Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah ... Oy veh! Why am I here at camp for so long?

June 19, 2009 6:35 PM

So why is it that we Jews send our children to sleep-away camp for so long (4 weeks - 8 weeks)?

My wife, who is not Jewish, was always amazed at the fact that my summer camp experiences were always 8 weeks away from home. For me, it was perfectly normal. Of course, so was having camp counselors who sang songs about how much they missed eating bacon. Tonight she came home, and after telling me about a colleague of hers from work who is sending his kids away to a (Jewish) summer camp for a month, she asked me, "Why exactly do Jews send their kids away to summer camp for so long? Is it a tradition? How long has it been going on for?"

Frankly, I had no good answer. All of my peers, when I was growing up, went away for the summer, as did I. My wife, on the other hand, knows only of day-camps and occasionally a one-week sleep-away type thing (organized, I'm sure, by their church).

As you can tell, from this question being posted on Shabbot (with me typing, and not my wife), I'm hardly what you'd call orthodox. As such, I simply may have missed the explanation along the way. Any ideas? Is her observation, in fact, accurate? Is sending kids away for 4 or 6 or 8 weeks during the summer primarily a Jewish thing?

posted by scblackman to society & culture (86 comments total)

Where did you grow up?
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 6:39 PM on June 19

I grew up in a town that was well-populated with Jewish kids (Central NJ), and I can only think of one other kid who went to sleep away camp, for two weeks only. I was the odd one out when I went to sleep away camp every summer, and I am not Jewish.
posted by smalls at 6:41 PM on June 19

I grew up in central NJ (East Brunswick) ... in the late 70s/early 80s. Most of my friends from elementary school and middle school went away.
posted by scblackman at 6:44 PM on June 19

Could it simply be a result of resources? Maybe her family couldn't afford to send her away for extended periods and yours could?
posted by onhazier at 6:46 PM on June 19

Yeah, I don't think this is a Jewish thing. I know several non-Jewish people who spent summers at non-denominational camps.

Of course, I do think Jews make an effort to have summer programs for kids so they can be in a totally Jewish environment. The Jewish camp I went to outside Pittsburgh started as a local thing, but when my little sister was a counselor, kids were coming from as far away as California--so I think Jewish camps are very conscious of providing that kind of atmosphere for kids who may not get to experience that during the regular school year.
posted by leesh at 6:51 PM on June 19

Is sending kids away for 4 or 6 or 8 weeks during the summer primarily a Jewish thing?

No, but it's sort of a primarily affluent thing.
posted by thisjax at 6:53 PM on June 19 [13 favorites has favorites]

I'm not Jewish, and I was sent away for 8 weeks as a kid. And, moreover, I was sent to a YMCA camp, with a lot of gentile kids there for 8 weeks (or kids who were at that camp for 4 weeks and then to lacrosse camp or basketball camp or whatever for the rest of the summer).

I would have to agree that this is surely a matter of financial resources (if anything) rather than being Jewish.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 6:53 PM on June 19

Yeah, it's not a Jewish thing, it's a wealthy thing.

I'm Jewish and I never went to sleepaway camp, although I think that was primarily because I didn't want to go.
posted by amro at 6:55 PM on June 19

Before I get jumped on, I shouldn't have said "wealthy." Make that "wealth."
posted by amro at 6:56 PM on June 19

Growing up in Texas, most of the people I knew who went to summer camp for more than a couple of weeks at a time were Jewish. I have no clue why or what it means, but I know what your wife is talking about. At least in my world, it wasn't a lack of resources - it just seemed totally foreign to me that parents would send their children away for months at a time.
Is your wife from the northeast? Maybe it's partly a regional issue as well as being a religious one.
posted by katemonster at 6:58 PM on June 19

I was going to say exactly what katemonster said. I'm from Texas, in my mid-20s and my Jewish friends went away to summer camp for way longer than I ever did (I only went to sleep away camp once ever). But they had more money than my family and a lot of my other friends' and their parents were generally from the north. So it could be a money thing or a regional thing.

Another thing I thought of: do the temples subsidize the camp costs at all? If so, it could be that the other faiths don't put as many resources toward sending the children to camps.
posted by ishotjr at 7:02 PM on June 19

Oh, I should correct that. The other ones that went to long camps were Baptist. Maybe it is a thing about certain churches putting more emphasis on summer camps for kids?
posted by ishotjr at 7:03 PM on June 19

Two weeks every summer for me. Catholic. (I escaped in the Devil's canoe.)
posted by rokusan at 7:07 PM on June 19

I also went to a YMCA camp (Athens Y, Tallulah Falls GA). Except for the very youngest kids, sessions were 4 weeks long. Two such sessions per summer. You could stay for both sessions if you wanted to, but if you were 8 or over the least you could sign up for was 4 weeks.
posted by jfuller at 7:08 PM on June 19

I spent several summers at camp, and while I only spent one or two weeks there, there were always a few campers who spent several weeks or even the whole summer there. This was at a Protestant (mainly Episcopalian) camp, so it was definitely not a strictly Jewish phenomenon. In the northeast the whole Catskills social scene in the mid-20th century may have helped form a Jewish/summer camp relationship for some people.
posted by TedW at 7:10 PM on June 19

While part of it certainly is an affluence thing rather than a Jewish thing (I knew tons of non-Jews growing up who went to summer-long sleepaway camps), I also think it's an urban thing - ie, get the kid out of the city and let `em experience nature, the woods, swimming, sports, etc. And I'd also be willing to bet that most Jews in the US live in urban or suburban areas.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 7:14 PM on June 19 [2 favorites has favorites]

Nthing the affluence thing, but I also think this entry re: the Borscht Belt explains it a bit too. Historically sometimes the whole family except for Dad would go off to the Catskills to escape the summer city heat, while Dad remained in the city working. I'll bet in more modern times, when *both* Dad and Mom worked, this translated into sending the kids away for an extended period during summer.
posted by chez shoes at 7:21 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

I wouldn't say it's a Jewish thing- I'd say it's predominantly a wealth thing.
The well-to-do kids in my town would go off to sailing camp or whatnot for a month or two, coming back with tans and loads of fun stories, and the poor kids... wouldn't. I was green with envy at the time.

