The Tales of Four Overnight Summer Camps

by Batsheva J.

These are the camp stories from Chanie, Mendel, Rivky, and Zalman. These are being shared so the reader can be an informed consumer, as well as those leading camps, to know what abilities you may have to impact your campers’ summers and perhaps much more than that.

*Names and some details were changed to protect the innocent. Some scenes may be from the same camp, just different summers.

Chanie told us about Camp Alef:

At 13, I went to camp for the first time. While we were organizing our things in the bunk, I noticed an empty bed that I was told would soon be occupied by Toby, a girl from Israel. Toby arrived in camp that day but didn’t join us in the cabin until two days later. She told us in Hebrew that they found “dead eggs” in her hair, but she still needs to stay in the infirmary until she is rechecked and cleaned out the following day. So efficient were they at keeping on top of the girls’ health and well-being that I don’t recall anyone I knew at that camp catching a communicable illness the entire summer.

In this camp, they were also pretty strict about their Tznius policy. I came from a community day school and didn’t realize some of my clothing wouldn’t pass muster. I thought I would “get away with it”, the way my friends shared their experiences while attending bigger schools. One day, I was chosen to serve as a “Chazonis” (davening leader).  My button-down dress didn’t have any closures past the knee, and I wondered what would happen if it were noticed.

The head counselor, Dina, couldn’t ignore the sight of me sitting on stage like that. She took me aside and said, “I want you to be chazonis, but your dress is open like this… Let’s get some pins, and we will fix it now.” So, for the next 5 minutes, she safety-pinned my dress.

Then she reminded me that I could get it repaired for free on-site (yes, someone was doing that!). I felt good inside and out. She helped me keep the rules while making sure my dignity stayed intact. I decided to keep in touch with Dina forever!

Rivky told us about Camp Beis:

At 9 years old, I really was too young and immature for overnight camp, but so many friends were going. However, the city (as we called Crown Heights) was going to be empty, and we were among the few families who didn’t own a bungalow in the Catskills. I begged my parents to send me to camp, which they did, very reluctantly.

From the moment I arrived, I realized this place was run like a zoo and secretly regretted coming, though I didn’t want to tellmy parents, of course. There was barely any opportunity to do that anyway, as the phones never seemed to work when it was our bunk’s turn.

One of the first things I saw was a staff member shouting a curse word at herself when a bird dropped something from above. Innocent child I was, it was the first time hearing a Jewish person use such words, and I felt unsafe around someone who couldn’t control their tongue like that. I avoided this staff member the whole summer.

Several other counselors, though, also used slang words I wasn’t used to hearing at home or at school. Every time they didn’t like something, they yelled, “What the heck!” When I got back home, that phrase slipped out of my mouth, and one look at my parents’ shocked faces was enough to stop me from ever saying that again, at least in front of them.

The counselors in our bunk insisted there was a mistake in our assignment and spent as much time as possible hanging out with the neighboring bunkhouse. We were the “orphaned” group for a month – quite literally, as some of the girls were actually orphaned, some from divorced homes and other difficult home situations. I had a minor disorder, and the other two in the bunk didn’t speak English well.

Clearly, they put all the “misfits” together, which was cruel to each of us. To add insult to injury, the rejection from the overwhelmed counselors was just too much for us young kids to handle. With no one really looking out for us, the amount of bullying, food fights, and general atmosphere was intolerable. We did things in camp – as a group and sometimes on our own – that I regret tremendously. It’s too much and too dreadful to elaborate here.

In camp, I had a cough for nearly all 4 weeks straight, and no one noticed or cared – except for my partner in the camp play, who suggested I take some tea and get it checked out. She was only 11 years old, but I took her sage advice and drank a hot cup of tea, which helped me push off telling any of the head staff about the cough. By the time I came home, my parents took one look at me and booked a doctor’s visit to get me treated right away. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them that I needed a lot more help – to unwrap that awful summer – than just a prescription medication.

I also brought home a lovely “gift” for all my siblings, too – lice! Apparently, the costly lice check the camp listed as a requirement was really just a “suggestion. They did not collect the clean checks from most campers and completely ignored any camper who, at some point, complained about an itching scalp.

After being home a few days, my mother noticed I was itching my head. It had already spread to almost the entire family. After speaking to my friends, we discovered that a whole bunch of us were infested, and Rosh Hashana was early that year. Our poor mothers had a lot of work to do, and it could have been avoided.

Mendel told us about Camp Gimmel:

All year long, I awaited the summer. My school desk was my enemy. I felt imprisoned by having to spend 8 hours a day learning when I didn’t want to hear another word from the same teacher for hours on end.

