Jewish Summer Camp Group Launches Campaign To Prevent Sexual Harassment, Abuse

Facing East: Gilboa campers are encouraged to have ‘a critical, questioning perspective.’ Image by David Oderberg

By Josefin Dolsten March 19, 2018

(JTA) — The Foundation for Jewish Camp has launched an initiative to prevent sexual harassment, abuse and misconduct at camps.

FJC launched the Shmira Initiative in Baltimore Sunday at its biannual Leaders Assembly conference for camp professionals, lay leaders, educators and philanthropists.

The FJC is investing an initial $100,000 in the program.

“Our Jewish communal organizations must be safe places and safe spaces, and we have to ensure that harassment, abuse, gendered power dynamics — that becomes a thing of the past,” said FJC CEO Jeremy Fingerman in an interview with JTA on Monday.

The initiative will educate and provide resources to camp staff about preventing, identifying and reporting sexual misconduct as well as create a campaign to change camp culture around the issue of sexuality and gender expression.

“The #MeToo movement has emboldened victims of sexual harassment and assault to come forward and tell their stories, shining a new spotlight on crimes of child abuse,” Marina Lewin, chief operating officer of Foundation for Jewish Camp, said in a Sunday statement. “Through the ‘Shmira Initiative,’ our camps and communities will be better equipped to address these issues head on, with immediate action in conjunction with parents and law enforcement authorities.”

Fingerman said summer camps provide an opportunity to teach future community leaders about issues surrounding gender and sexual misconduct.

“Summer camps are a prime place to begin to change gender norms, to create partners and allies for boys and young men,” he said. “Camps are developing the future leaders of our Jewish community — in some sense these camps are an incubator of what the next generation of what Jewish communal leaders will be, and our young people really have the power to shift culture and to influence change.”

Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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