10 | MARCH 30 • 2023 

student corner
What Jewish Camp 
Has Done for Me
A

fter eight days of hurl-
ing myself, gear, food 
and lots of special 
memories along the Coastal 
Trail of Lake Superior, my group 
finally made it to the last day 
and minutes of 
our hike. There 
were six of us on 
the trip, and to be 
honest, I had been 
lagging behind. My 
hip was throbbing 
after all my body 
had endured each 
day on this rocky, slippery and 
steep trail. 
There were many moments 
where I felt like giving up, but my 
counselors and friends encour-
aged me to push my limits. My 
group decided to exit the trail 
in a way we would never forget 
— carrying our own tents at the 
end. I remember everyone on the 
trip waiting for me at the bottom 
of a hill to begin our exit, and 
that memory has stuck with me 
to this day. It made me realize 
that at camp, no one is ever left 
behind. We create a memora-
ble community every summer, 
whether it’s on a hiking trip, at 
an outpost camp or at the main 
camp itself.
Attending Jewish summer 
camp for the past nine years has 
taught me many valuable lessons 
which I think every Jewish child 
should experience. I spent the last 
two summers at outpost camps: 
Camp Kennedy in the Upper 
Peninsula and Agree Outpost 
Camp in Wawa, Ontario. I was 
exceptionally lucky to have expe-
rienced the outposts not once, 
but twice. At the outpost camps, 
we did all the cooking and clean-
ing ourselves (with the help of 
our counselors); there was no one 

else to clean up after us. This was 
a valuable experience as a grow-
ing teen, because at home a lot of 
things are done for me. Not only 
did I gain life skills that will carry 
me through the future and set me 
up for success, but I also learned 
much about myself and what I 
can really accomplish. 
My camp community offers 
a support system while at home 
or at camp because we have 
shared meaningful and unique 
experiences together. Activities 
like Havdalah services at Lake 
Superior, jumping in and out of 
the sauna in the pitch-dark, hik-
ing on slippery rocks and more 
have had a lasting impact on my 
life. 
Jewish camp has also helped 
me enjoy and appreciate nature 
more than I ever have before. 
Being constantly surrounded by 
it for six weeks this past summer 
made me think of the Jewish 
belief in tikkun olam, repairing 
the world. If we do not care about 
the planet that we live on, expe-
riences like Jewish camp will no 
longer be available for future gen-
erations. As Jews, we must care 
about the world around us and 
strive to make it a better place not 
just for us, but also the genera-
tions that come after us. 
I am grateful for all that I 
learned at Jewish summer camp. 
It fosters community, friendships, 
the love of nature and Jewish 
pride. Without camp, I feel as 
though I would be lost in this 
world. I am eternally thank-
ful that my parents sent me to 
Tamarack Camps, which has 
instilled in me important values 
that will stick with me forever. 

Cami Katzen is a junior at Frankel 

Jewish Academy

Cami Katzen

PURELY COMMENTARY
WHICH SIDE continued from page 8

understood that there was 
another way to protect Jewish 
distinctiveness: move to 
Israel.
The political scientist 
Charles Liebman, in The 
Ambivalent American Jew 
(1973), argued that Jews in 
the United States were torn 
between surviving as a dis-
tinct ethnic group and inte-
grating into the larger society.
According to Eisen, 
Liebman believed that “Jews 
who make ‘Jewish’ the adjec-
tive and ‘
American’ the noun 
tend to fall on the integration 
side of the hyphen. And Jews 
who make ‘Jew’ the noun and 
‘
American’ the adjective tend 
to fall on the survival side of 
the hyphen.” 
Eisen, a professor of Jewish 
thought at JTS, noted that 
the challenge of the hyphen 
was felt by rabbis on oppo-
site ends of the theological 
spectrum. He cited Eugene 
Borowitz, the influential 
Reform rabbi, who suggest-
ed in 1973 that Jews in the 
United States “are actually 
more Jewish on the inside 
than they pretend to be on 
the outside. In other words, 
we’re so worried about what 
Liebman called integration 
into America that we hide 
our distinctiveness.” Rabbi 
Joseph Soloveitchik, the 
leading Modern Orthodox 
thinker of his generation, 
despaired that the United 
States presented its Jews 
with an unresolvable conflict 
between the person of faith 
and the person of secular 
culture.
When I read the texts 
Eisen shared, I see 20th- 
century Jewish men who 
doubted Jews could be fully 
at home in America and at 
home with themselves as 
Jews (let alone as Jews who 
weren’t straight or white — 

which would demand a few 
more hyphens). They couldn’t 
imagine a rich Jewishness 
that didn’t exist as a coun-
terculture, the way Cynthia 
Ozick wondered what it 
would be like to “think as 
a Jew” in a non-Jewish lan-
guage like English.
They couldn’t picture the 
hyphen as a plus sign, which 
pulled the words “Jewish” and 
“
American” together. 
Recent trends support the 
skeptics. Look at Judaism’s 
Conservative movement, 
whose rabbis are trained 
at JTS, and which has long 
tried to reconcile Jewish lit-
eracy and observance with 
the American mainstream. 
It’s shrinking, losing market 
share and followers both to 
Reform — where followers 
tend to fall on the “inte-
gration side” of the hyphen 
— and to Orthodoxy, where 
Jewish otherness is booming 
in places like Brooklyn and 
Lakewood, New Jersey. And 
the Jewish “nones” — those 
opting out of religion, syna-
gogue and active engagement 
in Jewish institutions and 
affairs — are among the 
fastest-growing segments of 
American Jewish life.
Eisen appears more opti-
mistic about a hyphenated 
Jewish identity, although he 
insists that it takes work to 
cultivate the Jewish side. “I 
don’t think there’s anything 
at stake necessarily on which 
side of the hyphen you put 
the Jewish on,” he said. “But if 
you don’t go out of your way 
to put added weight on the 
Jewish in the natural course 
of events, as Kaplan said 
correctly 100 years ago, the 
American will win.” 

Andrew Silow-Carroll is Editor at 

Large of the New York Jewish Week 

and Managing Editor for Ideas for 

the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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