I have a list of 20 names on my phone. It’s sacred to me, one of the most important artifacts of my life. I created it on June 29, 2013, the year I was Program Director at the Goldman Union Camp Institute. It was also the year three campers were sent to the ER after…
After the Union of Reform Judaism, which operates North America’s largest network of Jewish summer camps, sent an email last week to thousands of families announcing that all its camps were cancelled, an independent camp in Pennsylvania issued an email announcement of its own. “Camp Zeke is not a URJ camp” it declared, in bold…
Stacie Funk is afraid to tell her son that there might not be summer camp this year. Jonah, 21, has severe autism. Funk playfully calls him “one and done”: He’ll talk incessantly about a movie he wants to see, for example, and as soon as he sees it, he never mentions it again. But for…
For nearly two weeks in late November 2018, wildfires ravaged parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, much of the damage in and around the oceanside city of Malibu. The fires burned nearly 100,000 acres, destroying 1,643 structures and killing three people. Also left in the ruins were Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s two summer camps, Hess…
On Thursday afternoon, a long-dreaded email arrived in inboxes throughout the Reform Jewish community. Amid concerns about operating safely during the coronavirus pandemic, it announced, the Union of Reform Judaism had decided to cancel all sessions in its large network of summer camps. 10,000 campers ages four to 18 are affected by the shutdown, and…
The 10,000 children who attend the Reform Movement’s sleepaway camps learned on Thursday that coronavirus had cancelled their summer. The news left some devastated, but the impact on children, their families and the camps themselves has just started to unfold. “Camp is always the best part of my summer!” wrote a girl named Hanna Pearce…
I love camp. I went for the whole summer starting before I turned 8. First, to Camp Pembroke, where I was named Outstanding Lower Camp Athlete in 1979, and then for seven glorious summers to Camp Yavneh, where I was co-captain of the (losing) Maccabiah team in 1986. One of the first things I did…
Ruben Arquilevich is a Jewish summer camp guy. He says his life was shaped by Jewish summer camp. Over the past three decades, he’s been a camper, a counselor, a professional staffer and the director of a Jewish summer camp. He met his wife at Jewish summer camp. He sent his kids to Jewish summer…
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