TEMPLE HIGHLIGHTS | RABBI'S MONTHLY COLUMN

Summer Youth experiences construct enduring Jewish identities for life

From the study of Rabbi Hayon

Editor’s note: From time to time throughout the year, in addition to Rabbi David Stern’s columns, other members of our clergy will be contributing columns in this space.

As you read this, thousands of children and teenagers across the country and across the world are participating in typical summer vacation activities: playing sports, going swimming, and hanging out with their friends. In most cases, these carefree summertime activities are simply a fun way of blowing off steam and relaxing before school resumes in the fall.

For kids spending their time immersed in Jewish summer experiences, however, this summer has much more serious potential. As anyone who’s spent a summer at Jewish camp or trekked through Israel on a summer teen-tour can tell you, these kinds of experiences provide concrete, memorable, spiritual building-blocks upon which our children can construct enduring Jewish identities that will last the rest of their lives.

This truth is inspiring to all of us who work with Jewish youth and witness their enthusiasm first-hand. Moreover, it compels all of us to think about what the success of Jewish summer experiences can teach us about religious life here at Temple. As I see it, there are three main reasons that Jewish summers are so influential in helping ensure that Jewish kids remain firmly on the path to remaining Jewish adults – each of which can inspire those of us past the age of summer camping to enrich our Jewish lives as well:
Camp is immersive. More than anything else, Jewish summer experiences are successful because they help kids erase the boundaries around their Jewish lives. One of the best things kids learn at camp, or on trips to Israel, is that their Judaism is not something to be turned on when arriving at Temple and shut off when leaving. At Jewish summer camp, spirituality suffuses the camper’s whole life – from the dining hall to the swimming pool to the cabins – and immersive spirituality helps build Jews who are comfortable with themselves, their beliefs, and their tradition.
Camp is demanding. A successful Jewish summer makes demands on the whole child: body, mind, and spirit. It encourages him to grow in bold and constructive new ways. He is challenged to play new sports, forge relationships with new people, and build his Jewish identity by exploring concepts, questions, and ideas which insist that he take seriously his Jewishness and its demands.
Camp is peer-led. Jewish summer camps provide a wonderful model for the structure of all sustainable Jewish communities because virtually everyone at camp is engaged in the process of informal learning. Those who have completed a dozen summers as campers return as counselors and role models to younger kids; Israel tour buses are staffed by young adults whose enthusiasm as former participants helps buoy the spirits of first-time travelers. Counselors, lifeguards, songleaders, and clergy – everyone pitches in to contribute to the program’s goals, and so their participants learn that Jews are expected to be contributors to their communities as well as its beneficiaries.

Researchers of Jewish sociology all agree: one of the best ways to ensure that our kids will go on to create Jewish families of their own is to send them to Jewish summer camps and on teen-tours of Israel. But the benefits of Jewish summers extend far beyond the campfires and the bunk beds.

All Jewish communities can be enriched by what camp has to teach us. No matter how old we are, we can stand to grow as individuals when we refuse to sequester our Jewish lives from the rest of our existence. We can benefit from making ever more rigorous demands on ourselves. And we can gain fulfillment by upholding our obligation to contribute our presence and our energies as leaders and teachers in the communities that nurtured us.

The benefits of having our children spend their summers in Jewish settings are clear. We see them in the sociologists’ data and we hear about them in breathless anecdotes from our kids themselves. The positive results of these summers remain long after the school year is underway and the last of the sunburn has faded. And if we are wise custodians of their Jewish communities back home, we will continue to refine the gifts and the goals of our congregation to reflect the richness and the enduring value of a summer well spent.