Serious Fun at a Jewish Community Summer Camp: Family, Judaism, and Israel

(Hardback)

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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 campersand teaches them about Israel. Inspired by models of the earliest camps established for Jewish children in urban areas, CBFs 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 camps 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.

Reviews

[Rothenberg] paints an engaging picture of what actually does happen at camp....Rothenbergs book should be on the reading list of anyone interested in research about Jewish summer camp. * Journal Of Jewish Education *
[Rothenburg] does an excellent job of analyzing how the experience of small town Jews is central to the ways in which the camp creates a Jewish world.... Rothenberg is most effective as the ethnographer with a strong grounding in the history of the region and the camp. She walks the reader through the life of the camp with a light, and...elegant touch. * Reading Religion *
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. . . This research highlights the importance of campers experiences of traditional elements of the Jewish family. . . 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. * Israel Book Review *
Over the last two decades we have gathered important empirical evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of summer camp in instilling Jewish identities for Jewish youth. The magic of Rothenbergs eloquent and well-written ethnography is that it reveals the inner workings of how camps actually do it! -- Randal F. Schnoor, York University, co-author of Back to School: Jewish Day School in the Lives of Adult Jews
A wistful and nostalgic academic reflection on Camp Ben Frankel by the author, who is an alumna, that puts this small Reconformadox camp in the context of the American Jewish camp experience. A lovely and interesting read. -- Mara Cohen Ioannides, President, Midwest Jewish Studies Association
Moving the analysis of Jewish summer camps beyond the well-trod campgrounds covered by earlier studies, Serious Fun places the experience of small town Jews at the center. By looking where others have not, Rothenberg offers new insight into how Jewish summer camps create a feeling of family and develop a folk Judaism of their own. -- Shaul Kelner, Vanderbilt University

Author Bio

Celia E. Rothenberg is associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at McMaster University.