I was a long time BB Camp staffer for many years in the 70’s. I learned some basic skills there that allowed me to discover something in me that made me feel worthwhile. I was really good at being a counselor and developing relationships with other people young and old. Teamwork and loving your peers and campers like family was one of the best feelings I had ever had.

After college and my time at camp, I traveled with my mom to Israel. Not once or twice but 3 times! My mom loved Israel and had lived there as a young girl in the 1930’s. Needless to say I fell in love with Israel also. In 1973 I was lucky enough to join a group of young people from all over the United States and live on Kibbutz Ramot Menashe in Israel. This was another adventure in the discovery of ME. Some of the people in my group were really homesick, but because of Camp I was developing relationships with people and thriving in the cooperative farm lifestyle that was very much like camp itself. A few less chickens and cows, but still like camp. My family of friends grew stronger.

After Israel I was 22, and did one more summer at camp. Then I married my camp boyfriend and knew it was time to find a career. Luck again landed me a job in a place that was also a lot like camp, but much more serious. The young people who came to live in this camp like setting were abused. Their lives had been a nightmare. It is there that I learned how invaluable my ability to develop relationships was. I also learned what resiliency and courage was, and I experienced again how important it is to work as a team. My co-workers were my life line and vice versa as we did our best to help those fragile humans. Camp brought me to my career.

In 2001 one I had connected with Michelle Koplan who was in the beginning of her career as BB Camp Director. We hit it off and I decided to return to camp on my vacations from my “real job” , I realized I was feeling a little adrift, my kids were grown and I was searching a little for ME.

The stars aligned and here I am again, back at Camp. The place that started me on the road to discovery, the place that taught me that developing relationships with people can positively change their lives and mine.

What’s your story?

Sincerely,

Barb Gordon
B’nai B’rith Camp Executive Assistant and Registrar

By Jenn Director Knudsen, B’nai B’rith Camp

B’nai B’rith Camp will be running the second summer of its program specifically designed for children with special needs. Called “Kehila,” it’s available for children with challenges like ADHD, anxiety, autism spectrum, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Kehila is the only Jewish overnight program in the Northwest designed for this special population of children.

To integrate special needs campers as much as possible with their typical peers, Kehila takes place during the camp’s week-long Maccabee session. Last summer nearly 100 campers made B.B. Camp their home from June 26 through July 3. The Kehila kids included a handful of elementary and middle school-aged campers with autism and Asperger’s syndrome.

Was Kehila a success?

Beth Lipschutz, B.B. Camp’s inclusion specialist and Kehila coordinator, said she received emails from Kehila kids’ parents immediately after the first-of-its kind session ended.

“[One] called to talk about sending her son to the three-week session,” Lipschutz said. And another parent reported, “[Her son] came home with the most confidence she’s seen in a long time.”

Carol Freedman of Camas, Wash., is mom of 12-year-old Sayer Freedman who has autism; he often misses social cues and can get anxious and impatient very quickly.

Freedman said she felt very confident sending her son to a camp that not only “accommodates” children with special needs but has a program – including dedicated staff and trained counselors – specifically for them. Sayer made friends with typical kids, she said, adding, “He already wants to go next year. I hope it’ll happen.”

Lipschutz, the session coordinator, said that during Kehila she was “impressed” with the kids’ flexibility and ability to change course, both of which can be very difficult for children on the autism spectrum who often have a very hard time deviating from routine and their own set expectations.

For example, roasting s’mores over a roaring campfire had to be scrapped one evening the weather turned sour. She gently explained to the Kehila campers that the scheduled campfire and treat would occur the next dry day. On that wet evening, instead, all the campers would remain inside the mess hall, chomping popcorn and participating in a spirited sing-a-long.

Lipschutz said each Kehila kid dealt well with the disappointment. One child, for instance, coped with that sudden change by talking a lot about the new plan, but never lost control.

“I do get to spend a lot of time with them (the Kehila campers), especially when a potentially difficult situation arises,” Lipschutz said. “But,” she quickly added, “I’m also pulling back; I’d rather have them doing typical-kid stuff.”

While a success, Kehila also posed challenges, particularly to the counselors interacting directly with its campers. Rom Carmel, a second-year counselor, age 17, quickly learned it was an additional challenge to have a child with special needs as one of his charges. “You had to spend more time explaining to him what to do than with other campers,” he said.

By the same token, these challenges doubled as learning opportunities for both the counselors and the Kehila camper’s cabin mates, Max Giannetta also a second-year counselor, commented.

