Reform Movement’s Kutz Camp, Incubator For Teen Leaders, Is Shutting Down

Campers in 1977 Image by Courtesy of Kutz Camp
(JTA) — Kutz Camp, the Union for Reform Judaism summer camp for teens and an incubator for modern spiritual Jewish folk music, is closing.
URJ President Rabbi Rick Jacob made the announcement in a statement Wednesday, citing competition from other programs.
The camp celebrated its 50th anniversary on July 4, 2015. The summer 2019 session will be its last.
A Facebook post shared by camp director Melissa Frey explained that Kutz, once the “only high-level leadership programming exclusively for teens,” faced competition from youth programs at other Reform camps. The statement said that “the ability to attract teens to Kutz has been in decline for over a decade.”
Jacobs noted that “many of our teens are looking for these remarkable programs closer to home and at different times of the year.”
He also said that: “Throughout the next year, URJ camps across North America and NFTY will join us in determining how to best bring the Movement’s renowned leadership programming directly to the teens in our network of camps and congregations.”
Jacobs said the movement does not know yet what will become of the Kutz Camp facility located in Warwick, New York.
The camp will sponsor a series of conference calls with campers, alumni and staff “to process this information together, and to begin thinking about what the future might look like.”
In 1965, Kutz Camp became the summer headquarters for NFTY, the North American Federation of Temple Youth, the youth arm of the Union for Reform Judaism. The late folk singer Debbie Friedman, whose songs and settings for traditional prayers have been widely adopted by synagogues, served as song leader at the camp in 1969.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a Passover gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Fast Forward Suspected arsonist intended to beat Gov. Josh Shapiro with a sledgehammer, investigators say
- 4
Opinion My Jewish moms group ousted me because I work for J Street. Is this what communal life has come to?
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Yes, the attack on Gov. Shapiro was antisemitic. Here’s what the left should learn from it
-
News ‘Whose seat is now empty’: Remembering Hersh Goldberg-Polin at his family’s Passover retreat
-
Fast Forward Chicago man charged with hate crime for attack of two Jewish DePaul students
-
Fast Forward In the ashes of the governor’s mansion, clues to a mystery about Josh Shapiro’s Passover Seder
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.