Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah...aka Why Send Your Kids to Sleep Away Camp?

In response to some weird questions about Jews and summer camp I discovered a history grounded in feminism, inclusion, and the radical idea that play is important.

Jul 12, 2023

This week I read an Instagram post from Ilana Wiles about sending her kids to overnight camp and phew! The comments!

Between the judgment disguised as curiosity (“Isnt this crazy expensive? And does it mean your kids are only together with other rich people kids?” [sic]) and references to “wealthy Jews” I felt a little uh, defensive. Because it’s not the first time I’ve seen this.

That’s okay! Ask questions! I love finding answers.

So let’s learn a little bit together today, thanks to my love of nerdy research, historical data, and, well, summer camp.

I went to sleep away camp. My parents went to sleep away camp. Our kids go to sleep away camp and three out of the four of them are there right now as a camper, a CIT and a senior counselor.

It’s become the most special place in the world for them, no exaggeration.

I’m going to answer a few questions you may have about overnight camps (“is it really like Parent Trap?”) and then we’ll dive into a brief history of how summer camps got started, why they’re so big in the northeast, and the historical intersection with Judaism that I only just learned today.

Sleep Away Camp FAQ, Fun-Style

Why do kids go to sleep away camp in the first place? My kid would hate it!

Some kids live in cities with no backyards or pools. Some kids don’t have grandparents with big houses to visit, or relatives in other countries. Some kids don’t have summer homes. Some kids have friends who are all away for the summer. Some kids have single parents or work-out-of-the-house parents who don’t get two or three months of paid vacation (looking at you wistfully, Europe), and those kids need something to do over the summer besides playing video games. Some kids have crappy home lives and need a break. And some kids want to hone a passion — art, theater, music, basketball, baseball, computer coding, gymnastics, or important skills they’re not gaining enough in school.

Maybe your kid would hate it! Or…maybe they would love it.

And just maybe it’s that second part that’s most scary to parents.

What do kids get from sleep away camp?

Kids like the independence, the activities (friendship bracelets never get old), the ability for extraordinary personal growth (wait, she’s making her bed without being asked?), the sense of community and peer support, the constant attention of cool older teens and young adult counselors, the chance to meet kids who are more like them — or more different from everyone back in school — the chance to rock climb or hike or kayak or swim in a lake every day.

Even the break from technology.

You know how we’re always telling kids to put their phones down and get outside? Overnight camp is great for that!

(I write this, as I am within arm’s reach of my youngest daughter’s phone, where it has sat, miraculously untouched, for the past 10 days.)

Plus, many kids enjoy being able to spend a week or two or six out of the year with their best friends in the world. Crazy, I know.

Do you miss them?

“camp is fun” = the first and only letter I got home from Sage her first one-week stay at overnight camp. It’s my favorite.

Of course we miss them! We race to the mailbox every day eagerly hoping for a letter that’s more than “camp is fun” (see above).

We send little care packages. We check the daily uploaded photo dumps that are wryly called “proof of life photos,” to find candids of our kids swimming in the lake, hugging friends, ziplining, dressing up for a sketch show, singing with their tables at mealtime, competing in camp games, or scorching their mess kit pans over an open campfire, which is why I begrudgingly have to buy a new one every year.

There’s no “shipping off our kids.” That’s really very cynical and judgmental.

I mean, it’s hard to let them go, but it’s a joy and a privilege that I can let them grow through an experience that’s meaningful and fulfilling for them.

The way I see it, sometimes I give up “my time” with my kids, because it’s their time too.

Is sleep away camp like Parent Trap? Meatballs? Little Darlings?

Uh…a little like Meatballs? I guess?

Is it like Friday the 13th?

Shhh…

Is it like Wet Hot American Summer?

Only the part about the talking can of vegetables.

Is overnight camp for Jews?

There is no one faith that has a lock on summer camp. And most camps aren’t faith-based, though there is a fascinating intersection with Jewish culture, which I will get into in a sec.

That said, 40% of US teens have been to some kind of religiously-affiliated summer camp, and that group is led by Mormons, followed by Conservative Protestant and then mainstream Protestant teens.

