Inclusion at Jewish Summer Camp

Like so many others I read about Rafi Daugherty's amazing story with great interest. Rafi is the Jewish man who recently gave birth to a baby girl. A queer transgender Jewish man becoming pregnant is certainly deserving of the news headlines, but after meeting Rafi earlier this week I must say that I was more interested in the important work he's doing at summer camp. At the Foundation for Jewish Camp's Leaders Assembly this past week I was so inspired listening to Rafi's story. The Foundation has launched the "I Belong to Jewish Camp" incentive program aimed at promoting inclusion at Jewish summer camps. I wrote about this new initiative in The Times of Israel.

Jewish Summer Camps Prioritize Inclusion in 2016

As New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was signing an executive order requiring NYC agencies give access to single-sex bathroom facilities consistent with people's gender identity, across the Hudson River over 750 Jewish camp professionals were likewise pledging increased inclusion at their summer camps. For the first time, a gender neutral bathroom was made available at the Foundation for Jewish Camp's Leaders Assembly conference in East Brunswick, New Jersey to ensure transgender individuals were comfortable during FJC's biennial gathering.

More than that, the Foundation launched its "I Belong to Jewish Camp" initiative which will offer significant grants to organizations like day camps, overnight camps, Jewish federations, and other camp partners to strongly encourage a new commitment to inclusion. Up to $25,000 in seed-funding is being offered by FJC for new outreach and/or programmatic initiatives that engage such constituencies as LGBTQ, Interfaith, Multi-ethnic, and campers with disabilities.

This new initiative was announced by Jeremy Fingerman, CEO of FJC, following a dynamic series of presentations by individuals who had historically been marginalized because of their differences. The highlights of these impassioned talks were given by a young woman with Tourette's Syndrome and a transgender man who recently gave birth to his baby daughter.

With a delightful amount of humor, Pamela Schuller shared her experiences as a camper and staff member at Jewish summer camps. With her Tourette's Syndrome causing her to bark like a dog uncontrollably, Pamela found it too big of a challenge to survive in her family's synagogue and at her school because of her condition. However, summer after summer she found a comfortable euphoria at her Jewish camp where she went from camper to camp professional. She's now the full-time Inclusion Specialist for the Union for Reform Judaism and a standup comedian to boot. Despite struggling with Tourette's Syndrome, Pamela found a home at camp.

Rafi Daugherty and Rabbi Jason Miller

When Rafi Daugherty took the stage next, he acknowledged that an introduction of his personal story was likely unnecessary since it had been covered so widely in the media recently. As a queer transgender man, Rafi grew up in summer camps. In his youth, as an ultra-Orthodox Jewish girl, summers were spent at all-girls overnight camps where Rafi was a tomboy and felt uncomfortable as a girl. After leaving the Orthodox world of his childhood, coming out of the closet and eventually transitioning to a man, Rafi's journey led him toward finding unexpected connections to spirituality. While he's making headlines because he recently delivered a beautiful baby girl, the real story is that Rafi is doing important work as the Director of Camper Care at Ramah Outdoor Adventure, an overnight camp in Colorado, and feels accepted as a queer transgender man who was respected last summer when he explained to his fellow camp staff members and the oldest campers that he was pregnant.

Whether it is children of intermarried parents, counselors with physical disabilities, LGBTQ individuals, campers from multiracial families or any other people who feel as if they've been missing from these dynamic summer camp communities, Jewish summer camps are poised to increase the diversity in their institutions this summer and beyond. All sociology experts on the future of the Jewish community point to the integral role that summer camp plays in the development of strong Jewish identities. With the encouragement of the Foundation for Jewish Camp, camp professionals are now recognizing their responsibility to ensure all young people in the Jewish community are included in the magic that is Jewish camp.

Technology and Electronics at Summer Camp: Will Policy Change?

