CaMp

CAMP YOUNG JUDAEA

A Camp for Jewish Youth, 8-14
Waupaca, WI

Jewish programming,
Canoeing and Sailing,
Israeli Dance, Overnights, Arts and Crafts,
Red Cross Swim Program
Hiking, Scouting, Sports,
Oneg Shabbat, Drama, Israeli Singing,
Water Skiing

CAMP DATES

Session 1

June 22-July 15

Session 2
July 21-August 13

Mini-Session
Entering 2nd, 3rd
& 4th Graders Only
June 22-July 5
and July 22-August 3

2 Sessions

June 22-August 13

For more information call
(847) 982-2040
6600 N. Lincoln, #304
Lincolnwood, IL 60645
Sponsored by Hadassah

Our results
look impressive!

•Warm, friendly, family run since 1968
•Superb weight losses, exciting activities
•Featured on 20/20 & The Sally Show
•Girls & Boys 7-17 • Young women 18-25

CALL for FREE Video.

@n,13 MANE

134 Teatown Rd., Dept. W.1
Croton, NY 10520

Located in the beautiful
Catskill Mountains

800-292-CAMP
www.campshane.com

CAMPING/HOTEL/DORM TRIPS
HOTEL/DORM TRIPS
ALL CAMPING

sionvosonam ircuisss vast

ASK
USA • AL

1/16
1998

78

OUR
A • HP.,\NAll - CANADA
• EUROPE
Home Visits

Evening Or
Arranged Even
Weekends At Your Convenience

33rd

CALL TOLL FREE (800) 645-6260 or e-mail us at atwtours@aol.com

92 Middle Neck Road, Great Neck, NY 11021

American Camping Association Accredited

chosen not to raise my cousins as
Jews. Santa Claus came to our home
just like he did at my cousins' — but
while they had a Christmas tree, we
also lit Chanukah candles. We
shared Easter dinner with my rela-
tives, but also ordered matzoh for
Passover.
Sunday school was a requirement.
The religious school experience was
not unlike what went on elsewhere in
the country — mostly Bible stories
and holidays, no formal Hebrew
study, and bar/bat mitzvah not in
vogue. I followed the route of all my
siblings, attending religious school
through confirmation.
Growing up, I had best friends
who were not Jewish, and by the
time I settled into high school I was
one of four Jewish students in my
grade level. Yet I always-felt "differ-
ent," and so found comfort in social-
izing with fellow Temple Youth Group
members. TYG became my Jewish
life. So, as an entering high-school
senior, I thought going to Jacobs
Camp for the summer was the thing
to do.
The camp wasn't around when I
was camper age. One of nine Union
of American Hebrew Congregation
camps around the country, it was cre-
ated to serve the Jewish populations
of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi
and western Tennessee. It opened for
its first summer in 1970. The brain-
child of two youth leaders in the
region (one was Henry S. Jacobs of
New Orleans), the camp was built
without any single, large contribution,
but rather through a system of fair
shares assigned to each Reform con-
gregation in the region. It opened
debt-free after some $400,000 had
been raised over the course of a 15-
year period.
I had never seen so many Jews in
one place. I learned about Jewish
families who were the only ones in
their Southern towns, who traveled
miles and miles to send their children
to religious school and who were,
without question, seizing the opportu-

nity to send their children to this
camp.
It was the age of great song lead-
ers. Music I only knew played on an
organ at temple services was trans-
formed to another level through the
guitar, whether in solo at a Shabbat
service or in a rousing song session
after meals. I spoke Hebrew (with a
Southern accent) at camp wake-up,
and I learned prayers because we
recited them in daily worship, not just
on Friday nights.
We reenacted the Exodus from
Egypt across the camp lake and
greeted the new week after
Havdalah. I experienced Shabbat in
all its glory, and if you've ever
worked at a camp, you know what a
day of rest it really was.

Sunday school
was a
requirement.

For the first time, I met Israelis and
rabbinical students who also came to
camp to work. I learned about kib-
butz life because the camp had a
model kibbutz program for 1 1 th-
graders. (Later, I would go with fellow
staff on my first trip to Israel, during
winter vacation in college.) We were
"living Torah in the Bible Belt" (as the
author Paul Greenberg coined life at
Jacobs Camp in a 1979 article in
Reform Judaism.)
Most significant of all, I made life-
long Jewish friends, perhaps because
together we found a sense of pride
and acceptance in being Jewish and
grabbed onto the notion of Jewish
community — which I learned
reached far beyond my family, my
congregation in Shreveport, my tem-
ple youth group, my Jewish camp.
I worked at camp for seven sum-
mers — as a junior counselor, office
staff, unit head and then full time as
its assistant camp director after gradu-
ating from college. The experience of
being together with other Jews

