Specialty Camps Offer Angle for a Different Kind of Summer

Yoni Stadlin speaks at the groundbreaking for Eden Village Camp, one of five new facilities funded by the Specialty Camps Incubator. (JTA Photo)

Jacob Berkman
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

NEW YORK

While most children who attend Jewish overnight camps this summer will ship off to rural settings, a handful will find themselves in the concrete jungle of Manhattan, engaged in what can be described as early career development.

The 92nd Street Y in Manhattan is recruiting campers for "Passport NYC," a program offering its participants several New York-specific tracks involving three weeks of immersion in popular "specialties," such as film, fashion, culinary arts, the music industry and baseball.

They will be able to work with professionals in New York who are leaders in their fields, from the Greenmarket to the Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league affiliate of the New York Mets.

"Passport NYC" is one of five new camps across America that was started with seed money from the Specialty Camps Incubator run by the Foundation for Jewish Camp and funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation with a $10.1 million grant two years ago.

The incubator has also helped start Eden Village Camp, a pluralistic coed camp in upstate New York focused on Jewish environmentalism; Adamah Adventures in Georgia, which will take Jewish teens on "thrilling, awe-inspiring outdoor adventures"; the Six Points Sports Academy in North Carolina; and Ramah Outdoors in Colorado, which offers adventures for teens in the Rocky Mountains.

The hope is that the camps will fill niches and draw hundreds more to Jewish camps.

"What we are finding is that there are so many families for whom this is their goal," said Yoni Stadlin, founder of Eden Village Camp, which now has more than 100 campers enrolled for its first season. "We know lots of parents who were saying, 'My kid was not going to camp,' but after hearing about this it was an automatic niche filled."

Each of the camps has been given $1.1 million spread over five years to launch and become self-sufficient by attracting a critical mass of campers.

Behind the Scenes
While the 92nd Street Y has run specialty camps for children aged 9 to 11, the new program is for older kids, most of whom will come to the city from other parts of the country. They will have the chance to come into contact with resources that may not be available elsewhere, said Alan Saltz, the Y's director of camps and planning and development.

"They will really get a sense of what it is like in these industries," he said. "We want to give them a sense of what the behind-the-scenes is about."

Campers will live in a residency at the Y for the three-week sessions, which cost about $3,900. The camps will receive training and technical support for the incubator, as well as a grant to help offset start-up costs during the first few years of operation.

For some, like Stadlin, of Eden Village Camp, the incubator made it possible to turn something of a fantasy into a reality.

After Stadlin earned his master's degree in informal Jewish education from the Conservative movement's Jewish Theological Seminary, he and several friends started bandying about the idea of starting a Jewish camp about farming. The discussions turned into highly productive meetings, said Stadlin, who had worked at several Jewish camps and spent some time at the TEVA learning center, a Jewish environmental education center in New York.

"We got some pushback saying starting a camp was a lot harder than you think -- sort of like, when you convert to Judaism, you get told 'no,' " he said. "But we found out this was a collective dream of many people."

Word spread and, serendipitously, the UJA-Federation of New York heard about the rudimentary plans for Eden Village and offered Stadlin the 248-acre site of a camp that it had shut down -- and to foot half the bill for renovations.

Creating the camp could not have been possible without the incubator, said Stadlin.

Each camp is provided a mentor who is an expert in starting and running camps similar to those being launched; the five camps consult with each other about best practices for success.

"It just feels like we are making the camp with them," said Stadlin.

The incubator is really teaching its fellows how to start and run a camp, said Adam Griff, who is launching Adamah Adventures with his wife, Bobbee.

The Foundation for Jewish Camp "has done a great job of giving us a blueprint and templates for what to do first and second. We haven't had a chance to struggle on our own," he said.

"It's step-by-step guidance."