Poor kids get to go to camp too, it turns out, but not the fun kind.
When I was fourteen, my parents and I finally found a month-long 'outdoor leadership' program we could afford. The row of beat-up Trans Ams at check-in should have tipped us off: Most of the kids there seemed to have been recommended by Human Services, and "outdoor leadership" meant stacking firewood while chanting Marine-style songs and being yelled at by angry Italian ladies wearing huge crosses around their necks. There was a very Christian vibe to the whole operation and it seemed to be more centered on 'straightening kids out' than having fun- so poor kids might have been to camp and just not want to talk about it.
posted by dunkadunc at 7:21 PM on June 19

I don't know about being a Jewish thing, but it's definitely a Russian thing. Maybe a Russian/Jewish thing? Russian families like to send their kids away for at least 3 weeks every summer. And it doesn't have much to do with wealth - my parents never had $$ when I was a kid, but somehow they found organizations (probably Jewish ones) that would help pay the cost of sleep away camp.
posted by KateHasQuestions at 7:25 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Growing up, I knew only one eight-weeker and she and her mother were constantly at each other's throats, so, I figured that explained that. But yes, as an adult I've noticed that it's something that wealthier families do regardless of creed or (lack or presence of) familial animosity.
posted by moxiedoll at 7:27 PM on June 19

I don't know. In the Northeastern US, a common stereotype is that "only Jewish people send their kids to sleepaway camp." That's what my parents told us whenever we mentioned it. All the Jewish people I know, except for my husband, went to camp for six or eight weeks every summer.

There was a lot of energy in the Jewish philanthropic community around establishing Jewish summer camps in the 1920s, so that might be part of it--many of the New England camps were funded by/had investments from Jewish philanthropies in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, along the idea that CCo'Do'D expressed: I also think it's an urban thing - ie, get the kid out of the city and let `em experience nature, the woods, swimming, sports, etc. As the need for burial associations waned, and there was more emphasis on creating a secular Jewish identity in the US, the charitable groups turned (among other things) to helping establish these summer camps.

Even today, a lot of Jewish summer camps are non-profit institutions, and there are a couple of non-profit umbrella organizations of which the largest is the Foundation for Jewish Camp must resist Harvey Fierstein joke.

Since relatively fewer non-religiously-identified camps are non-profit institutions, it may be that it's just too expensive for too many families for them to market their camping experiences in six to eight week chunks?
posted by Sidhedevil at 7:31 PM on June 19 [4 favorites has favorites]

On the flip side, a co-worker's wife is the executive director of a fairly pricy and prestigious sleep away camp here in Maine. While a lot of her girls are from Boston and NY, she doesn't note any particular trend in terms of the religious background of her campers.
posted by anastasiav at 7:35 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

I grew up going to summer camp. 99% of my camp was jewish. In fact, I went when I was 6 (yes six) years old for 8 weeks. I would consider my youth as in the top part of middle class. Wealthy I was not. I have asked my parents whey they sent me away for 10 straight summers starting at 6 and the answer they gave me was that it was as simple as they thought I would enjoy playing sports all day, swimming and camping out and hiking. Oy vey were they right. I also think that they did not want to be my entertainment for the summer. Being at home would have required driving me places, and all other sorts of logistical issues that they wanted a vacation from too. I played ice hockey when not in camp and they drove me to rinks 45 minutes away on weekday mornings to play at 6:00 am. My guess is that they wanted a break too. The other rumour/joke was that the parents had to send us away because they needed someone to watch out for us when they traveled to europe for the several weeks.

For what its worth, I think spending 8 weeks away from home really helped me become independent at a much younger age than many of my peers. Going away 500 miles to college was a no brainer for me, but I knew plenty of kids who were homesick or who only wanted to stay near home for college.

I read it a while ago, but Michael Eisner of Disney fame wrote a book about summer camp (his) that may help to answer some of the question. I think it was called "Camp" cleverly enough.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 7:39 PM on June 19

I think it's a resources + tradition thing. 7 weeks at summer camp is not cheap; it runs 10K per camper per summer these days at the camp I went to as a kid. I think families are more likey to make this a priority if the parents went and had a positive experience.

FWIW, I went to an affluent NYC school that was about 70% Jewish but we pretty much all went to summer camp. Only about 10% of us went to specifically Jewish summer camps; most were mixed, but leaning more one way than the other.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:45 PM on June 19

I grew up white protestant, and spent one week at Scout Camp, one week camping with Scouts (different! No activities or mess hall, just you and your scout buddies trying to paddle your ass back to civilization fifty miles up-river), one week at Church Camp (Episcopalian, so it was the "god loves everyone nonjudgmentally" sort of Church Camp) and one week of day-camp. This was done for social reasons to this day I really don't understand or accept. I loved the Scouting camp experiences, and at the time I loved the other camps, too... but I see now I was being used as a "trophy kid" that my folks showed off to their social peers. "Oh, Little Slappy goes to Church Camp and Day Camp, just like all of the other children of Quality hereabouts!" They wouldn't brag about the scout camp, because the local Boy Scout troop (mine) was a bunch of weirdo hooligans who made too much noise and appeared to actually enjoy helping the old folks homes and the poor neighborhoods with their "service projects."

So, in the end, it's likely a game of social one-ups-man-ship peculiar to Jewish households... "Oh, my kids went to camp for four weeks!"- "That's nothing, my kids went for eight!" It's a Jewish thing, simply because Jewish families relate to each other in different ways than Episcopalians. Culture, not religion.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:46 PM on June 19

Growing up in Philadelphia, I never met a kid that went to summer camp. I always thought it was some kind of outdated thing that only kids in movies still did.

My ex is Jewish and definitely not affluent. She and her two sisters all went to summer camp.
posted by orme at 7:47 PM on June 19

Sidhedevil raises a good point - I wonder if there was a bit of the pioneering Zionist spirit behind some of these camps. Something along the lines of, "Well, we've been living in the cities for ages, but if we're going to found a Jewish state in Palestine, we'll have to make the desert bloom, so we best get started teaching our kids about the great outdoors." Maybe I'm stretching it too far (because obviously being made to swim in freezing lakes by sadistic counselors = great training for future farmers), though I'm also LOLing at the Harvey Fierstein reference.

And there's also this bit from Annie Hall:

Allison: I'm in the midst of doing my thesis.
Alvy Singer: On what?
Allison: Political commitment in twentieth century literature.
Alvy Singer: You, you, you're like New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the, the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right, and the really, y'know, strike-oriented kind of, red diaper, stop me before I make a complete imbecile of myself.
Allison: No, that was wonderful. I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.
Alvy Singer: Right, I'm a bigot, I know, but for the left.

posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 7:48 PM on June 19 [5 favorites has favorites]

"Oh, my kids went to camp for four weeks!"- "That's nothing, my kids went for eight!"

