jewish Camp. The story was produced independently and at the sole discretion of JTA’s editorial team.

jewishnewsva.org | March 26, 2018 | Camp | Jewish News | 29

camp Foundation for Jewish Camp’s Leaders Assembly draws record attendance BALTIMORE—More than 750 Jewish summer camp professionals, educators, philanthropists, and communal leaders gathered March 18–20 for Foundation for Jewish Camp’s (FJC) seventh biennial Leaders Assembly. Attendees from across the Jewish denominational spectrum in North America and beyond convened to discuss a wide range of pressing issues affecting the Jewish camp field and broader community today.

The gathering addressed topics including the changing landscape of Jewish and family life, teen engagement and empowerment, year-round engagement, child safety, disability inclusion, and Israel. The conference also featured training and field announcements surrounding the #MeToo movement and tackled the challenges and changing needs facing Jewish camps

by showcasing insights from local and national experts.

“The dizzying pace of change we live in is actually accelerating. All around us, in every field, the communal landscape is changing in unprecedented ways.

Jewish camp is an antidote, an island of stability where children can be themselves, be removed from technology, forge long-lasting relationships and develop strong self-esteem and independence,” says Jeremy J. Fingerman, CEO of FJC. Breakout sessions focused on key issue areas that directly impact the field of Jewish camp, including three plenaries that offered participants new ideas and data for improving outreach and impact: • Casper ter Kuile and Angie Thurston, Harvard Divinity School’s co-authors of How We Gather, and Something More shared

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Founded in 1998, Foundation for Jewish Camp is a catalyst for change throughout the field of Jewish Camp. FJC trains and inspires camp leaders, expands access to Jewish summers—and increases demand. FJC’s work enhances the Jewish impact of those summers, developing programs to strengthen camps and summer experiences across the Jewish spectrum in North America—including One Happy Camper®, which has enabled tens of thousands of young people to experience Jewish summers. Further, FJC elevates Jewish camp on the cultural and philanthropic agenda. The Foundation for Jewish Camp has grown to work with approximately 300 day and overnight camps who serve more than 200,000 youth, teens and college-aged counselors across North America each summer.

how Jewish camps can apply the lessons of community building and personal/social transformation modeled by new-economy outfits like Cross-Fit and Soul Cycle; • Jean M. Twenge, professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, discussed the challenges of reaching “iGen,” the rising generation of teens and young adults born after 1995, who have spent their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone; and • Dr. Deborah Gilboa, a family physician and expert of parenting and youth development, addressed ways to satisfy the needs, desires, and expectations of camp parents.

During the program, the Assembly honored the memory of students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and FJC facilitated discussions on teen empowerment and respect.

•Gross motor play •Cognitive process art projects •Sensory play •Milestone recognition

Schedule your tour of our state-of-the-art facility TODAY! Call 757.424.4327 or visit StrelitzEarlyChildhood.org 30 | Jewish News | Camp | March 26, 2018 | jewishnewsva.org