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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