I've never heard this sentiment expressed, though perhaps it was once upon a time. Almost all the summer camp programs I knew of were eight weeks long. I actually twice went for just four weeks (because I didn't want to stay longer - I hated camp), but I was one of the only kids at both camps who did so.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 7:51 PM on June 19

My family is jewish and both my sister and I were sent to summer camp because my mom always loved it as a kid. We were not wealthy (the opposite of wealthy, to be exact), and if I recall correctly, summer camp was not very expensive back then (late 70's - mid 80's for my sister, early - late '80s for me).

My sister usually went to camp for 8 weeks, because she loved anything that involved being away from home (I think she had a secret desire to one of the characters on The Facts of Life). She never went to jewish camp or camp in the south, I believe the camps she went to were in the NE somewhere. She and I never went to the same camps.

I hated summer camp, hated it even before I went, yet I was sent year after year to camp after camp because my mother really wanted me to like it. I went to three camps, for a total of 6 years. The first two years, I went to jewish camp, Camp Coleman in Georgia, for 4 miserable weeks at a time. Almost every jewish kid I knew (grew up in Miami) went to Coleman or Blue Star.

Next, I went to Camp Highlander in NC for 2 years (not in a row). It wasn't a jewish camp and I didn't know any jewish people there, except the second year when I went with my jewish neighbor. I went for 3 weeks at a time, though my mom tried to encourage me to stay for 6, but I wasn't having it.

The other camp I went to, in between years at highlander, was camp chatooga (sp?) in SC. This was very much not a jewish camp. They had sunday chapel type services and everything. I didn't know a single jewish person there.

Most of the kids I knew growing up, jewish or not, went to summer camp, and one week camps was almost unheard of. I don't think it's just a jewish thing. I grew up in south florida and, like I said, it was very common. To the extent of having camp fairs (like a trade show geared toward parents) at the convention centers.
posted by necessitas at 8:08 PM on June 19

I'm Jewish, and I went to nondenominational day camp from birth (practically) until I was eight, then I went away for the summer for four weeks. When I was nine, I went away for eight.

My camp was not Jewish per se, but as the faq states:

Most of the campers and staff are Jewish, but many are not. Tamakwa is not a religious camp and has no affiliation with any synagogue, church, or agency. We are one big happy family where everyone feels perfectly at home. Traditionally, we say grace at meals and have a liberal Friday night Sabbath observance. Friday night services, as we call them, are of a creative non-worship nature... usually reflecting on a particular theme such as friendship, nature, cooperation, etc. It's our "time-out" from the busy week to have a quiet evening. The nicest part about these contemplative services is the camp family assembling together on our "Slope" overlooking the spectacular view of our South Tea Lake.
posted by pinky at 8:09 PM on June 19

Hmmmm....I had a vague sense that there was a big Teddy Roosevelt let's make men from boys in the fresh air thing going on in the 20s, but the only thing I could quickly google up to confirm that was this link from a PBS kids show. It's actually pretty informative, though. Turns out camps went back a little earlier than I thought --- starting in the 1880s --- but they were mostly an East Coast, get the kids out of the city and into the New Hampshire woods thing. Why Jewish seems to be, regrettably, the same reason a lot of vacation resorts and so forth were sectarian --- rampant anti-Semitism. There were segregated camps for every ethnic and religious group. Now it's more mixed. But it seems, in as much as the summer camp thing is a custom of the moderately well to do, of urban parents, and of East Coaters, the more likely Jews are to fall into those categories the more you'd expect them to pick up the camp habit.
posted by Diablevert at 8:15 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm no expert but have read Will Eisner's "A Contract With God".

One of the chapters is called "Cookalein" and Like chez shoes says, Mom and the kids leave the hot, New York tenement apartments for the summer and the Dad visits them on weekends. In the story it made clear that a cookalien rented rooms with a shared kitchen and was not an affluent resort.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:20 PM on June 19

I suppose that should read...

I'm not Jewish but have read Will Eisner's "A Contract With God".
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:22 PM on June 19

Halfie-Jew who didn't go to much summer camp chiming in to vote that it has to do with socialist, Zionist, and collectivist traditions in our culture (these traditions are obviously distinct, but happen to overlap when your average Jewish parent is deciding about camp) and the history of camp being intentionally part of both religious and atheist (but culturally Jewish) political education .

I think the affluence thing isn't exactly correct: non-Jewish wealthy people do not necessarily send their kids to camp for months at a time, however, I don't think poor Jewish kids spend a lot of time at camp, at least kids of my generation and later. So perhaps a this point it does have to do with a nexus of financial security and Jewishness, although like I said, I think the tradition has a lot more to do with other cultural issues.
posted by serazin at 8:23 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

I grew up in North Texas and went every summer to Camp Arrowhead in Glen Rose for Nazarene church camp. It was sleep-away but only one-week long running Sunday thru Friday. I didn't know anyone who went to camp any longer than that.
posted by mds35 at 8:25 PM on June 19

I can't really answer the question specifically, but one thing that hasn't really been talked about here is the opportunities for learning about Jewish religion and culture that a specifically Jewish camp provides. I was raised Jewish but I went to the local YMCA camp that was only one county away and had only week-long sessions. However, some family friends that grew up in a much more observant household went to a Jewish camp that was a few states away. I remember that after they started going to camp we would be at services or Hebrew school or some holiday function at home and they would seem to know how to read or sing all these prayers and songs that I had never heard of. When I asked how they knew all this stuff the answer was always, "camp." I think they learned way more about certain practices in Judaism through a few weeks at camp than we were ever able to pick up from years of going to the same Sunday school.

However, I don't really remember how long they went to camp. I don't think it was more than two or three weeks a summer but it has been a long time (I do remember it was longer than my YMCA sessions but that made sense to my ten year old self since they had to travel so much further). While I can't really speak to the length of a camp stay, I do think the religious/cultural opportunities of a Jewish camp could be a factor in Jewish families choosing to send their children to camp at all.
posted by horses, of courses at 8:44 PM on June 19

horses, of course, that was not my experience at jewish camp. Aside from the hamotzi (sp?) before meals and some hippy-dippy songs that passed for a friday night service, there was nothing jewish but the people. Oh, and what would be called color war at a non-jewish camp was called something in hebrew, I can't remember what it was called.
posted by necessitas at 8:53 PM on June 19

Being able to go to camp is partially an affluence thing, but I went to music camps -- became a much better orchestral violinist that way.

