More in ‘summer camp’

An Israeli sociologist has published a study based on surveys he conducted with more than 700 kids at Jewish summer camps across the United States. Campers were presented with a list of 132 symbols—a range incluiding a talis, the Talmud, a Star of David, the Holocaust, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen—and asked how much each one ...

This week’s parasha is as heartbreaking as anything in literature. It’s Moses’s farewell speech. Weary and elegiac, the dying leader, done retelling the past, speaks to his people about the future.

Forget bug juice, ball games, and dips in the lake: the new trend in summer camps, in Israel at least, is settlement-building. “Youth for the Land of Israel,” a new non-profit affiliated with the Yesha Council, the leadership organ of the West Bank settlers’ movement, is offering Israeli youth a summery stint at camp on ...

We were driving up the New York Thruway, my mother and I, wearing sunglasses, tanning our arms out the window, listening to Top 40 on the car radio. The song playing just then was called “In the Year 2525,” by a previously obscure duo named Zager and Evans, and it had risen to a hit more by lucky timing than tuneful hooks. In July 1969, as Apollo 11 hurtled toward the moon, the song prophesied the future of humankind. We were heading toward the summer camp where my sister Carol was being driven to despair. On this day, my mother would decide whether to accede to Carol’s pleas and bring her home.

• The editor of the New Jersey Jewish News makes a case for summer camp for adults. Is he vying for the newly-vacated CEO position at the Foundation for Jewish Camp? [NJJN]
• Moment magazine surveys the role of Jews in fashion, from Ralph Lauren to Levi Okunov. [Moment]
• A blogger links Michael Jackson’s funeral to ...

United Jewish Communities, the money-hemorrhaging umbrella organization for the North American Jewish federation system, announced yesterday that its new president and CEO will be Jerry Silverman, who since 2004 has headed the small but scrappy Foundation for Jewish Camp, a non-profit dedicated to bolstering the fortunes of North America’s Jewish summer overnight camps. In a ...

Filmmakers had been adapting Philip Roth’s work long before Isabel Coixet transformed The Dying Animal into Elegy. When Roth was just twenty-two, his story “The Contest for Aaron Gold,” published first in the Fall 1955 issue of Epoch and then in that year’s Best American Short Stories, was presented on television by Alfred Hitchcock. Roth ...

Like most summer camps, Sloane Crosley’s had its share of mix-and-match rituals, from early morning prayers to evening flag-foldings and late night bonfires. Some were meant to evoke Native American tradition, while others could be best described as patriotic, paganistic, or simply bizarre. It took a while for Crosley to realize the dominant stream in ...

With August upon us, it seems appropriate to tip our hats to a venerable summer institution: sleepaway camp. From our archive, we bring you Laurel Snyder’s interview with Eric Simonoff, who edited an anthology on the subject. From 1975 to 1985, Simonoff packed up his books, clothes, bug spray and bathing suit and headed to ...

Okay, pop quiz. It’s summer of 1963. What are the hottest pop songs on the charts? You’re probably thinking Elvis, Chubby Checker, Frankie Valli. Sure, they’re up there. But even hotter was a number rarely remembered these days, except around a campfire: “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.”
That’s not the only Allan Sherman song that enjoyed widespread ...