Some Jewish camps set aside bunks for trans and non-binary kids

At Jewish camps this summer, bunks and bathrooms accommodate any gender identity

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Some 70,000 Jewish kids will arrive at sleepaway camps this week. Our Louis Keene spoke to camp directors, staff and families about how they are meeting this moment of growing gender diversity.

By the numbers: With 1 in 5 American teens identifying as LGBTQ+, the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s website shows 90 of 153 overnight camps welcoming transgender and nonbinary campers. Most of those 90 allow these campers to choose whether they want to bunk with girls or boys.

Third bunk: Camp Tawonga, which is near Yosemite National Park and affiliated with a JCC, was the first camp in the U.S. to introduce a non-gendered bunk, in 2019. Only a handful of Jewish camps offer this option, but several directors said they would if they had enough kids to fill one.

Backlash: No Orthodox camps accommodate gender-based bunking, according to the Foundation website’s Find A Camp tool. That has led some Orthodox families with trans children to send their campers to non-Orthodox camps — and some Conservative families to send their kids to Orthodox camps.

Questions remain: Camps that strive to be welcoming are still establishing best practices around inclusion. If a child comes out as trans mid-session, for example, should they be allowed to change bunks? Which bunks should nonbinary counselors staff? What are parents entitled to know about their child’s gender expression at camp — or their counselor’s?

ALSO IN THE FORWARD

Bette Midler performs during her Continental Baths tour in New York. (Getty)

Why 1973 was a particularly Jewish year in pop music: Fifty years ago, Carly Simon (and Paul Simon) made the charts with “You’re So Vain” and “Loves Me Like a Rock.” Kiss played its first concert. Paul McCartney’s ode to his Jewish wife topped out at No. 5. And the Jewish songwriting team of Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown had the No. 1 song of the year, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.” Our Seth Rogovoy breaks down the year in song. Read the story ➤

Young Jews grapple with how to remember what some Holocaust survivors would rather forget: The Ice Factory Festival in Manhattan presents a hallucinogenic new play through which “the boundaries between reality and dream, memory and forgetting, and life and death all begin to blur,” our Mira Fox writes. The play is by Eliya Smith, who worked in our newsroom last year and is now pursuing a master’s in playwriting at the University of Texas. Fox says it presents a visceral snapshot of young Jews grappling with the question of what to do when, as Smith said, “remembering as a political act is not always the most benevolent thing.” Read the story ➤

Plus…

• An ad for Brandeis University in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine seemed to be mocking Orthodox Jews. The school and some of its Jewish alumni say the ad was misconstrued.
  
  
• Mayor Eric Adams of New York, home to the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel, on Monday created a panel of advisers on Jewish issues.
  
  
• Relatedly, New York City’s public schools will be closed for the last two days of Passover next year, after nearly 4,000 teachers and parents signed a petition demanding the days off.

WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

(Getty)

??  Jewish voters favor President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election 72% to 22%, according to a new survey by the Jewish Electoral Institute. The 50-point margin among the 800 Jewish respondents is a sharp contrast to national polls showing a close race, like one released by NBC Sunday that showed 49% supporting Biden and 45% Trump. (JTA)

⚖️  The man found guilty of murdering 11 Jews at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue five years ago has a history of suicide attempts, his lawyers said in court Monday. In the first day of the trial’s penalty phase, expected to stretch six weeks, they said the shooter, Robert Bowers, suffers from “chronic mental illness.” (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle) 

?  One Israeli soldier fatally shot another accidentally during a training exercise early this morning. Separately, a 5-year-old Palestinian boy sitting in the back seat of a car lost his eye after Israeli soldiers shot a rubber bullet during weekend clashes in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military is investigating both incidents. (Times of Israel, Haaretz)

?  The Biden Administration said it would return to a long-running policy of prohibiting U.S. agencies from funding scientific research and development projects in the West Bank. The rule had been reversed during Trump’s presidency. (Times of Israel)

?  Citing religious beliefs, a pharmacist at a Walgreen’s in California refused to give a transgender man his hormone replacement medicine. (Los Angeles Times)

?  The second season of The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem arrives July 14 on Netflix. The historical drama, starring Michael Aloni of Shtisel fame, follows three generations of a Ladino-speaking family in British Mandate Palestine. (JTA)

Mazel tov ➤  To Mel Brooks, who will receive an honorary Oscar in November …. And to Gal Gadot, who is set to become the first Israeli actor to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next year.

Shiva calls ➤  Rita Reif, an antiques and auction columnist for The New York Times who helped reclaim a painting that the Nazis stole from her husband’s uncle, died at 94 … Richard Ravitch, the former lieutenant governor of New York, died at 89 … James Crown, the billionaire businessman who served on JPMorgan’s board since the early 1990s, died at 70.

Dept. of self congratulation ➤  To our California-based reporter Louis Keene on winning the LA Press Club’s best headline award for this gem: Oy vey shmear! Still trending for antisemitic rants, Kanye makes a bagel run. The judges called it “funny, clever, ironic without the need of a sub-heading to explain.”

Our contributor Simi Horwitz took home three LA Press Club awards, including first prize in film criticism for a trio of reviews — on documentaries about assisted suicide and previously unseen Holocaust photographs as well as an animated biopic of a young artist killed at Auschwitz. “This writer handles heart-wrenching material with a facile balance of empathy and critical detachment,” the judges raved.

ON THE CALENDAR

J.J. Abrams at the 2022 TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles. (Getty)

On this day in history (1966): J.J. Abrams was born. The self-proclaimed “most nebbishy Jewish director ever” created the hit TV show Lost, and directed Star Trek and Star Wars films. The discursive nature of his projects has led some to compare his works to the Talmud, and his anxious characters share some of his nebbish energy. 

In honor of International Pineapple Day, here’s a recipe for weed-infused pineapple blintz soufflé.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

In case you missed it: Our editor in chief, Jodi Rudoren, and our archivist, Chana Pollack, talked about the treasures in the Forward’s files, including remnants of Yiddish typesetters and a silhouette of our founder Ab Cahan. Plus: Where you can see how the old photographs were printed, and who are those Socialist busts on the landmarked Forward Building? 

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Thanks to Laura E. Adkins, Mira Fox, PJ Grisar, Louis Keene, Tani Levitt, Jodi Rudoren and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected].