Talking about Israel-Palestine with children is hard. Jewish camps are doing their best
There’s a vast landscape of ways that camps choose to address the complicated realities of conflict in the Middle East
Jewish camps are not all alike — and neither is their treatment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Photo by ArtistGNDphotography/iStock by Getty Images
Re: “Dear Jewish summer camps: It’s time to tell our children the truth about Israel and Palestine,” by Anonymous.
To the editor:
As a rabbi who has served Jewish communities for nearly 30 years and who raised three children in Hebrew school, youth group and Jewish camping — and most importantly, a Jewish home — I was appalled to read the facile oped by Anonymous entitled “Dear Jewish summer camps: It’s time to tell our children the truth about Israel and Palestine.”
While written without attribution purportedly to protect the identity of the authors’ Jewish child, the piece addresses no particular camp, no particular movement and no particular ideology, but rather traffics in platitudes and accusations which belie the complicated work that innumerable Jewish summer camps actually engage in while teaching about Jewish identity, language, history, religion culture — and yes, Zionism, Israel and Palestine.
Why didn’t the opinion writer interview camp directors, counselors and campers? This opinion piece traffics in generalities, lacks critical self-examination and assumes, without evidence, that the author’s own Jewish camp experience — which lacked a balanced view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — was the same across the board for anyone sending their kid to camp.
A brief and honest survey of the major movements’ camp curricula, along with camps on the Zionist left, center and right, would reveal a nuanced and complex educational landscape when it comes to teaching children about the intractable, violent and as yet unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Thousands of innocent Israelis and Palestinians have been brutally killed in this horrific war. The maddening hubris of Anonymous to hide behind their righteous hopes belies their own failure to simply leave the comfort of their bubble, talk to their kid’s camp director and take responsibility for their own child’s education. What does it say in the Torah? “You shall teach them to your children.” (Deuteronomy 6:7)
That mitzvah is personal, not Anonymous.
Rabbi Andy Bachman
Portland, ME
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