"How Goodly Are Thy Tents": Summer Camps as Jewish Socializing Experiences

Abstract

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | xix is dedicated to them. They have taught us more lessons than we can enumerate about life, about love, about growing up as Jewish children in America. They were both the subjects of this work and our best native informants and critics. Today the air is frigid; the evergreens are outlined in white; and the city sounds are muffled by snow. But the sensations of summer camp float through our memories-the warmth of sunshine and friendship; the sounds of laughter, singing, and prayer; the smell of pine trees and sun lotion; and the taste of bug juice. Camp is a magical place and, in our role as social scientists, we have tried to deconstruct and explain this magic. To the extent we have succeeded, we hope that our research will benefit summer camps that strive to become pre-eminent educational and socializing institutions. Our message, we hope, will interest both those specifically concerned with the future of the Jewish community and those who are more generally concerned with how we socialize children in America. To the extent we have failed to capture some part of the magic, we hope that others will join us in trying to understand and nurture what summer camps have to offer. Camp deserves such attention because it appears to have nearly unlimited potential to produce joyous and memorable learning. It certainly produced such learning for us.

Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education

“…When I think of the informal Jewish educational institution that most embodies Peters' thinking about initiation, I think of Jewish camps (Dorph, 1999;Lorge and Zola, 2006;Sales and Saxe, 2004). That, in turn, recalls a personal experience I had at a Jewish camp that may further illustrate how I distinguish between socialization and education and think about how informal education can lead one to going deeper.…”

“…As Sales and Saxe (2004) contend, providing fun is almost always a good way to begin. What we can also learn from Berger (1969) is that beyond fun lies the question of plausibility.…”

“…That is what effective socialization is about: creating experiential Jewish plausibility. Sales and Saxe (2004) illustrate how quality Jewish camping accomplishes those socialization goals effectively. But it is much harder to accomplish these socialization goals in the part-time environment of a JCC, a Hillel, or a BBYO group.…”

The Fundamental Characteristics and Unique Outcomes of Christian Summer Camp Experiences

“…Sales and Saxe (2004) attended to the unique characteristics and outcomes of Jewish camps, demonstrating the fruitfulness of research targeting specific subsets of religiously affiliated camps. Smith The characteristic that sets religiously-affiliated camps apart from secular camps is their emphasis on faith.…”

Sounding Diaspora through Music and Play in a Russian-American Summer Camp

“…Second, the diversity of music in ORUR is enabled by the social context in which it is performed: the summer camp, a space that simultaneously fosters powerful collective identities while allowing participants to question and modify these frameworks. Indeed, summer camps present salient sites for informing participants with a shared identity regardless of the camps' ethnic, religious or cultural affiliations ('Camps for Scamps' in The Economist, 8 August 2012;Mechling 2001;Sales and Saxe 2004;'Notes on Camp', This American Life, 28 August 1998;Zeldin 2006;Zola 2006). The collective identity of campers is reinforced through expected, repeated behaviours, which are the backbone of any summer camp and which can be designed specifically to fit within the cultural parameters of the community in question.…”