I think a big motivator behind Jewish summer camps is to have Jewish experiences. Most people cannot afford Jewish schooling year round, or don't have one available in their area. The social and cultural offerings at synagogues vary and can be pretty limited. What summer camps then offer is a more in-depth Jewish experience. Learn some Hebrew, learn lots of prayers, learn lots of culture.

Admittedly I thought many of my friends who went mostly went for the social aspect, but the camps do offer a deeper and more intensive Jewish lifestyle exposure than what most youth can get from their local synagogue and community.
posted by davidnc at 8:54 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

Alvy Singer: You, you, you're like New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the, the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right, and the really, y'know, strike-oriented kind of, red diaper, stop me before I make a complete imbecile of myself.

I think that's a reference to something really specific: Camp Kinderland, which is a Jewish, leftist summer camp in Massachusetts. It's a huge institution for the New York red diaper baby set, but it's a pretty different place than, say, Camp Ramah. What's interesting is that Jewish summer camps exist clear across the religious and ideological spectrum. You've got Kinderland for the commies, but there's also Ramah for the conservative (religiously, and my sense is to some extent politically) kids.

I don't know if Jewish people are more likely to send their kids to camp in general, but I think that Jewish summer camps are part of a big network of institutions that are designed to instill a sense of Jewishness in kids and teenagers. Basically, American Jewish kids are pretty assimilated. Most American Jewish kids go to public schools or secular private schools, rather than yeshivas or Jewish day schools, and they don't necessarily hang out in exclusively or heavily-Jewish peer groups. Summer camps, youth groups, Hillels and the like are meant to make sure that Jewish teenagers and college students have a Jewish peer group and a strong sense of Jewish identity. Apparently there are studies that have shown that Jews who went to Jewish camp are more involved in the Jewish community than those who didn't, regardless of how observant or Jewishly-involved their parents were. Since American Jews are perennially freaking out about the idea that we're going to intermarry, assimilate, and fade away, the Jewish community has put a lot of resources into institutions that are seen to convince young people to value their Jewishness and continue to be involved in the Jewish community.
posted by craichead at 8:56 PM on June 19 [4 favorites has favorites]

The "This American Life" episode on camp really opened my eyes to the east coast, extended camp scene. I've only been to week long scout camps in the Rocky Mountain West, and there were no girls. And mild hazing. And much posturing with other troops.
posted by mecran01 at 9:01 PM on June 19

Thanks for that detail, craichead. I had never heard of Camp Kinderland, and I always assumed that "political" camps were a more widespread phenomenon back in the day simply because Woody Allen used the plural word "camps" in that line. Maybe I need to stop getting my cultural history from movies. :)
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 9:26 PM on June 19

Haha I was not Jewish but went to a WI 8-week summer camp overwhelmingly populated with Chicago suburban Jews. All I really recall about the juxtaposition was being bummed out my parents didn't have Volvo's with wipers on the headlights like the Chi town folk.
posted by ShadePlant at 10:21 PM on June 19

I don't think Kinderland was the only radical summer camp, but it's the only explicitly-Jewish radical summer camp that I know of. (Of course, I know of it because my mom's cousins went there. There could have been other ones that I don't know about because nobody in my family attended them.) Also, Kinderland is still around, whereas I think all the other ones have either closed or been depoliticized. Anyway, here's a review of two books about red diaper babies, including one about radical summer camps. The author of the book suggests that communists started summer camps because of their pedagogical theories about proper communist child development, and the reviewer suggests that the children of radicals valued the camps because at camp they didn't have to hide or be embarrassed about their parents' political convictions. That jibes with what my mom's cousin has said. On the other hand, she didn't exactly have a typical Jewish-American childhood, so I'm not sure how much of the Jewish summer camp phenomenon can be explained by the lefty camps like Kinderland.
posted by craichead at 10:26 PM on June 19 [1 favorite has favorites]

mecran01: The "This American Life" episode on camp really opened my eyes to the east coast, extended camp scene.

The fact that everyone else who didn't grow up in America doesn't know all about summer camp is fascinating to me. Do you have a link to that This American Life?

Also, FWIW, loads of people over here in Europe are very familiar with the extended US summer camp experience because it's pretty easy to get a visa to be a camp counsellor and a lot of people sort of 18 - 23 ish do just that. This came up in conversation here and I said something like "It must have been interesting to suddenly be with more Jewish people in one place than you'd ever seen in your life" and all I got were completely blank stares. So I'm wondering if there's some "summer camp is for Jewish people" confirmation bias going on among MeFites in this thread.

Ireland is like 97% Catholic. We're not so much rocking the matzoh here.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:38 PM on June 19

I went to summer camps from age 2, starting with the day care/day camp at the local JCC, and then to 4-week and 8-week camps.

I'm not Jewish. (I was told that I was sent to the JCC because it had swimming lessons) I would have never thought of camp as being a "Jewish thing." Sure, there were a lot of Jewish kids at Interlochen, but I more assumed that it was just the Farmington Hills kids all going to Interlochen. People from elsewhere were a huge mix.
posted by that girl at 10:38 PM on June 19

It's so you have more time to flirt! You can't expect people to start making Jewish babies unless they spend all summer together. Get with the program. (Westcoast Jewcamp kid! Go Camp Ramah.) They've even got a marriage section on their website. You can't get more - send your kids here and they'll marry Jewish - than that!
posted by Arbac at 11:00 PM on June 19

I grew up at an Episcopal camp in California (my parents were and still are the directors) which has only one-week sessions. (There used to be one two-week session.) It's not especially churchy but we don't get a lot of Jewish campers that I know of.

My impression is that the really long summer camp thing is more something that happens in the East. Out here there are some, but the majority will have one- or two-week sessions only.

I would agree also that it's partly a money thing--the long-term camps are generally private, while the Girl Scouts, YMCA, and church camps tend to have shorter sessions and less affluent campers.
posted by exceptinsects at 11:01 PM on June 19

It's not about money -- there are tons of scholarships to send poorer Jewish kids to camp.