I knew I was smart, but I had lost interest in too many things lately, especially learning, because I had no patience. My parents were trying, but they didn’t always understand me. Therapists were employed, but my inner struggles continued. Summer was my saviour. And camp was the Gan Eden I hoped for in every way!

The staff welcomed me from the very first moment. They took my things, showed me my bunk, and I got to know my sweet, confident counselors, who seemed always to be smiling at me. Even when the head counselor got mad at me a few times for some childish antics, they had my back. They knew I wasn’t a bad kid. No one bullied me or made fun of the way I acted, even if sometimes I was pretty silly, when I think of it. In fact, one bunkmate told me that in a previous summer, he caused another boy harm in some way. According to him, his parents had to pay towards the other boy’s summer camp tuition!

Whether that story was entirely accurate or not, we believed it. We also learned at camp that a staff member was dismissed that very summer for acting irresponsibly, which resulted in another staff member injuring his arm. Of course, no one knew all the facts, but we knew this: Camp had a reputation for meaning business when it came to other people’s bodies or property. What a refreshing break from school that was – where others constantly targeted me for my out-of-the-box questions and speech delay.

My artistic abilities had a chance to shine in this camp. I even received a genuine art certificate from my counselor. Back home, I hung it on my wall, using bright green tape in the middle of my (very messy) room. It was my reminder that I could be good at something. Also, at the end of camp, I was chosen to be the sign holder (that I designed!) for the Kluger game. I feel it was because of this beautiful sign I made that my team won. For the first time in my life, I earned a trophy. I proudly displayed it in my room – the one I shared with my genius younger brother, who wins every learning award and trophy that exists. Camp built me up, and I can’t wait to go back there every year.

Zalman told us about Camp Daled:

After what seemed like a forever-long winter, summer arrived, and I went to overnight camp – a 10-hour drive from where we live. My older brothers filled me with so many amazing stories from camp, I really couldn’t wait. Being the youngest in a large family (mostly boys), I knew I would be a little homesick, though I hoped no one would notice. That definitely was not a problem, because there was no one in sight to greet me at all.

Everyone was ordered to go to the shul, which was a madhouse, with just kids around. The HC barked, “1, 2, 3, quiet!” then sent out two kids who were talking to make sure everyone knew they meant business before giving them their endless speeches. I kept looking around, wondering why there was only an HC and no counselors. I didn’t understand why they were torturing us with a big meeting before settling us in, showing us around, or feeding us a good meal.

Suddenly, like chickens let out of a coop, dozens of counselors wildly stormed through the curtains and ran towards us. It reminded me of makas arov. The counselors, whom I had thought would be wearing dignified white dress shirts, were dressed up in odd clothing – to make us laugh, I suppose? They were shouting, clapping, and stomping. We were tired, hungry as ever, and yet they were doing the equivalent of a color war breakout on us to introduce our counselors. This was an awful way to start my first camp experience.

Overall, I liked camp, though I tried very hard to hide how homesick I felt. I prayed that only my counselors really knew the truth. I was good at sports, and let everyone see how much I enjoyed camp. My counselors, though, often chided me for my homesickness, as if it were part of my identity. I didn’t appreciate that at all. My friends, who were terrific, loyal, and so well-behaved in camp, also got labels – Chaim for being sloppy, and wearing a sweater every day in the heat, and Shmueli – for being a “kvetcher” whenever he tried to get a little more attention from the counselors.

At the end of the summer, it was with horror that I read in the camp newsletter what the counselors had written about my friends in our bunk page and me. I wanted to rip out the keep-in-touch pages and then bury the rest of the newsletter in the trash.  But my big brothers were so excited to see everything about the camp they used to attend. Under my name, they saw something about my being homesick all the time. “Oh, so you really missed us, eh?” they laughed.

Seeing my humiliation, they tried to calm me down with “Oh, they were just joking. Look, they wrote something like that by everyone. It’s just a camp newsletter!” And indeed, just about every bunk had a page describing negative behaviours (often actual, which only made it more offensive, not cute or “just a joke”)

Despite being young – still under Bar Mitzvah – I wondered about the oversight – wasanyone a little older and more mature than the 18-year-oldcounselors who were writing these things, looking over the newsletters before they went to print? How could a camp – especially one that cared about its rep – have allowed kids to get shamed in this way?

Thankfully, my friends and family never brought up the homesickness again, and I have since managed to outgrow it by the time I went to another camp the following summer. This camp memory, though, is one I won’t forget.

Dear Camp Staff of our precious sons and daughters,

You heard these stories. Some of them for the first time, and some may have been around when you were a camper, or perhaps when your own father or mother were. Which camp do you want yours to be like this summer?