Michelle Koplan, B.B. Camp’s executive director, looks forward to welcoming even more Kehila campers this years. Made possible by a grant funded in part by an allocation from the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland Innovation Impact Fund, the Kehila session can support up to 20 campers with special needs.

The hope is that more children could have the experience of one 13-year-old Kehila camper who was in counselor Reid Birch’s cabin. “He had his moments,” Birch, 17, acknowledged, referring to the 13 year-old, “but all the other kids in the cabin accepted and respected him, which was awesome. My favorite thing he said all week was…“This is my first time here, and this is definitely my favorite camp ever.”

For more information about the Kehila Program at B’nai B’rith Camp please contact David Zimmerman, Associate Director, at dzimmerman@bbcamp.org.

Over this past week, Melissa Bernstein, Liat Melnick, Micah Urbach, David Zimmerman, and I attended the annual American Camp Association’s Tri-state Camp Conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was a jam packed three day conference, which we were each allowed to choose between about a dozen or so sessions every hour and a half throughout the days. The content of the conference was vast. It covered nearly all areas associated with both day camping and residential camping. Some topics included were the business of camp, staff training, new approaches to working with all types of children, and how to expand a camp’s programming culture.

I was surprised to find that a large portion of the information presented at the conference came across as common sense to me, as I learned BB Camp is generally ahead of the curve on a national scale in terms of our innovative approaches and establishing consistent growth and development. Although the sessions did not always provide new information, we did find many of the sessions useful in that they placed special focus on narrow aspects of our respective jobs. This forced us to intensely think about those areas in ways we had not previously delved into. As a result, some of the most important time for us at the conference ended up being our BB Camp team’s nightly debrief sessions. During those debrief sessions, we each tried to cover the material that we had learned or discussed that day in a timely way. We found, however, we could not help but get caught up in discussing many of our topics at extreme length. Our debrief sessions routinely lasted at least three hours or more.

One of the main impactful realizations that we all had was that since we are a Jewish camp with a structured set of Jewish values and ideals, it is easier for us to create meaningful programming and teach a desired standard of behavior for everyone involved with our camp. Even when it’s not conscious, we rely on Jewish values and practices to be the backbone of our culture at camp. We came to realize that due to our already firm values ingrained in our camp culture, many of the sessions were not able to further enlighten us. Our Jewish intentionality that is utilized in our programming as well as our approach to working with children strengthens BB Camp’s ability to operate and thrive in many aspects that other camps struggle with. As a whole, the conference was a lot of fun and quite useful for me. Attending the conference gave me a lot of new connections within the national camping community and has gotten me as excited as ever for this upcoming summer!

-Josh Wasserteil

Camp Works!

This past summer, while working as the Leadership in Action Coordinator, I had the opportunity to complete a combined internship through the Judaic Studies department at my college and BB Camp. My research, observations and discussions with Michelle culminated into an essay that explored American Jewish summer camps as a socializing agent with an emphasis on leadership due to my position. Through my internship I learned a lot about the development of Jewish summer camps nationally and was able to directly incorporate my new knowledge into the LIA program.

Through my experiences as a camper and staff member at BB Camp I knew that one of the main purposes of camp was to experience and teach Jewish values. However, I was surprised to learn that this was not always the case. The “uniquely American phenomenon” of Jewish camps began at the turn of the twentieth century in order to give Jewish youth an opportunity to escape the cities. In the 1930’s and 40’s the camps protected Jewish youth from polio epidemics. It wasn’t until the fifties and sixties that the camps realized their potential as educational tools and platforms for “Jewish identity building” (Valley 2).

Today’s American Jewish summer camp scene has greatly expanded to include over 190 camps including non-profit, private, community camps, Zionist camps and denominational movement camps. A large emphasis has been placed on utilizing these camps as socializing agents because of the informal structure often absent in Jewish day schools and supplementary schools.

Camp provides an ideal environment for informal education through its flexibility, emphasis on individuals, interactive and experiential nature, and the utilization of community. Barry Chazan, an expert on informal Jewish education shares that people “learn best when they are actively rather than passively engaged in experiencing an idea or an event,” a description that undoubtedly resembles camp.
Chazan also writes about two qualities unique specifically to Jewish informal education: the curriculum and the role of the educator. Jewish informal education seeks to teach Jewish values, customs, practices and beliefs. Jewish informal educators serve as teachers as well as role models, playing an integral role in the formation of their student’s identities. (Chazan contrasts this with other informal education where the teacher focuses on the development of skill rather than identity formation.)

