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SoCal Holds Out Hope for Summer Camps

[additional-authors]
May 5, 2020
Photo by Getty Stock Images

Summer camp is a staple of Jewish life. It’s an escape to the outdoors where more can be learned in one summer than from a textbook. The coronavirus already has shut down kids’ classrooms, and now their camps appear to be headed that way, too.

Major cancelations began on April 30 when the Reform movement canceled 15 Union of Reform Judaism summer camps, affecting nearly 10,000 campers. Ramah Darom, a Conservative Jewish camp in Georgia also canceled. On May 4, Tamarack Camps, the largest Jewish overnight summer camp in Michigan announced it, too, would close for the summer. In California, Reform and Conservative camps still are deciding what to do, and many will make their decisions by May 15.

“If we can’t create a safe and meaningful experience, then we have to do what’s best for our campers,” Seth Toybes, director of Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s Camp Hess Kramer and Gindling Hilltop Camp told the Journal. “But until we think it’s not a viable option, we want to keep trying to explore and work so we can create that great and meaningful experience.”

Rabbi Bill Kaplan, executive director of Shalom Institute, which is home to JCC overnight camp JCA Shalom, told the Journal it seems as if they’ve been hurtling from one crisis to another following the deadly wildfires that affected the JCA Shalom and Wilshire Boulevard Temple camps 18 months ago.

“If we can’t create a safe and meaningful experience, then we have to do what’s best for our campers.” — Seth Toybes

“We’re kind of mobile and are able to adapt,” Kaplan said. “It’s a very challenging time. We have been in constant limbo since [the pandemic] started. It’s hard to make decisions based on the lack of information that should be coming in the next few weeks. It’s sad.”

Kaplan — along with camp director Joel Charnick — oversees three summer programs, including day and overnight camps, which now all need to be rethought for the safety of campers and staff.

Photo courtesy of Camp Ramah in California.

JCA Shalom, Wilshire Boulevard Temple (WBT) camps, Camp Ramah in California and Camp Bob Waldorf are waiting on the latest information provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the American Camp Association (ACA) on safety protocols for the summer.

“The [ACA] guidelines may say ‘Go ahead and do camp, but you have to do these 25 things,’” Cari Uslan, executive vice president of Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters Los Angeles, told the Journal. “And if the 25 requirements are so onerous that it doesn’t make camp a really enjoyable experience, that will factor into our decision making.”

She added that Camp Bob Waldorf has been figuring out how to make camp activities plausible online since early spring, when it took part in a virtual summer camp test run.

“The biggest thing we realized is that if you’re giving kids virtual programming, the best programming is where kids have materials in their homes,” Uslan said. “If we have virtual camp, we will provide our campers with [that.] It’s not finalized but we are thinking about those possibilities.”

Photo courtesy of Camp Ramah in California.

All of the camps told the Journal they desperately want camp to happen this year for the sake of parents, campers and staff . While the National Ramah Commission is allowing each specific camp to decide, California’s Camp Executive Director Joe Menashe and Camp Director Ariella Moss Peterseil said knowing they were not alone made the process less daunting.

Moss Peterseil said it surprises people to learn that even before the pandemic, Jewish summer camps had such collaborative relationships. She and Menashe have been Zoom calling with different Jewish summer camps across the country to lean on one another for support.

“It is a community,” Menashe said. “Camps are really in it together, and we care about each other and support each other and share our vulnerabilities, and that will help Jewish camping get through it.”

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