Also a former Jewish camper (Camp Airy [East Coast] / Camp Tawonga [West Coast] ). I have no idea what the story is there, but that's like, our thing.

I'm with Arbac -- I'm halfway convinced it's a conspiracy of Jewish Moms to get us all used to hooking up with other Jews. Actually, I am totally convinced.

Want a hilarious trip down memory lane? Check out Camp Camp... Jesse did an interview with the author on The Sound of Young America. Totally hilarious stories and full of scary pictures.
posted by ph00dz at 11:18 PM on June 19 [2 favorites has favorites]

It's certainly not "a game of social one-ups-man-ship peculiar to Jewish households." Most of my mother's generation (all from Cleveland) went to Catholic camps (both day CYO camps and longer camps). In my generation, I think most of my cousins and both of my siblings have spent a fair amount of time at sleep-away camps. I spent time at a music/arts camp (focusing on the fiddle), a summer camp focused on German immersion, a biochemistry-related program at a local college, and the summer before my senior year at a (free!) program that allowed high schoolers to participate in science/math/engineering research at various Boston universities. My siblings have spent time at other programs (mostly art, drama, and music-based.) Most of my peers during middle school and high school spent at least some summers at summer camps, inlcuding YMCA camps, sport-focused camps, etc.

Our family was middle class, and we definitely needed scholarships (or programs that were free to qualified students, or a lot of advance saving) to attend most of the programs. We couldn't afford expensive academic programs like CTY or the programs related to the Midwest Talent Search. However, the emphasis was always on education, and my siblings and I went to camps in part to learn things we weren't learning much of at school.

Perhaps that's why you're seeing a variety of answers here: some camps (like Jewish or Catholic camps) are focused on a certain culture or religion, some focus on certain activities like music or science or other academic/intellectual stuff, some are more traditional outdoors-y summer camps, etc. If you're not exposed to many Catholic families, or families with overachieving kids who score high on the SATs in middle school, or whatever, you obviously won't know much about the camps aimed at those demographics. Since most of these camps require money, a high level of achievement at something, or a lot of persistance in finding financial aid, there's certainly a class aspect to it as well.

(Honestly, I thought that summer camps were a pretty universal American thing, though. I mean, even one of the early American Girl dolls has a big summer camp story. Despite having gone to a bunch of camps, I'd never heard the "summer camp is for Jews" or "summer camp is for people from the East Coast" stereotypes before this thread.)
posted by ubersturm at 11:23 PM on June 19

(Er, in short, I second DarlingBri in suggesting that there might be some confirmation bias here.)
posted by ubersturm at 11:30 PM on June 19

I went to Habonim Dror, the Zionist youth summer camp (it was more fun than it sounds) for a couple years. It wasn't strictly religious, though we did keep kosher, and there were usually songs after meals. It was quite a lot of fun. Four weeks in the summer. We weren't rich, but part of it, I think, was that I was growing up in Kalamazoo, and my mother wanted me to see that there were places where the group was actually predominately Jewish (at the time, there were about 200 Jewish families in a city of 90,000). I think, perhaps, that's a part of it, wanting your kids, who have already started to deal with the unpleasant realities of being in a minority group (due to being in school), to have positive experiences that are explicitly associated with the faith that makes them a minority. It always seemed to be a lot more fun to be Jewish after a summer at camp.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:30 AM on June 20

I am Jewish and grew up on the East Coast (North Carolina and southeastern Virginia). My sister and I went to JCC day camp for a few summers and we went on a few weekend shabbatons to Richmond, Baltimore, and DC, but we never went on any major month-long summer camp trips.

My dad grew up in South Jersey in the 50s and 60s and I've never heard him mention any summer camps like those either.

And this is the first I've ever heard of sleepaway camps being a Jewish thing. I always had Christian friends who went to "Bible Camp," but never heard of anything like that for Jewish kids.
posted by sellout at 12:39 AM on June 20

I always thought long camps were a back east thing. In California I grew up with plenty of middle-class Jewish friends but the only long camp they ever went to was CTY.

I went to Armenian camp growing up, which has basically the same explicit goal as any other diaspora-related or religious camp would - to meet lots of other Armenians. The sessions were one week long and there were usually three or four sessions a summer, but it was very unusual for kids to stay more than a week. We had chapel twice a day, religious lessons, some summers language lessons...one summer I spent my mornings being trained as a deacon. Another, I won a Bible Jeopardy tourney. None of this helped with my eventual atheism, but I met a lot of priests from the Armenian church and think they're all pretty good guys.

If I remember correctly, it cost about $400 a week to go to camp (I went for 7 years, all of which were in the 1990s). Churches sometimes offered scholarships that you could win through an essay contest. I got at least one free year of camp out of that.

I remember reading books as a kid about camps that went on for months and had, gasp, uniforms. I know Charlie Brown went to that camp where he wore that goofy hat. I never knew anyone who went to a camp with any sort of uniform and always wondered what that would be like.
posted by crinklebat at 1:08 AM on June 20

Another datapoint that it's not just a Jewish thing - I'm not Jewish and went to summer camp for 8 weeks every year from age 8 to 15. This camp wasn't explicitly a "Bible camp", but it was definitely majority Christian - chapel on Sundays, grace before meals, etc. While I wasn't especially wealthy, most of the kids who went to this camp were, of the WASP/preppy variety.
posted by Daily Alice at 3:28 AM on June 20

Sleep away camp? What kind of temple did you go to? I went to Camp Kee Tov in Berkeley. It was across the street from my house and yet they still wouldn't let me leave early!
posted by parmanparman at 3:30 AM on June 20

I'm Jewish, and I went to summer camp, but not Jewish summer camp. My family was maybe lower-middle middle class? Definitely not affluent. In fact, according to this, Camp Trywoodie, where I went until it closed, was only 75 bucks a week. (That seems awfully cheap! I'm going to have to ask my folks).

I think I went to camp because both of my parents worked and they wanted me to have a more fun experience than just going to day care or something.

As I got older, and after Trywoodie closed, I was allowed to choose my camp. I went to Stagedoor Manor one year, and then switched to a camp in Maine, can't remember the name.

I loved going to camp. It was free, and fun. It was great to spend time with the counselors. One of the counselors introduced me to the Eurythmics, which set me on the path to loving New Wave and punk music. I learned how to waterski.

