Skip to content

Where different views on Israel and Judaism are welcome.

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • [email protected]! video

Search

Archives

Recent Posts

  • חמש שנים לעבודה מהבית
  • הקוביד תפס גם אותי
  • Thirteen calls for action
  • Immersive art experience
  • Games, fun and serious
  • Welcome back, TUTS!
  • Play tackles Israeli/Palestinian conflict
  • Averbach reaches Kamloops
  • Israel’s new Ethiopian airlift
  • Remembering the Great Roundup
  • Walking tours celebrate Pride
  • Living their values daily
  • Fighting racism, terrorism
  • Diverse allies critical
  • An afternoon of music
  • Community milestones … awards, honours, weddings, releases
  • STEAM-powered schooling
  • A composer for the Queen
  • Different horror, same hell
  • Never waste life’s many gifts
  • Reuse, recycle, make anew
  • נסיעה שנייה לישראל
  • Dreamy Midsummer’s Night
  • A story of two families
  • New era in U.S. politics
  • Folk festival returns to park
  • Standing up against hatred
  • Good reads, good talks
  • Tofino mustard maven
  • Journey from prison to power
  • Ben-Gurion goes global
  • The romance of good bagels
  • Hitting the high seas & citrus
  • Enjoy summer treats

Recent Tweets

Tweets by @JewishIndie

Tag: Kozlovsky

Meet at camp, get married?

Meet at camp, get married?

Dan and Jen Silber met at Camp Moshava. (photo from Silber family via jns.org)

Eighteen-year-old Bernie Kozlovsky spent from sundown to sunrise on a boat with 16-year-old Sonia Rosenbaum in the summer of 1972.

“We talked until dawn,” Kozlovsky recalls about that summer at the Orthodox Jewish NCSY overnight camp in northeastern Maryland. Kozlovsky worked in the camp kitchen. Rosenbaum was a camper. From that summer forward, neither dated another individual. Forty-three years later – including 39 years of marriage, six children and seven grandchildren – Kozlovsky attributes his successful relationship to the spark that formed during his summertime experience.

Not much has changed.

Today, the (camp) fire is still burning at Jewish summer camp. Dating and marriage are byproducts of summers spent banging on the table during Birkat Hamazon (Grace after Meals), engaging in loud and intense games of color war, and celebrating Jewish culture with Hebrew plays and folk-music campfire sing-alongs.

No one is pushed to date at Jewish summer camp, said Lauren Ben-Shoshan, who met her Israeli husband, Alon, as a counselor at URJ (Union for Reform Judaism) Camp Harlam in Kunkletown, Penn., in 2004. The couple now lives in Israel.

“Camp is a positive place for Jewish learning, physical activity and connecting with the outdoors. No one wants campers to feel bad because they didn’t find their spouse when they were 15, 19 or 22. But there is a covert understanding that [marriage is] a nice byproduct of Jewish summer camp, when it happens,” said Ben-Shoshan, who is also a Jewish educator.

It occurs more often than many realize. According to Camp Works, a report released in 2012 by Foundation for Jewish Camp, Jewish adults who attend Jewish overnight camp are on average 10% more likely to marry within the Jewish faith than their peers. The 2000-01 National Jewish Population Study found that number to be higher, with 78% of individuals who attended Jewish summer camp in-married, as opposed to 62% of their non-camper peers.

What’s the secret sauce? Is it that romantic Shabbat at sunset by the lake or in the secluded woods? That’s part of it, but it is more likely a result of the “intensity” of the camp experience, Ben-Shoshan believes.

“The days last forever, but camp feels like it only lasts a minute, so even if camp is only two months, these are two very intense months,” she said. “You see the campers and counselors in stressful situations, how they interact with peers and with the kids, the meals, how they interact with co-workers. It is all these things that happen in life, that could take several months in the ‘real world,’ you see within a week at camp.”

Jewish summer camp focuses heavily on community-building, noted Aaron Bogage, who attended the BBYO International Leadership Training Conference for several summers and now works at the overnight BBYO Chapter LTC. He said there are always “quite a few couples per session,” explaining that these relationships form because everyone is “extremely open” with each other and open to meeting new people. “Everyone is genuinely excited to get to know the rest of the teens.… There is a sense of community that comes from camp,” he said.

One can start to pinpoint new couples, according to Bogage, by looking at who sits where during meals and what campers do during free time. Bogage has not met his significant other through camp, but his good friend met a girl last summer from another state. They are still together despite the physical distance between them.

Jen Silber, executive director of Habonim Dror Camp Moshava in Street, Md., said there is a focus at camp on building healthy peer relationships. “We want [campers] to learn about communication, how to express their needs in relationships, feel confident being themselves and develop trust,” she said.

Silber, who met her own husband as a camper and then staffer at Moshava, argues that friendships and romantic relationships that people form at summer camp tend to be “deeper” and more authentic than those forged at school or in other environments. Campers and counselors feel accepted for who they are, she said.

Read more at jns.org.

Maayan Jaffe is former editor-in-chief of the Baltimore Jewish Times and a Kansas-based freelance writer. Reach her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter, @MaayanJaffe.

 

Format ImagePosted on December 18, 2015December 16, 2015Author Maayan Jaffe JNS.ORGCategories WorldTags BBYO, Bogage, Camp Harlam, Camp Moshav, Habonim Dror, Jewish camp, Kozlovsky, URJ
Proudly powered by WordPress