School is back in session in many parts of the country and that means the summer camp season has come to a close. With each passing summer, I try to evaluate the role that technology plays at sleep-away camp. It seems that each year more summer camps institute "screen free policies" concerning the use of technology and electronics at camp, but other camps are gradually relaxing their policies (e.g., letting staff keep a cellphone in their pockets during the day, not checking for campers' Wi-Fi-enabled devices on trips out of camp, etc.). Last week I published the following piece on The Huffington Post's website about technology and summer camp. It has already generated a lot of discussion about appropriate use of technology at summer camp and what the future might look like.

Sitting with my wife by the lake in Northern Michigan at the beginning of the summer I listened as the director of our family camp, Camp Michigania, recited the rules for the week. "One final thing we ask everyone to abide by," he said to the assembled adults, "please keep your children from using any technology this week and try not to use your own cellphones and computers in public." I noted the irony that he had just read his annual list of policies and procedures from his iPhone.

Is it hypocrisy when a camp director asks campers to unplug while being tethered to his own smartphone? I contemplated this from my spot on the beach watching my kids kayak and paddleboard as I tapped away at my notebook computer, enjoying the gorgeous surroundings as I put the finishing touches on a blog entry.

I am a techie, but I am also an advocate for summer camp. I respect those who believe that our kids should leave anything that requires a rechargeable battery at home before getting on the bus to sleep away camp -- hard as that may be. But I also wonder if we're setting ourselves up for failure. Just how far into the future will we be able to continue banning communication devices from these children of the digital age?

The argument against allowing these young campers to import their technology to camp is that they need a chance to unplug and to be fully present without any influences from the outside world. But those influences inevitably sneak into summer camps each year. Overnight camp counselors use the Internet after hours and on days off and then keep the campers abreast of what's happening in the world. Communiques in the form of one-way email messages, faxes and even hand-written letters from family members alert them to the goings on back home. Summer camp for our children is akin to a vacation for us, but aren't we all guilty of sneaking a peek at our email while on vacation? Is the expectation that our kids shouldn't have that ability a double standard?

Summer Camps Use Technology to Operate More Effectively

As Jewish camp leaders once again convened at Leaders Assembly, the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s biennial conference here in New Brunswick, there was a lot of networking taking place – both in person and via social media. The dozens of ad hoc camp reunions taking place in the hallways of the hotel also materialized into an exchange of best practices for these Jewish camp professionals. The hot topic this year was the use of technology, both in the back office of the camp operations and front and center for campers, their parents and alumni.

What role all of this new technology plays for the Jewish summer camp industry was hashed out in breakout sessions at the camp confab in what were termed “Hot Topics” and also discussed in the “Shuk” where the companies that provide this new technology were camped out. “Do you keep your camper registrations and medical forms in the cloud?”, “Who manages your alumni Facebook page?”, “Have you started Instagram or Pinterest accounts,” and “Which online service do you use for staff background checks” were just some of the questions overheard at the conference.

While many don’t typically associate high tech with the camp world, which for generations was thought of as a low tech industry, there’s no question that camps have come to depend on the latest support applications in the technology world to run their camps efficiently, effectively and safely in the 21st century. After all, while one of the core missions of the overnight summer camp experience may continue to be allowing our youth to unplug from their electronic gadgets for several weeks each summer, the camps charged with that mission must be run like businesses. And that means using the best technology to manage everything from security, registration, financials and medical information to social network engagement, summertime communication and alumni relations.

Summer Camp Online Photos: The Good, the Bad and the Oy Vey

Like many parents, I was concerned that my son wasn’t getting enough sleep while he was away at sleep-away camp. As it turns out, it was my wife’s lack of sleep that posed a bigger concern. Each night beginning around 11:30 she would sit anxiously in front of the computer screen scanning each new photograph as it was uploaded from the camp. It was a slow process that lasted well into the wee hours.

On the slim chance that she caught a glimpse of our son in one of the photos, the analysis would begin. Was he wearing the same t-shirt that he was wearing in the photo two days ago? Did he misplace his glasses since he wasn’t wearing them? Did he look sunburned? Did he make new friends since he was posing in the photo with the same friend from last time? Was he showering? Was he brushing his teeth? Was he having fun?