As to the Jewish thing... I definitely think a lot of Jewish families did send their kids to camp, but totally not exclusively. I think the camp I went to in Maine there were not a lot of Jews, although Trywoodie there were, probably because it was in upstate New York.
posted by miss tea at 4:56 AM on June 20

This topic--Jewish people going to summer camp--is a running joke in the movie Wet Hot American Summer.

Also, here's a website for a book, Camp Camp, that came out a little while ago. Nostalgic camp links abound, and some of them touch on the OP's question.

posted by hpliferaft at 5:30 AM on June 20

Forgot the link - http://campcampbook.blogspot.com/
posted by hpliferaft at 5:31 AM on June 20

DarlingBri: Here's the link to This American Life, Episode 109: Notes On Camp.
posted by the littlest brussels sprout at 6:20 AM on June 20

I remember reading books as a kid about camps that went on for months and had, gasp, uniforms. I know Charlie Brown went to that camp where he wore that goofy hat. I never knew anyone who went to a camp with any sort of uniform and always wondered what that would be like.

Yeah, my entire concept of summer camp before the days when I actually went to one came from Molly Saves the Day, an American Girl book about a very goyish girl during the WWII era.

Jewish here, and only went to camp for a week or so at a time for maybe four summers growing up. We were poor, and I'm pretty positive that no one in my mother's orthodox Jewish family had ever done summer camp. There were a few girls at Girl Scout Camp whose parents shipped them off for the entire summer. Always seemed sad to me, but maybe it wasn't. None of them were Jewish.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:48 AM on June 20

I was a Protestant kid who went to summer camps, and day camps in the late 50's and early 60's, as well as spending a couple summers in that time in a very small Nebraska town with my maternal grandparents. One of the reasons parents, including Jewish parents, often tried to send their kids away in July and August was the prevalance of polio, typhoid and diptheria epidemics, even as late as 1958 to 1960. 50,000 to 60,000 American kids used to die each summer, due to these diseases, and it was thought by many that kids playing outdoors in crowded city parks, especially near public swimming pools, urban rivers and lakes and even fountains and fire hydrants, made for a quick and sure spread of these diseases. Any parents living in urban situations who could possibly afford it, sent their kids away for as much of July and August as they could.

I remember the summer of 1957 as a particularly fearful year for my parents, who had 2 kids in the target demographic for polio, and real fear of having them vaccinated in the wake of the contaminated Salk vaccine failures (Cutter vaccine incident). President Eisenhower had to get on the radio to calm down the country, and put his own credibility on the line to continue the vaccination program in the face of conflicting scientific advice. We finally were immunized that year, and again, later in the 60's with the oral Sabin vaccine.

But I visited a ward of kids in iron lungs at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, in 1959, who weren't as lucky. I'll never forget those rows of big steel tanks, each with a tiny head sticking out of one end...
posted by paulsc at 7:30 AM on June 20 [4 favorites has favorites]

I grew up in a Boston suburb in a town that was roughly 40% Jewish and 40% Catholic. The Jewish kids went to sleep-over camp all summer, the gentile klids did not. It had nothing to do with income level. As a non-Jew, I assumed that parents sent their kids to camp because that's what they had done when they were younger, and since most people continued going through high school (as a counselor or whatnot) I also suspected that there were some matchmaking hopes for some of the parents, like "oh, maybe my daughter will meet a nice Jewish boy at camp!"
posted by emd3737 at 7:34 AM on June 20

I grew up in the Midwest, and only attended an extremely nerdy and wonderful camp for "the gifted," but an old roommate of mine was a Jewish girl from Chicago, who called her long-term summer camp "Hippie Jewish Sex Camp." She said she learned an awful lot about an awful lot of things.

I have since cleared the term with a few other friends who had similar experiences, and who all laughed pretty heartily at the phrase.

And then I was jealous.
posted by lauranesson at 8:07 AM on June 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

Another datapoint: I grew up in north Houston, in the 80s, and practically nobody I knew went to summer camp, except in the Boy Scouts, and then it was usually only for a week at the most. Actually, scratch that, some of the Asian kids went to summer camps sponsored by what they all called "Chinese School", which from what I gathered was an after-school thing where they learned the Chinese language (I don't know if it was Mandarin or Cantonese or what, they only ever referred to it as "Chinese School"), various cultural stuff, etc. I don't think those lasted very long either, certainly not the whole summer. But us crackers and Jews and Mexicans, etc. never went to anything that wasn't Boy Scout-related.
posted by DecemberBoy at 8:08 AM on June 20

A whole movie committed to this conceit: Wet Hot American Summer.
posted by RajahKing at 9:02 AM on June 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

Yeah, yet again the PC gang is piling on.

Everyone is afraid to agree with you that it's a Jewish thing.

Most of those camps are run by Jewish people. It's not affluence or a keeping up with the Joneses thing - it's simply a community thing. I grew up in a mostly-Jewish town. We (Italian Catholic) rented a house at the beach for 4 weeks, all of my friends went to those camps you are mentioning.
posted by Zambrano at 9:38 AM on June 20

Eh. I'm not especially PC on the issue of Jewish culture. (And I'm not sure that pointing out that Jews are disproportionately wealthy is any more PC than saying that Jews are more likely to go to summer camp!) I just think it's complicated. It may partly be a Jewish preference for summer camp in general. It's partly related to socioeconomic factors, and Jews happen to be disproportionately located in regions and classes where summer camp is common. And it's partly related to the fact that Jewish summer camps are significant Jewish community institutions.

I don't remember there being a stereotype about Jews being more likely to go to summer camp when I was a kid, but I was really conscious that the first sleepaway camp I attended was really Jewish. It didn't have any official religious affiliation, but it definitely seemed to me that most of the kids there were Jewish. The second one was run by Quakers, though, and I was one of the few Jewish kids.
posted by craichead at 10:42 AM on June 20

craichead: Eh. I'm not especially PC on the issue of Jewish culture. (And I'm not sure that pointing out that Jews are disproportionately wealthy is any more PC than saying that Jews are more likely to go to summer camp!)

Yeah. No. We already had that conversation.
posted by DarlingBri at 11:10 AM on June 20

I suspect being sent away to camp for 4 - 8 weeks is a Jewish thing in the same way "ordering takeout for dinner" is a Jewish thing. And by that I mean not at all.

There are still camp ads in the New York Times magazine all the time and they don't seem to lean toward the chosen people. A lot of them now tout their "Community Service" which I guess is for kids who need that for their college application.

