Creating happy campers of all colors

Camp Be’chal Lashon, located near San Francisco, is no exception, but it does seem to be rather exceptional.

The unique summer camp brings together an eclectic, and perhaps surprising, array of atypical Jewish youngsters, youngsters from a variety of backgrounds and of various colors.

The camp gives these youth the unique and life changing opportunity to practice their faith in a warm, welcoming and nurturing setting.

Take for example, 11-year-old Amalia, a Jewish girl who is part Brazilian and Chinese. “If there are Christians of all colors and all kinds, and Muslims of all colors and all kinds, then why would Jewishness be any different?” she asks rhetorically.

A fellow camper by the name of Joesh Rowen-Keran, 14, and born to black and Korean parents and later adopted by an interracial couple says, “Being Jewish isn’t looking a certain way. I could look at anyone and not know if they are or aren’t Jewish. You can’t know till you know the person.”

While the typical American Jew, has for centuries, been Caucasian, “the times,” as another Hebrew noted some years ago, “are a changin’!”

Transmitting Jewish life effectively

Israeli law granting instant citizenship to those who make aliyah has recently led to an influx of Ethiopians and Indians, two cultures that are often associated with other religions, generally slam or Christianity.

Given that the largest cultural group of Jewish immigrants to the US came from Eastern Europe, it has effectively set the tone of a “Jewish look” since the early 1900s.

According to a new study, demographers Gary and Dian Tobin found in a survey that an estimated 10% of America’s six million Jews were non-white. Generally, their journey into the community has been through conversion, adoption, and interracial parentage.

The Tobins themselves adopted an African-America boy named Jonah. Through their experiences raising a child of a different ethnicity, they began to wonder about acceptance and inclusion with regards to Jews of color.

For 10 years up until Gary Tobin’s death in 2009, the couple began to take their concerns to another level by running a speakers’ series on Jewish diversity. They held retreats for multi-racial Jewish families, eventually culminating in the opening of Camp Be’chol Lashon last summer, home to 25 Jews of color this summer.

“Camps transmit Jewish life effectively because they create a unified existence of friendship, independence and positive adult relationships in Jewish space, a calendar built on Jewish time such as Shabbat, and Jewish content,” says Riv-Ellen Prell, a professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.

“These camps succeed because they effectively create a sense of the importance of Jewish life and learning through performance, creativity and physical activity.”

No doubt the happy campers at Camp Be’chal Lashon would agree.

Reprinted with permission from Shalom Life

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