Serious Fun At A Jewish Community Summer Camp

Download or read book Serious Fun at a Jewish Community Summer Camp written by Celia E. Rothenberg and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unique in the literature on Jewish camping, this book provides an in-depth study of a community-based, residential summer camp that serves Jewish children from primarily rural areas. Focused on Camp Ben Frankel (CBF), established in 1950 in southern Illinois, this book focuses on how a pluralist Jewish camp constructs meaningful experiences of Jewish “family” and Judaism for campers—and teaches them about Israel. Inspired by models of the earliest camps established for Jewish children in urban areas, CBF’s founders worked to create a camp that would appeal to the rural, often isolated Jewish families in its catchment area. Although seemingly on the periphery of American Jewish life, CBF staff and campers are revealed to be deeply entwined with national developments in Jewish culture and practice and, indeed, contributors to shaping them. This research highlights the importance of campers’ experiences of traditional elements of the Jewish “family” (an experience increasingly limited to time at camp), as well as the overarching importance of song. Over the years, Judaism becomes constructed as fun, welcoming, and easy for campers, while Israel is presented in ways that are meant to be appropriate for a community camp. In the camp’s earliest decades, Israel was framed by “traditional” Zionist discourse; later, as community priorities shifted, the cause of Russian Jews was the focus. Most recently, as Israeli politics have been increasingly viewed as potentially divisive, the camp has adopted an “Israel-lite” approach, focusing on Israel as the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people and a place home to Jews who are similar to American Jews. In sum, this study sheds light on how a small, rural, community camp contributes in significant ways to our understanding of American Jews, their Judaism, and their Zionism.

Download or read book The Jews of Summer written by Sandra Fox and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-21 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades directly following the Holocaust, American Jewish leaders anxiously debated how to preserve and produce what they considered authentic Jewish culture, fearful that growing affluence and suburbanization threatened the future of Jewish life. Many communal educators and rabbis contended that without educational interventions, Judaism as they understood it would disappear altogether. They pinned their hopes on residential summer camps for Jewish youth: institutions that sprang up across the U.S. in the postwar decades as places for children and teenagers to socialize, recreate, and experience Jewish culture. Adults' fears, hopes, and dreams about the Jewish future inflected every element of camp life, from the languages they taught to what was encouraged romantically and permitted sexually. But adult plans did not constitute everything that occurred at camp: children and teenagers also shaped these sleepaway camps to mirror their own desires and interests and decided whether to accept or resist the ideas and ideologies their camp leaders promoted. Focusing on the lived experience of campers and camp counselors, The Jews of Summer demonstrates how a cultural crisis birthed a rite of passage that remains a significant influence in American Jewish life.

Download or read book Hebrew Infusion written by Sarah Bunin Benor and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-17 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Let's hear some ruach (spirit) in this chadar ochel (dining hall)!" Sentences like this abound at Jewish summer camps around North America, alongside Hebrew songs, games, and signs. Through insightful analysis and engaging writing, Hebrew Infusion explains the origins of this phenomenon and what it says about Jewishness in America.

Download or read book The New Zionists written by David L. Graizbord and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a qualitative analysis and broad historical contextualization of personal interviews, The New Zionists shows how American Jewish “Millennials” who are not religiously orthodox approach Israel and Zionism as galvanizing solutions to the thinning of American Jewish identity, and (re)root themselves through “Israeliness”—an unselfconscious and largely secular expression of national kinship and solidarity, as well as of personal and communal purpose, that American Judaism scarcely provides.

Download or read book Making Shabbat written by Joseph Reimer and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-18 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Early in the 20th century, Jewish camp leaders had little interest in creating spiritual experiences for their campers. Yet Jewish camps have gradually provided primal Jewish experiences that campers could enjoy, parents appreciate, and alumni fondly recall. This book considers how Shabbat at camp became the focus for these experiences"--

Download or read book No Better Home written by David S. Koffman and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Better Home? brings together a unique combination of voices to question whether or not Canada is the best home that Jews have ever had.

Download or read book Jews Across the Americas written by Adriana M. Brodsky and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Jews Across the Americas, a documentary reader with sources from Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada, and the United States, each introduced by an expert in the field, teaches students to analyze historical sources and encourages them to think about who and what has been and is an American Jew"--