Went to camp. Went to stay with relatives for weeks at a time. Know others who went to camp. Perhaps I was surrounded by Jews at camp and didn't realize or have forgotten, but my memory is that camp was a-little-less-Latin but otherwise the same mix of girls as school, Camp Fire Girls, riding lessons, ballet class, etc.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 11:25 AM on June 20

Not Jewish; went to camp in the summers (ages 10-14 or so). This post led me to look for information on my summer camp (in the awesomely named Bat Cave, NC), only to discover that after 80 years as a summer camp, it'd been converted into a family vacation "camp". Sadness.

Has this happened to a lot of the old camps that were around in the 70s/80s/90s? At least in my section of suburbia, which would arguably be the source for a large number of Jewish and non-Jewish campers alike, there don't seem to be many kids that do the camp away thing anymore.
posted by elfgirl at 11:48 AM on June 20

See, LS, I suspect you're wrong. Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of people who go to plenty of different camps, but for whatever reason, summer camps are totally part of the Suburban Jewish experience. Pretty much all the Jewish people I know went to camp, which, given the relatively small number of camps on the east and west coasts, can lead to some really interesting revelations about crossed connections later in life.
posted by ph00dz at 11:53 AM on June 20

Data point: I grew up in beautiful Southwest Houston (close to Meyerland, although I'm a gentile) but my camp experiences in the 70s/early 80s were all gentile-oriented. I went away for a week at age 6 and after that for a month a year until I moved to England after my freshman year of high school. I was also a private-school attendee and most of my schoolmates and peers at other private schools, Jewish or otherwise, went to summer camp for 2-4 weeks every summer.

Camp Mystic, which was the go-to, see-and-be-seen camp among my school peers, was an explicitly Christian camp. I didn't go there, but I was a little heathen. Instead I ended up at an nondenominational educational camp in New Mexico that was a school for developmentally disabled children during the winter months. I vaguely remember chapel on Sundays as part of my camp experience, so definitely not Jewish.
posted by immlass at 12:13 PM on June 20

See, LS, I suspect you're wrong. Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of people who go to plenty of different camps, but for whatever reason, summer camps are totally part of the Suburban Jewish experience. Pretty much all the Jewish people I know went to camp, which, given the relatively small number of camps on the east and west coasts, can lead to some really interesting revelations about crossed connections later in life.

"Totally part of the Suburban Jewish experience" even though plenty of Jewish people (who likely grew up in the suburbs) have said that this was something they didn't experience? Really, most Jews I knew didn't do the whole-summer camp thing, including my wealthy more-Jewish-than-I cousins, who went to Hebrew school weekly; they did a week of girl scout day camp in the summers, and that was it.

I really think it's a shame that Diablevert's comment's been largely overlooked: "Why Jewish seems to be, regrettably, the same reason a lot of vacation resorts and so forth were sectarian --- rampant anti-Semitism. There were segregated camps for every ethnic and religious group. Now it's more mixed. But it seems, in as much as the summer camp thing is a custom of the moderately well to do, of urban parents, and of East Coaters, the more likely Jews are to fall into those categories the more you'd expect them to pick up the camp habit." Correlation is not causation, and all of that.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:59 PM on June 20

I really think it's a shame that Diablevert's comment's been largely overlooked:"Why Jewish seems to be, regrettably, the same reason a lot of vacation resorts and so forth were sectarian --- rampant anti-Semitism. There were segregated camps for every ethnic and religious group. Now it's more mixed....

I don't think that's right, because anti-Semitism isn't a factor now, and many parents persist in sending their kids to Jewish camps. I taught in an after school program for Jewish teenagers this year, and most of my students had been to some sort of Jewish camp, even though they're perfectly free to go to non-religiously-affiliated ones. I also think this risks assuming that Jewish identity is purely a negative thing, a response to rejection. It's not. Jewish people sometimes do Jewish stuff because they enjoy being part of a Jewish community. There's really nothing wrong with that.
posted by craichead at 1:21 PM on June 20

Jewish people sometimes do Jewish stuff because they enjoy being part of a Jewish community. There's really nothing wrong with that.

Of course there's not anything wrong with that. But Diablevert's comment was in the past tense, and historically, it's true that summer camps were racially or religiously segregated. This establishes a tradition of religious segregation being seen as part of the camp experience--parents and counselors and camp founders are all used to religious affiliations, services, and practices being part and parcel of the camp experience, so the trend continues. That's not to say that there aren't good reasons why people might not want to experience a Jewish, or Episcopalian, or Catholic community. But sometimes those communities exist in part as a reaction to historical instances of prejudice or segregation. There's nothing inherently negative about that, though.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 1:38 PM on June 20

I don't think that's right, because anti-Semitism isn't a factor now, and many parents persist in sending their kids to Jewish camps. I taught in an after school program for Jewish teenagers this year, and most of my students had been to some sort of Jewish camp, even though they're perfectly free to go to non-religiously-affiliated ones. I also think this risks assuming that Jewish identity is purely a negative thing, a response to rejection. It's not. Jewish people sometimes do Jewish stuff because they enjoy being part of a Jewish community. There's really nothing wrong with that.

I should clarify, then --- the link I posted was all about "how did summer camps start? Who invented them?" They were invented in the late 19th century and popularized in the 20th, when anti-Semitism was more of a factor, and, it would seem, a big chunk of camps were self-segregated along religious/ethnic/social lines. The were invented on the east coast are were particularly popular with urban parents --- cities were seen as unhealthy in the summer, as paulsc highlights with his remarks about polio --- and while you didn't necessarily have to rolling in it to afford to go, particularly for day camps or shorter stays, to send a kid away for a whole summer is a fair bit of money. So yeah, I think there's a bit of a correlation thing --- Venn diagram overlap --- as to why a random Jewsish kids might be more likely to attend summer camp then a random gentile kid.

The question of why they persist is entirely different. People here have mentioned a bunch of reasons, all of which probably contribute, especially the sense that it's a unique opportunity for the kids to connect to Jewish culture in a way that they don't otherwise.
posted by Diablevert at 2:07 PM on June 20

As a data point, my dad is Jewish, grew up in the 50s in NYC, and went to sleepaway summer camp too.
posted by reptile at 2:39 PM on June 20

More anecdata: My (ethnically Jewish, non-practicing) great-grandfather ran a summer camp in Maine that was open until sometime in the late 60s or 70s. He started it because he'd been a physical education teacher at a mostly-Jewish high school in New York and got frustrated with the fact that a lot of camps were refusing to take his students. As far as I know, the camp he ran was never explicitly religious in any way — it certainly wasn't Zionist or particularly Lefty — but I gather that the first cohorts of campers were almost all Jews, if only because those kids had fewer other options.