As LIA Coordinator and therefore an informal Jewish educator I often sought to add deeper meaning to the LIA experience. During their final Shabbat as campers, LIAs traditionally give speeches about their time at camp and the process of moving forward. I thought that this ritual had the potential to allow my campers to think about their Jewish identities on a deeper level. Rather than giving general speeches, each camper chose a blessing from the Amidah to explore and relate to their camp experience. I believe that the format allowed the LIA’s to begin to integrate their Jewish identities with everyday life while broadening their understanding of prayer. The speeches given at our final Havdallah services were incredibly moving and insightful.

Overall, completing this internship provided me with a broader and deeper understanding of Jewish Summer Camp that I hope to continue to draw from and utilize personally and communally at BB Camp.

- Liat Melnick

Suggested Further Reading:

Chazan, B. (2003), “The philosophy of informal Jewish education” the encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/informaljewisheducation/informal_ jewish_education.htm

Cohen, Steven M., Ron Miller, Ira Sheskin, and Berna Torr. Camp Works: The Long-term Impact of Jewish Overnight Camp Jewish. Foundation for Jewish Camp, 2011. Web.

Sales, Amy L., and Leonard Saxe. “How Goodly Are Thy Tents”: Summer Camps as Jewish Socializing Experiences. Hanover: Brandeis UP in Association with the AVI CHAI Foundation, Published by UP of New England, 2004. Print.

Valley, Eli. “Jewish Summer Camps: Our Precious Resource.” The Journal of Jewish Life Network 4.4 (2002): Jewishlife.org. Web. 15 Sept. 2011.

Upon finishing up last summer at camp and moving to Portland, I moved into a house full of present and past BB Camp Staff members. We expected a degree of unforeseeable problems when living together for the first time without the tools given to us in the camp setting, but to our surprise, it was an incredibly natural transition. After spending years living in cabins, both as campers and as staff, we have all developed the skills to both communicate our own needs to each other, as well as to adapt to the needs of those around us. While I was initially hesitant to move in with camp friends in a setting that was not camp, these skills translated immediately to every day life, and we rarely experience any conflict. To be perfectly honest, our largest struggle to date was what we were going to name our house.

Though researching my house on Google maps may bring you to a house tagged as “S9,” we didn’t come across the perfect name until winter break, when Liz Glusman, a former BB camper, counselor, and friend, came to visit. Liz dubbed our house “the BB Camp Halfway House, because it’s not quite camp, but it’s not quite not camp”. While all of my roommates worked on staff together at one point, we have all had incredibly different experiences at camp. My house holds both hard-core first sessioners and hard-core second sessioners, both Jewish and non-Jewish BB Campers, and a small age range that leads to a large age range of BB Camp people we’re connected to. People I would have never expected to see again have shown up on my doorstep, and we have since been able to develop even stronger friendships, despite previously losing touch.

It’s my goal that this blog can become a digital version of my BB Camp halfway house. By default of living with my BB Camp community, I have been able to reconnect with old friends in a new way. Even though (up until now) we have only spent our summers at camp together, the shared experience that touches every person who steps foot on BB Camp is never limited to when camp is in session. With this blog, we plan on shedding some light on the magnitude of our entire B’nai B’rith Camp community’s shared experience. Every Monday, there will be a new post from all kinds of people in our community, whether it is a parent, camper, alum, staff member, etc, it is our hope that we can all learn from the incredible variety of experiences and connections to BB Camp. If you have any interest in contributing, don’t hesitate to contact me at mbernstein@bbcamp.org or (503) 345-9451.

So, I would like to extend a warm welcome to the BB Camp Halfway Blog to our whole community. I could not be more excited to hear all the stories you have to share.

Warmly,

Melissa Bernstein, B’nai B’rith Camp Community Outreach Coordinator.

Here is an image of the completed project, slated to open Spring 2012!

Please join us for community telethon, Super Sunday on December 4 in Hoffmann Hall on the Portland State University campus – have fun while making a difference. Sign up today for a 2 hour shift – see schedule below.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

SPECIAL HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• The return of the Golden Phone Award providing a $1,000 prize to the
synagogue or agency credited with bringing the most volunteers.

• Kids activities organized by Portland Kollel’s Camp SEED & the PJ Library featuring
storytelling, arts and crafts.

• Kosher food and training at each shift.

Shift Schedule (please note new schedule):

Shift 1 9:30am-11:30am

Shift 2 11:30am-1:30pm (Children’s Activities Available)

Shift 3 3:30pm-5:30pm

Shift 4 5:30pm-7:30pm

Register NOW or contact Nicole at 503-892-7406 or nicole@jewishportland.org for more information.