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PunCtuate tHis: anaWana Go to CaMP
spent 16 2/3 percent of my time over a sixteen-year, no doubt formative, period of my life learning, playing, and teaching sports and all manner of other activities, immersed in the culture of Jewish summer camps. (I actually “went to camp” between my first and second years at Columbia Law School.) I used to say, proudly, that every bad habit that I developed was born and nurtured in bunks, on lakes, in mess halls, in “rec” halls, and on playing and other fields during my summers at camp. I would also say that a fair amount of good things were learned there as well.
You will notice that this chapter is one of four that I will devote to this fairly important part of my life. This chapter and the next one will focus on Camps Anawana and Starlight, as I went to them for the most part when I was still a camper and before I really started taking on the trappings of young adulthood. At Camps Kee-Wah and Brookwood, where I was paid to attend (with the exception of one summer), I clearly went of my own volition, and my experience was categorically different. Those camps will be dealt with in separate chapters (Thirteen and Fourteen) after I manage to graduate from high school but before I go off to college.
We will start at Anawana, not just because I did but also because I first experienced some of the basic concepts of Jewish camping in that setting. When I say, “Jewish camping,” I don’t mean that the campers all came from Jewish families, which they did (unless someone slipped through the cracks), but I mean much more. All of these camps sold themselves as serving food in the “kosher style,” which meant that they were just kosher enough to be sold as suitable venues to such people as my parents but weren’t kosher by any Orthodox standard. Even Brook- wood, which was owned by a family of kosher caterers of bar mitzvahs and weddings, served “kosher-style,” but was not really kosher, which made me feel somewhat at home, even though neither lobster nor Chi- nese food was provided. All of the camps also held some form of Jewish services, either on Friday night or Saturday morning but never both. The services were led primarily in English, not by a rabbi but by a layperson who was a counselor who might have known some basic prayers in Hebrew.
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