Three days before some 400 teenagers were set to arrive at Camp Tel Yehudah in the summer of 2023, an electrical fire destroyed the camp’s kitchen and dining hall — a devastating loss made worse by an insurance settlement that covered less than half of the rebuilding cost.
This wasn’t just a building; it was the heart of a 78-year-old institution where generations of teens had sung, danced, debated and celebrated together.
Tel Yehudah miraculously opened on time that June, serving meals under a repurposed circus tent supported by mobile kitchens. The moment camp ended, efforts began to rebuild in time for the next season.
Enter Mario Zacharjasz, award-winning architect and president of Philadelphia-based PZS Architects. Mario, a longtime member of Beth Tikvah B’nai Jeshurun synagogue in Flourtown, Pennsylvania, was already working with Tel Yehudah on camp renovations when the fire destroyed the kitchen and dining hall.
A former TY camper himself — and brother to longtime TY community member Fanny Korman — Zacharjasz took on the project personally. He has bonds with the Barryville, New York camp dating back to his first summer there in 1970, and fond memories that often revolved around the dining hall.
“It’s sort of the heart and soul of the camp,” Zacharjasz told Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. “It’s a beautiful setting on the banks of the Delaware River, surrounded by trees — maple trees and birch and sycamore. And it has a multi-purpose function, not only breakfast, lunch and dinner, you have meetings, you have dancing, you have singing, it goes on day and night.”
Camp Tel Yehudah serves as the national teen leadership camp for the Zionist youth movement Young Judaea. Located on 150 wooded acres, the camp has operated since 1948, welcoming Jewish teens aged 13-17 from diverse backgrounds across the U.S., Great Britain, Israel and other countries.
Roger Korman, another TY community leader who belongs to Beth Tikvah B’nai Jeshurun, noted that before the fire, the camp had already endured three summers without an indoor dining hall because of COVID and renovations.
“This was a horrific blow for us, because 2020, no camp … 2021 and 2022, [we had] a giant circus tent, we had to be outside to eat together. Here we were prepared to go back to a real dining room, and it burns down,” he said.
“Once the smoke had cleared, so to speak, we were faced with an enormous challenge of how to rebuild and what to rebuild,” Korman added.
An added complication was that an approximately $3 million insurance payout didn’t come close to paying for a modern dining facility that could accommodate hundreds of people and kosher kitchens for meat, dairy and vegetarian meals.
Fortunately, an individual and a foundation that prefer to remain anonymous stepped forward and gave the camp a $4.7 million interest-free loan to proceed with rebuilding the dining hall facility.
“We knew we had the money. Now, how do you design something that fits within the budget and is open by a certain time?” said Zacharjasz.
Zacharjasz and his fellow architects went to work, compressing what would typically be a 10-month design process into just four. He said his team created a building that would fit organically with the surroundings.
“We didn’t want to build some palace that was not part of the camp,” Korman said. “The way it integrates with the camp in terms of its physical construction … it really enables it to be an integral part of the program.”
“We used heavy timber construction, a complement to the natural landscape,” Zacharjasz said. “We also did tall, gabled ceilings, 27 feet high, with natural light coming in. We wanted the place to be lit up by the sun, so when you walk in during the day, it felt not only comfortable, but it felt like a warm place.”
Warm – but with air conditioning, as well as good acoustics, ADA-compliant facilities and three giant garage doors that can be opened to create what Zacharjasz calls an “indoor-outdoor feeling.”
With the help of friendly, fast-working contractors, Camp Tel Yehudah got its new dining hall just in time for the summer of 2024. “When I say ‘in time,’ the campers were arriving when the inspectors were leaving the building. The inspectors walked out, and the campers walked in,” Zacharjasz said.
And how did longtime campers feel entering the new hall after several years of eating outside? “It was a wow factor when they walked in,” Zacharjasz said. “It literally brought tears to our eyes to see them walk in.”
The project was finished with completion of the kosher kitchens last summer. Korman is both happy and relieved that campers can hold large meetings indoors again. “Coming back into one building brought us back to where we were five years previous. It just raised us to where we were before,” he said.