Page 138 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
To give you some idea of just how lay the leaders were, I will admit that, when I was a counselor at Camp Brookwood, I was invited to give the sermon, and I accepted and centered my talk on Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” of Beatles fame. (I had majored in religion in college—switching from the English Department—but that was something that prepared me for absolutely nothing that was reflected in my words.) I do hasten to add that there were some Jewish camps, such as Camp Ramah and Camp B’nai Brith, that were run along fairly strict religious lines, but their campers were often yeshiva or day school students and, in any event, were not the best softball players on the planet.
I think, however, that it was more about what my camps did in a nonreligious vein, or just plain didn’t do at all, that made them “Jewish camps.” Campers lived in wooden bunks with screened windows, not tents. Only one of the four camps had a shower house and that was for senior boys only. Girls’ bunks always had showers. All had indoor toilets. (You had to ask?) Hikes, if they occurred at all, occurred on Wednes- days, as their primary purpose was to give the kitchen staff the day off. There was never any camping out in the woods or schooling in the skills that every Boy Scout can demonstrate in his sleep. The camp infirmaries did a brisk business, especially as campers sought to avoid swimming on cooler days or sweeping up their bunks. One wildly celebrated camper in Anawana was the kid who won the annual spelling bee. On camp vis- iting day, parents would tip counselors, sometimes fairly substantially, and would compete to provide their child’s bunk with the most comic books, candy, board games, water pistols, and, most important, Hebrew National salamis. Those parents who came armed with seeded rye breads and French’s mustard (never Grey Poupon) were the most respected. Finally, to take care of making the little boys feel at home, each one of the camps demonstrated its fealty to Jewish culture by hav- ing a full-time “camp mother.”
One institution that is classically identified with Jewish camping— although only two of my camps, Anawana and Brookwood, featured it (Starlight and Kee-Wah advertised themselves as “progressive,” mean-
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