This new parental anxiety is thanks to the advanced technology now available to sleep-away summer camps. In the “olden days” (more than five years ago), parents had to wait until junior returned home to see photos from his camp experience. Now, summer camps have invested in a few digital cameras and an Internet connection, so there’s simply no excuse not to post the daily collection of photos. But is it healthy? After all, just because the technology is available doesn’t mean it has to be used.

Evidence that this has become a national trend among sleep-away camp parents (many day camps post daily photos too) came in the form of a popular animation video this summer. The video, which was created on xtranormal.com and posted to YouTube, mocked the “helicopter parent” who is addicted to scanning the camp website for photos of her child. Many parents with children at Jewish sleep-away camp found it funny and relatable.

In the video (below), two cartoon animals portraying mothers are discussing summer camp. It is obvious that the character whose son is away at sleep away camp is Jewish and the character unfamiliar with the culture is not. The Jewish character keeps saying “refresh” until the other character finally asks why she repeats that word uncontrollably. She explains that it is because she spends many hours late at night refreshing the summer camp’s website to see if a photo of her son has been uploaded. The other character finds it odd that she has just spent a large amount of money to send her son away for a few weeks during the summer only to neurotically check the camp’s website each night to catch a glimpse of her son.

It’s no accident that the online posting of summer camp photos each day has become de rigueur for Jewish sleep-away camps across the nation. A man named Ari Ackerman made sure of it. When Ackerman was in graduate school, he wrote the business plan for Bunk1. He thought of it as a “one-way window into the camp world” so parents would be able to get a taste of what their children were experiencing while away from home for a few weeks each summer. From fewer than 100 camps a decade ago, Ackerman’s Bunk1 now boasts over 1,000 camps that utilize his web application to showcase a couple hundred random photos each night.

Camp directors who thought the daily online photo gallery wasn’t a good idea were pressured by zealous parents who demanded such transparency. Many parents do note the odd culture that has been created with the obsessive scanning of photos just to see that their child is still alive and well. One parent wrote on the Bunk1 blog, “Anybody else here see the irony of confiscating your kids electronics and sending them off into a Wi-Fi free zone, only to spend the summer obsessed with electronics yourself?”

The problem with this new phenomenon is that the photo doesn’t tell the whole story of the child’s day at camp. Analyzing a photograph which only documents one second of a very busy day at camp can lead to unnecessary anxiety. The camper could have spent the day happily engaged in her favorite activities and only at the end of the day when she was exhausted was a candid photo taken of her and posted to the camp’s website. The parents immediately repost it to their Facebook account with the message, “Uh oh… Our daughter looks exhausted and unhappy at camp! Concerned.”

One sleep-away camp staff member who fielded calls from parents this summer recounted that most of the urgent inquiries from parents were prompted by the online photos. Neurotic parents wanted to know why their children were never in the photos (“my child’s friend is in every photo”), why they were never in photos at the beach, why they were wearing someone else’s clothes, and why they weren’t wearing a hat when it was very sunny out. It seems these online photos, while posted with the best intentions, have caused more concern for parents.

A recent column in Time Magazine focused on this online camp photo gallery phenomenon theorizing that it is a “nod to helicopter parents’ inability to cut the cord.” One parent quoted in the column exclaimed, “I totally am stalking my kids.”

Camp was once a safe place where kids didn’t have to worry about their parents watching them. They were free to just grow and enjoy themselves. The new technology, however, changes that.

Demonstrating that camp directors aren’t thrilled about this new culture, the article in Time quotes Sam Perlin, the director of Camp Solomon Schechter in Olympia, Washington. He explained, “In the beginning, it was like, Wow, how cool. Now I spend much of my day answering phone calls from parents who say, I don’t see a picture of my kid, or, They’re not smiling — are they having a good time?”

For some parents, just recognizing the back of their child’s head in a photo is reassuring that at least he’s not in the clinic. However, parents survived for many generations not seeing current photos of their children at summer camp. Just because the technology is now available for camps to post these photos doesn’t mean they should feel compelled to do so. After all, there are many other technologies that camps can utilize but have decided that it’s not healthy. The online camp photo phenomenon is a wonderful example of what happens when new technology changes the equilibrium.

