When you think of June in the Philadelphia area, what comes to mind?
The end of school. Hot, muggy weather. Trips down the shore. Phillies baseball. Water ice. Backyard barbecues.
And, of course, summer camp.
For decades, camp and the area’s Jewish community have gone hand-in-hand.
Generations of Jewish kids have attended both day and overnight camps in the immediate area, not to mention throughout Pennsylvania. And a not-insignificant number of people met their future spouses while participating in camp mainstays like color war or while sipping bug juice.
The cover of the June 19, 2014, Jewish Exponent looked at what was new in the camping world, just days before most camps opened.
One story detailed Camp Harlam debuting a day camp on the campus of Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr.
Preparations were continuing briskly, including dealing with damaged trees, converting classrooms into bunk rooms and lining up burlap for a crafts project.
About 100 elementary and middle school children were expected to attend the camp, part of a pilot program for the Union for Reform Judaism.
The other cover article described the plans for the new Gan Israel in the Poconos camp. The Chabad camp was ready to welcome non-observant campers, as about 80% of the expected 60 campers didn’t come from observant families and attended public schools.
Founder Gershon Sandler said that rather than preaching to the campers, his approach would be to “show them why you keep Shabbat, why you keep kosher, why you like to pray, and then they’re intrigued and want to learn more.”
Elsewhere in the paper, in a sign that some things seemingly never change, the Exponent ran an op-ed entitled, “Bring Them Home” about three yeshiva students who were kidnapped a week earlier while hitchhiking in the West Bank.
Does this paragraph from the op-ed sound like it could have been written today?
“With significant troops engaged in a major military operation against Hamas in the West Bank and several hundred Hamas members already under arrest, Israel appears determined not only to rescue the captives but also to deal a blow to the terrorist organization that just weeks ago was bolstered internationally by its unity pact with the Palestinian Authority.”
The students’ bodies were found about 10 days later, and the two Hamas members believed to be responsible for the abductions and murders were killed in a standoff with Israeli security authorities in September.
