Camp is Home

When I was 8 years old, I considered myself a “mutt” - my mom was Christian, and my dad was Jewish. Neither were religious, and there were no expectations for me to be, either. My cultural upbringing was a menorah on Chanukah and a tree on Christmas, but other than that, I lived in limbo.

Camp changed all of that for me.

My uncle worked at the JCC of Greater Pittsburgh, and from the time I was 4, he was gearing me up for Emma Kaufmann Camp.

“3 years til camp!”

“2 years til camp!”

“You’re going to camp next year; are you ready?”

EKC is a sleepaway camp in Morgantown, West Virginia. I was a precocious only child who’d never left the tri-state area for more than a weekend, and I was about to leave the nest to be surrounded, for arguably the first time, by jewish people.

On my first day, I was overwhelmed by the...everything about it. The cabins, the trees, the people. I had no idea what a “Hamotzi” was, let alone how to say it. I was thrust into a world I knew almost nothing about. So why was it that I suddenly felt so at home?

Camp has this magical way of engulfing you in its culture almost instantaneously; I’m not sure if anyone actually knows how. My best guess would be it’s the way in which everyone is unapologetically themselves from the moment you walk in. How could you feel anything but at home with that kind of authenticity? In turn, that “be-yourself”-ness that surrounds camp is doubly impactful at a Jewish camp. I wasn’t just Abby, the girl who liked to sing and watch Harry Potter. I was someone with Jewish heritage; I was a part of something larger.

Those first foreign culture shocks of the Hamotzi, Birchat Hamazon, and Shabbat services became second nature, just pieces of the puzzle in the place that I loved. It makes sense, then, that when you find “home” in camp, you find it in all that comes with it. Judaism, for me, became home.

That desire to belong to something pervaded throughout my tween and teen years. It no longer felt like enough to be “half” of anything; finding my place felt important. When you’re lost, it’s always best to find your way back to a place where you feel accepted. I realized that being jewish was much more than a religion. It’s a culture that’s ingrained inside of you. You’re born into it, and no matter your views or lack thereof on religion, it’s a part of you.

Years later, when it came time to be staff, I was made EKC’s songleader. I, the girl with essentially no jewish upbringing of any kind, became the camp’s cantor. After my first year, our rabbi left, and I took on that job, too.

These safe spaces we create for our children are molds for their future. What we allow them to be while they’re young shapes who they’ll be as they age. Places like camp allow us to be the most authentic versions of ourselves before we even know what that means; you become a part of what you’re accepted into. Camp was instrumental in helping me become the proud Jew that I am today, not by pushing religion on me, but by reminding me that I am part of a bigger picture. Camp is home.