Jewish kids come in fourth.

We just may sing a lot louder in the dining halls.

Is overnight camp for rich people?

High-end private camps and specialty camps can be upwards of $2000 a week. Other camps start around $500/week. There are also discounts for extended stays, siblings, and scholarships/financial aid that can be very generous at a lot of places.

In some camps, that aid is built into the camp mission, which dates back to the very history of summer camps as a way to help more kids to spend summers out in nature in the days before air-conditioning. And child labor laws.

In fact, until they died, my Great Aunt Bea and my grandfather were actively involved a non-profit camp called Vacamas, which was built to help get working-class, lower-income kids out of the city. At the time, that meant mainly Jewish immigrants from the Lower East Side tenements.

Vacamas is still around, supporting a diverse group of campers who couldn’t ordinarily afford the experience; a basic scholarship can cut already fairly reasonable rates to $300/week or so.

My understanding is that there’s a plaque on a bench or an iconic tree or something that’s dedicated to my grandfather. I think it was a blog reader of mine who told me — if it was you, get in touch! I’d love to find that.

So I guess the idea of making an overnight camp experience available to all kids who want one is very much ingrained in my family.

My grandfather, in the 1956 issue of Broadcast Telecasting. Cool, right?

The brief but kinda fascinating history of summer camps.

Wow, did I love researching this.

The first overnight camp in 1861 was all about letting boys learn how to march, fight and live like Civil War soldiers, but I get the sense that the fishing and trapping and communing with nature turned out to be the popular part. Because that’s what stuck as we get into the later part of the 19th century.

Camps started springing up not to let kids play solider, but to play Henry Thoreau.

(Okay, not Thoreau really, but all the “pioneer” folk heroes are problematic and I don’t want to give them credit here.)

Summer camps were a response to more families moving to the industrialized, smoggy, sooty cities with the antidote of course being nature! Trees! Clean water! Mountains! Air you can breathe!

It was actually the social service agencies that urged low-income boys to head out to the country for the summer. And since their immigrants parents had generally come from less populated areas themselves, they weren’t too keen on the idea of their kids playing in the hot, dirty streets all summer—or whatever else they might be doing in the streets.

So, camp it was.

Ragpickers on Baxter Street, 18. Photo by Jacob Riis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1892, Camp Arey became the first to allow girls, presumably so they could do their sewing outside.

In 1902, a very cool private school teacher named Laura Mattoon noticed the gender discrepancy of camp activities and was like, yo! What about the girls doing nature-y adventure-y stuff too? This is some BS here! So she founded the first private camp for girls in scenic and extremely woodsy New Hampshire. While most people were like uh, nature stuff is not for delicate lady-people, Laura was all, oh yeah? Get a load of this. Voila: She created bloomer-type garments just for the outdoors so girls could actually climb rocks and stuff.

Soon, all kinds of organizations started jumping on the overnight camp bandwagon. YMCAs, for one. 4H. Church groups. Also, Boy Scout (and eventually Girl Scout) camps sprung up and honestly I can never stop thinking about having to spend summer as a kid wearing a tie and full uniform but that’s how it was.

At the same time, a few hundred miles south in Cold Spring, NY, a camp opened called Surprise Lake. The name aside — do you really want to be surprised by something in a lake if you’re from the city? — Surprise Lake was a big deal. That’s because it was specifically built for lower-income Jewish boys from Lower East Side tenements.

Eventually, Eddie Cantor went there. (The youngs can look him up.) Neil Diamond went there. Jerry Stiller. Neil Simon. Walter Matthau. Even Gene Simmons, though I imagine probably not in full makeup.

At the turn of the century, there was a couple named Charlotte and Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick who were big advocates of play as therapy, and are pretty much credited as the founders of physical education—something that remains an actual important thing we all believe kids need in their lives, right? The Glucks scooted up to Maine and in 1906 established the White Mountain Camp for Boys. They later bought the adjoining land to create the Sebago-Wohelo Camp for Girls. By 1911 they started “Camp Fire for girls,” and wait…

is that set of words clicking for you?

