Content area
Full Text
Shira Dicker, a New York writer, attended all three Massad Camps -- in 1972 (Gimel), 1975-1976 (Aleph) and 1977-1978 (Beth).
Varda Sherman Lev recalls a heated argument her parents had during the spring of 1942.
"I don't want my kid going to one of your Zionist experiments!" she remembers her father yelling, responding to the news that his wife had enrolled their daughter in a fledgling Hebrew-speaking overnight summer camp, housed in a "decrepit farmhouse" in Monticello, N.Y.
Lev's mother ultimately convinced her husband that partaking in a "Zionist experiment" was a worthwhile experience and that summer became the first of 11 that Lev would spend at Massad Camps, the legendary trio of overnight camps that produced a generation of Jewish leaders. Last month, Lev, 70, journeyed to New York City from her home in Providence, R.I., to join some 600 other former campers and staff members at the 60th anniversary reunion of Camp Massad, the first American gathering of alumni since the camp shut its gates in 1981.
In the days before the Jewish state's creation, Massad, the brainchild of two idealistic Zionist, pioneering educators, Shlomo and Rivka Shulsinger (now Shulsinger-Shear Yashuv), was unique. Though Jewish sleepaway camps are now ubiquitous across America, Massad, with cooperation from the Histadrut Hanoar Haivri and the Jewish Education Committee of New York, was the first independent institution to offer a mixture of Zionism, traditional observance, learning, rootedness in the culture of Eastern European Judaism and, of course, Hebrew, said Rabbi Ramie Arian, executive director of the Foundation for Jewish Camping.
In the American imitation of life in Palestine and then Israel, the daily camp routine was conducted entirely in Hebrew, from the wake-up messages blasted over the ram kol (loud speaker), to the bunk chores, to the food on the tafrit (menu), to sports. Spirited daily davening and Shabbat singing enlivened the camp. There were informal classes led by stellar Jewish educators. There were weekly trips...