By the 60s, when my dad attended, the religious balance had evened out some, but also still plenty of Jewish campers, many of whom at that point were going because their parents had gone.

So, at least in Maine, at least in the early 20th century:

1. There were plenty of summer camps that were explicitly for gentiles.
2. Some Jews were responding by opening camps of their own.
3. Some of those Jewish camps became family traditions even after the overt anti-Semitism started to die down.

posted by nebulawindphone at 3:03 PM on June 20

Make that "family traditions that persisted even after the overt anti-Semitism started to die down"
posted by nebulawindphone at 3:04 PM on June 20

Perhaps this also connects to an earlier AskMF question about going to Israel for the summer? If I recall correctly, many people said that chaperoning on these Israel trips was quite lax, and that guys and girls could find time to "hook up" (as the kids say) pretty easily. Maybe the summer camp is the same idea, get the kids surrounded by other Jews and maybe find a Jewish girlfriend.

I say this as a two-summer camper at Camp Judea, and I did find a girlfriend both summers.

(Though Mrs. W is not Jewish, so apparently it didn't "take".)
posted by wittgenstein at 4:14 PM on June 20

I vote for a combination of relative affluence, suburban/city living, and the culture of 'we went to camp, it was good, we'll send the kids'.

Sleepaway summer camps were practically unknown in the religiously mixed, mostly farming area of the Upper Midwest that I grew up in (mid'70s-early'80s). Some kids went to Scout Camp, the Youth Groups from various churches would go to church camp/on mission trips as a group, and a few kids from the more evangelical/isolationist churches went to church camp, but generally we hung around home all summer. Bigger kids worked on the farm, or on the neighbor's/relative's farm; little kids went on month long trips to Grandma's or went to VBS-- Vacation Bible School -- you could go to 6 hr/day VBS every week for six weeks, a different church every week. The summer I went to Girls' State for a week and Interlochen for two weeks and WIE at MTU for a week was the most time any of my friends had 'gone away' for the summer. There was an ulterior motive to that -- Dad had surgery that spring, and Mum wanted me out of the house so that we'd all survive the summer.

My daughter has gone to one- or two- week sleepaway camps (by her choice) every year since kindergarten. Used to be Scouts, since middle school she's been going to music camp at a non-evangelical Christian camp. My son wants nothing to do with sleepaway camps.
posted by jlkr at 5:24 PM on June 20

1. Affluence = ie, many of the parents can afford to take a break from the kids.

2. Networking = as an example, five people in my office went to the same Jewish summer camp as children. One of them got the job the usual way- with a resume and interview- then the rest all trickled in because an existing B'nai Brith alumnus recommended or hired them. Their parents were well aware that this early bonding time with other people in their social circle and age group would be beneficial to their careers down the line.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 5:50 PM on June 20

then the rest all trickled in because an existing B'nai Brith alumnus recommended or hired them.

B'nai B'rith isn't just summer camp, it isn't even mainly summer camp, though they do have conventions and retreats. I was only in it for one year in high school, and I'm still in contact with many of the people I associated with then, so I guess it's good for networking (though most also went to my high school anyway). It was like a youth group, or lots of youth groups. Kind of like a high school version of sororities and fraternities, there were many options to select from, based on your personality and the dynamic of the group. But it's not summer camp.

I'd be incredibly surprised if parents sent their kids to jewish sleep away camp to open up career opportunities in the future. That just doesn't seem like a practical line of reasoning when you're sending an 8 year old away for the summer.

Certainly BBYO might be good for career contacts, but at best, it might be good to help secure a spot for kids in jewish sororities/fraternities in college, which might be good for career contacts. It seems more likely that parents encouraged their kids to join BBYO to hang out with and date other jewish kids. I grew up in a very jewish area, and I had friends who were only allowed to date other jews. Luckily, my parents didn't care who I hung out with and didn't care that I dropped out of BBYO in 10th grade.

But this still doesn't answer why it is so common for jewish kids to go to sleepaway camp, jewish or otherwise. I asked my mom for her opinion and she, too, was puzzled. The camp that she went to (and loved), like the camp I went to, was Reform so it had very little to do with religion. Almost no prayers, no services, no chapel, absolutely no zionism. Of course different forms of Judaism have different motivations when it comes to camp, in the case of reform or simply cultural jews, my theory is that it's about cultural identity. When it comes to the popularity of sleepaway camp in general for jews, that's still a mystery.
posted by necessitas at 9:54 PM on June 20

Oops, meant to highlight the quote at the start of my comment.
posted by necessitas at 9:55 PM on June 20

I think it's an East Coast thing. I tried a number of camps as a kid, including a Girl Scout camp that I've forgotten the name of (I think itonly lasted a week(?)), the camp that used to be where this one* is (2 week sessions, but you could go for more than one), and this one, which was too sporty for my tastes (two 4-week sessions, you could stay for both), and then finally settled on here, where I have spent 6 summers of my life (3 in the 3.5-week half session program, 1 in the 7-week full session program, 1 on an extended wilderness trip, and 1 as a counselor for some very tiny girls, several of whom stayed all 7 weeks. All of these places were pretty overwhelmingly WASP-y. As much as I loved (and still love, the video on the website totally makes me teary) ALC, the homogeneity of preppy Connecticut girls got a little tiresome at times.
However, I can also offer a Jewish data point: my stepmother, who is Jewish and from NYC, was sent to 8-week sleep-away camp at an absurdly young age (I think 5?) - her parents figured that since her older brother and sister were there she'd be just fine, but she still talks about it as if it were a slightly traumatic experience.

*As far as I can tell, this place used to be Saddle Rock, but I do not understand what happened. I didn't realize that Saddle Rock was gone until looking up the link so I could put it in this comment. Slightly distraught. WTF.
posted by naoko at 9:10 AM on June 21

My understanding of Jewish camping is that it has a lot to do with (1) giving kids (especially kids who aren't getting a day school education) a Jewish experience over the summer and (2) encouraging Jewish continuity.
posted by amandarose at 3:52 PM on June 21