Camps should wait until the end of a session to post the photos. Parents will get a lot more sleep that way.


A version of this appeared in the Detroit Jewish News. Cross-posted to The Jewish Techs blog at The Jewish Week.

Jewish Summer Camp and Customer Service

This Shabbat we read the double Torah portion Mattot-Masei. Last year, I wrote a d'var Torah for this Shabbat extolling the virtues of Jewish summer camp. This year, Jewish summer camp is on my mind again.

On Wednesday night, Rabbi David Krishef, a Conservative rabbi in Grand Rapids, Michigan, did what any father would do. He advocated on behalf of his son. Rabbi Krishef published a long exposé on his blog that detailed what his family had endured over the past few days after being told that his 16-year-old son Solomon, who is blind, would not be able to spend the second part of the summer at camp. The reason the new camp director at Camp Ramah in Canada gave for this decision was that Solomon required more assistance from the camp's staff members than the camp could adequately provide. The bottom line was that the camp could no longer effectively accommodate a camper like Solomon, even though he had spent several successful summers at the camp in previous years.

Photo on  Camp Ramah in Canada's website of Solomon Krishef with a staff member

Rabbi Krishef's blog post went viral. Well, at least in the Jewish community it did. Several people (myself included) posted a link to the blog post on Facebook and watched as dozens of people commented about this travesty and dozens more shared the link on their own Facebook pages. In the end, the camp director reversed his decision welcoming Solomon back to camp, although the 16-year-old blind teen weighed the decision and ultimately determined that after all the commotion he would not return for the remainder of the summer.

Of course there is probably much more to the story than what Rabbi Krishef blogged about. The camp director didn't make his decision in a vacuum and it must have been a difficult decision to come to. But it raises several important issues about summer camp and keeping the publicity about camp positive.

The most important rule about summer camp is that the campers are safe and having fun. Solomon's safety was not compromised. The camp director said the blind teen took too long at meals and in the shower and there wasn't ample staff coverage to assist him. These problems can easily be remedied. Mistakes were clearly made and there was poor "customer service" coming from the camp.


I felt bad sharing Solomon's plight when I posted the link to Rabbi Krishef's blog on my Facebook page because I knew it would have negative consequences for this Ramah camp and the new director. [Full disclosure: In 2005 I served as Rabbi-in-Residence at Camp Ramah in Canada, and my friend was suddenly and unfairly released of his duties as director last year.]

The lesson in this is that every camp director needs to realize what it means to be in the customer service industry. Like any business, camps need to advance and be innovative. The leadership also must recognize the power of social media in the 21st century. Social media reigns king and that means that if a customer isn't happy with their service at Best Buy or Starbucks, they will take their rant to the social networks where it will be "liked," commented on and shared across other networks exponentially. As demonstrated by the angry father of a blind teen with a blog, this is also the case at Jewish summer camp.

Jewish summer camp means Jewish parents. While it may be fair to describe some of these parents as neurotic, the fact remains that all Jewish parents care deeply about the livelihood of their children. That means that they want their children to all feel special, safe and secure while at camp. No parents want to hear that the camp can't accommodate their child for any reason.

Today is the first day of the new month of Av according to the Hebrew calendar. It is the beginning of a period of mourning for the Jewish people as we recall the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, this Hebrew month is often called "Menachem Av" because we desire comfort during this sad period. Camp Ramah in Canada will also require menachem as it deals with this matter internally and externally (a petition was signed by campers and staff appealing to the director to let Solomon stay). 

I'm glad that the camp director reversed his decision and apologized to Solomon and the Krishef family. That was a good resolution. But the lesson has to be learned. In the 21st century, it is not enough for a camp to have a program for special needs children and teens. It must seek to accommodate all children and help them feel safe and happy at camp. Camp directors must lead by example and always seek to do good and to make wise decisions. They must try to always accommodate.


It is often said that a parent is only as happy as his saddest child. So too it is for summer camp directors. Try to keep all your kids as "happy campers" and the camp will be a happy place too.

Shabbat Shalom.