Page 188 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
plain noise that pervaded for the fifty-six days of activity now ended had neither disappeared nor even dissipated. After a few minutes, I sighed, I packed the car, and I left Kee-Wah and the reverberations behind—for the last time.
The news came about a month later in a letter that was addressed to Kee-Wah campers, counselors, and friends. The rumors that had circu- lated were true. After decades of successful camping, the families that owned Kee-Wah had decided to sell the camp (for, it was rumored, an amount that could not be turned down). They had sold, not to new own- ers who might have continued Kee-Wah’s hallowed traditions, but to an organization that had been founded by the Jewish Theological Seminary. Kee-Wah would be operated as a Camp Ramah, a religiously oriented camp that observed the rules of kashrut and the Shabbat and otherwise instilled the traditions of Conservative Judaism. Thus, my time at Kee- Wah was therefore at an end: there was no camper or counselor at Kee-Wah who would dream of returning to Wingdale for the next summer.
(There is arguably a slight exception to this statement. In the early 1980s—that is to say, more than two decades later—I found myself on Kee-Wah’s former premises, now Camp Ramah, as my then wife, Phyl- lis, and I were part of a group of members of Temple Israel Center of White Plains who attended a “Shabbaton” there. At that time, we attended Sabbath services in the Camp Ramah Beth Knesset, which I knew to have been Kee-Wah’s “Bunny Playhouse.” [Here then were two examples of a recurring place without a recurring place-name.] There will be more about this detour in my life later.)
Not to fear, however. Two other letters to camp families and coun- selors followed. The leader of the boys senior group would be moving to Camp Roosevelt in Monticello, New York, as would other counselors from Camp Kee-Wah who were loyal to him. He hoped that many Kee- Wah campers would follow him as well. The boys Head Counselor and a respected group leader harbored the same hope but with respect to another camp; they would be moving on to Camp Brookwood in Glen Spey, New York. I received solicitations from both camps but did nothing immediately. Instead, I did not act until May 1964, when I opted to
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