Banding Together: Supporting 
and Organizing Jewish Camping

Last summer, Elisa Spungen Bildner's (MetroWest) daughter told her she did not want to attend a Jewish camp. And while Elisa wanted to dissent in principle, she says she couldn't argue with her daughter's reasoning. Her daughter wanted a sleep-away camp with top notch writing and music programs and she told her mother that Jewish camps couldn't offer her the same quality programs as secular camps in those fields. Elisa says she was sorry about that, especially considering what powerful experiences her children have had over their summers at Jewish sleep-away camps. She and her husband, Rob Bildner (MetroWest) asked themselves the question that Rabbi Herbert Friedman had so often posed to them and other Wexnerites: Why can't Jewish sleep-away camps create an environment that is top notch both Jewishly as well as in arts, facilities, staffing and sports?

Elisa and Rob believe the answer is that Jewish sleep-away camps can rise to the challenge if they are provided with the resources to do so. That belief was one of the driving forces behind their decision to create the Foundation for Jewish Camping. Another prompt was the evidence indicating the significance of the Jewish camping experience to the formation of Jewish identity and to promoting commitment.

According to studies conducted in Jewish communities in several cities over the past five years, there is a strong correlation between a person's having had a Jewish camping experience and their continuing link to Judaism. For example, in Atlanta, 68% of people polled who attended Jewish camps hung mezuzot on their doors, as compared to 53% of people who had no Jewish camping experience. A full 28% of former campers said they light Shabbat candles, compared to 16% of respondents who had never spent a summer at a Jewish camp. Of the campers, 45% were synagogue members as opposed to 25% of non-campers.

The Bildners add that one need not look further than the Wexner Heritage Foundation for proof of the positive correlation between camping and Jewish commitment later in life. Many WHF participants have Jewish camping backgrounds. "Camp has a magical effect on kids," Elisa Spungen Bildner concludes, "and unfortunately it's hard to see because camp has been relegated to that fun activity in the summer and not much more. It needs to be bolstered tremendously if it's going to compete with the secular opportunities available.

Rabbi Ramie Arian (former Vice-President of the Wexner Heritage Foundation), the Foundation for Jewish Camping's executive director, says its objective is to double the number of youth who attend Jewish sleep-away camps within the next ten years. To achieve that goal, Arian says the Foundation advocates on behalf of Jewish sleep-away camps to get the word out on their importance to the Jewish community. It also focuses on helping camps expand their facilities and in construction of new camps in under-served parts of the United States and Canada. In addition, the Foundation plans to promote programmatic excellence so that Jewish camps will be competitive with secular private camps.

Getting the camps ship-shape is only part of the mission. The Foundation is promoting the creation of scholarships to encourage students to choose to spend summers at Jewish camps. According to the Foundation for Jewish Camping, the average cost of camp is $2,200 per month. "Camp Directors tell me that if they could triple the amount of scholarship funding and triple the bedspace, they could fill the camp with people who otherwise wouldn't go," says Rabbi Arian.

While the Foundation is only a year and a half old, it has already made two rounds of awards to enhance Jewish camping. In 1999, responding to a critical challenge in recruiting staff, the Foundation awarded grants to twenty-five camps to fund projects in staff recruitment, training and retention.

Camp Yavneh in New Hampshire received funding to recruit a female Hebrew-speaking sports specialist and teachers for an enlarged Ulpan program. A Foundation grant enabled Camp Ramah in the Berkshires (New York) to expand its artists-in-residence and athletes-in-residence program. The Foundation awarded Camp Moshava in Pennsylvania a staff programmer and social worker, to support staff needs and improve morale. The Foundation helped the UAHC Greene Family Camp in Texas to offer two college credit courses for staff during the camp season. The Foundation provided Camp Shomria in Ontario the ability to recruit specialists for its new canoe trip program. Five camps were awarded extensive libraries of Jewish educational videos, through a partnership with the Jewish Media Fund.

The Foundation for Jewish Camping recently published a directory of Jewish sleep-away camps in the U.S. and Canada. Some 7,000 rabbis, plus key personnel at JCC's, Hillels, BJE's, Federations and other institutions received copies, as a resource in encouraging members to send their children to Jewish camps.

For the summer of 2000, the Foundation for Jewish Camping is addressing the staff recruitment challenge, and simultaneously enhancing programmatic excellence, in twenty-seven camps. Partnering with the Nathan Cummings Foundation and Steven Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation, the Foundation for Jewish Camping will place "Fellows" in Jewish environmental education and Jewish dramatic arts, respectively, in camps spread across the geographic and denominational spectrum. Fellows will be highly experienced and talented college upperclassmen, graduate students and professionals early in their careers. The partner foundations are providing a summer salary that will enable the camps to recruit staff for these positions who would normally be beyond their reach. The Foundation will gather the Fellows from both programs at the UAHC Olin Sang Ruby Union Institute in Wisconsin for a week of highly specialized training prior to the start of the 2000 camp season.

"The Jewish community has been very concerned for a decade or so about the issue of holding onto our young people," Arian explains. But while Jewish leaders agree that day school education, trips to Israel, and Jewish camps are critical towards fostering Jewish identity, very little was being done to promote camping.

During Wexner Heritage Foundation programs, the Bildners were constantly hearing that they should raise the bar and become leaders in their community. They asked themselves, "Why can't we do that for camps?"

"They had so many desperate needs but nobody in the community seemed to be giving them the attention and the resources they deserve," recalls Rob. He recalls that a Wexner retreat was pivotal to their decision to do something about the void. Participants in the retreat split up into small groups. Some discussed how to improve Jewish day schools, others focused on adult education or Israel programming. The Bildners joined the discussion on Jewish camping. "I think the concept for the Foundation emerged from that retreat," Rob says. "We came out of the retreat believing there was a need, there would be support, and there were people with expertise who would be willing to help." They formally incorporated the Foundation for Jewish Camping approximately five months later.

Now that the Bildners launched the Foundation, they are hoping other Wexner graduates will contribute time, energy, brainpower and financing to their effort. "We mean to be the catalyst to get it off the ground," Elisa says, "but we truly feel that we need other members of the Jewish community to come in and help keep this issue on the table. We can't do it on our own."

Reprinted with permission of The Leader: the newsletter of the Wexner Heritage Foundation -- The original article appeared in the Summer 2000 edition of The Leader (Vol. 2, No. 5) .