Those 500 campers at Camp Fire became the very first Camp Fire Girls. (Though I must add the values were still kind of based in these patriarchal notions of women and hearth and family as means of supporting the menfolk, just to be fair.)

My own kids’ summer happy place started as a Camp Fire Girl camp in 1918, and they still talk about wohelo there, which as I recently learned, is not an appropriated Native word (there’s a lot of that in summer camp traditions, unfortunately), but a portmanteau of Work-Health-Love. So the tradition lives on even as the activities, the diversity, and the uniforms have evolved.

(There are no uniforms.)

My kids’ camp in 1920. Photo by Jessie Tarbox Beals, the first published female photojournalist in the US. Public domain.

Now back to the Jews and sleep away camp connection:

I have often seen people, particularly outside of NYC, say things like “sleep away camp is a Jewish thing.” Even Jews make jokes about how we’re all basically 2-degrees from each other through summer camp.

Oh you went to Winaukee? Do you know…

I started wondering whether there’s any truth to it, or whether it’s one of those things where one group is disproportionately associated with some activity or tradition. Here’s what I found.

In the early 20th century, just as camps were gaining popularity, anti-semitism was becoming prevalent in the US, because of course it was.

Jewish overnight camps started springing up as places that Jewish kids could assimilate and learn to be more “American,” what with all the archery and s’mores making.

Soon, camps evolved to be places with intentional Jewish programming. This way, campers weren’t expected to assimilate, but to take a break from assimilation. In other words, Jewish kids could openly be Jewish, sing Jewish songs, and generally not worry about being beaten up in their local playgrounds for being Jewish. At least for a few weeks each summer.

(Not surprisingly, during the exact same period, Camp Atwater was founded in Massachusetts by Reverend Dr. William DeBerry as the first sleep away camp expressly for Black kids. It’s still thriving today and the story is amazing.)

Soon, camps of all kinds were popping up like crazy, and in 1923, Jewish union activists founded Camp Kinderland to help promote responsibility around social justice and peace as an imperative of Jewishness. And hey, happy centennial, Kinderland! There’s a documentary about them called Commie Camp (original title: Not Another Jesus Camp) and alumni include notable not-commies like Marky Ramone and Marissa Tomei.

In fact, most Jewish camps were grounded in community and philanthropy as their core principles.

Then, WWII came.

By 1940, there was understandable urgency to build more Jewish overnight camps, stemming from the concern that Americanized Jews wouldn’t be able to keep cultural traditions alive. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction to the genocide of 6mm of the world’s 16.6mm Jewish people. (As an aside, the Jewish population has not yet recovered those numbers.)

The boom in Jewish-founded camps continued for a good 20 years. Then…it kind of stopped.

In the 70s, first-wave feminism hit. More moms entered a workplace that’s still pretty crappy with paid time off. Even we Gen X latchkey kids needed something to do besides roam the streets alone every day, playing flashlight tag until our parents heard the ad that reminded them it was 10PM and we weren’t home yet.

There’s more, but you know, this is supposed to be short. So smash cut to today.

Overnight camps have boomed for all kinds of kids, all over the country. I went to a gymnastics camp for four years and an all-girls camp in New Hampshire for two years. I knew kids who went to tennis camps down in Florida, or Outward Bound experiences in Colorado (those always terrified me). But there’s still that New York metro area urban-to-rural imperative that’s cemented into the industry’s heritage.

Which goes back to the original question: Is sending your kids away to camp “a Jewish thing?”

The ACA lists 2,340 overnight camps in the country right now.

Only 67 of those have any kind of Jewish affiliation. 467 other faith-based camps run gamut from Atheist/Humanist to Greek Orthodox to Hindu.

That leaves 1,784 overnight camps with no religious affiliation at all.

Do you have any amazing camp memories? Questions about camp? Letters that are funnier than Sage’s CAMP IS FUN? Stuff I definitely got wrong here or history you’d like to add? Shoot me a comment!

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