Middlesex federation announces summer "Campership" grants
By Michele Alperin
Jan. 4, 2008

As a child, Eliot Spack spent his summers at the Zionist Jewish Camp Tevya in New Hampshire, which he believes played a significant role in forming his own Jewish identity.

"Camp becomes a nurturing and reinforcing movement, a 24-7 life experience," he said. "It is not episodic, not two to five hours a week. It is living that experience for eight weeks over a summer -- the friends you make, the experiences you have, and the observances you do become part of your routine."

For many of Spack’s friends it was a Jewish camp that provided some of the basic components of Jewish life: how to do the motzi -- the blessing over bread, or the birkat hamazon -- the blessing after meals, how to observe Shabbat without that experience, or how to sing and dance to Israeli songs. His own camp was not affiliated with any singular movement, but offered a Jewish cultural program that included these elements.

"It is not necessarily by cramming something down a person’s throat, but really is by living that kind of a Jewish life," Spack said. "Not only have I seen it with myself but literally with hundreds of other people I know who will attest to the role camp played in their own Jewishness."

Spack cautioned that the camp experience is not the sole indicator of future Jewish involvement, but melds with experiences at home, in the synagogue, and in youth movements. Yet, he said, research confirms that Jewish camping experiences can be significant contributors to helping young people form their Jewish identities and maintain them into adulthood, as measured by criteria like marrying within the faith, staying involved in the Jewish community as adults, and participating in federation campaigns as adults.

In an effort to increase the number of Jewish children who experience Jewish summer camps, a joint venture between the Dave and Ceil Pavlovsky Endowment Fund for Jewish Education of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County and the Foundation for Jewish Camping is offering 50 children a $1,000 scholarship to attend an overnight Jewish camp for the first time for at least three weeks.

The program is not need-based nor is affiliation within the Jewish community a requirement.

Spack was asked to chair a committee to disburse funds from the endowment last summer. The Pavlovskys asked that the proceeds be applied to creative Jewish educational possibilities, as Spack explained, "not necessarily things that are standard run of the mill but innovative, creative, forward-looking ideas."

He brought the idea of the incentive program to the table, among other suggestions.

"The committee was particularly intrigued with this opportunity and asked me to provide more information," Spack said. The other members of the committee -- Rabbi Deborah Bravo, Jeffrey Kress, Henry Lerner, Herb Levitt, Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, Rabbi Esther Reed, and Paul Rovinsky -- liked what they heard, and the program is in place for this summer.

Only a week after the December announcement of the incentiveship program, the federation had received two-dozen inquiries. Spack emphasized that even first-time campers already registered for one of the 130 or so not-for-profit Jewish camps certified by the foundation as acceptable can apply for the incentiveship. This program is meant as an outreach program for children who do not receive an intensive Jewish experience during the year, and campers already participating in another campership program are not eligible.

For more information, contact Gerrie Bamira at gbamira@jf-gmc.org or check the following site: http://www.jewishmiddlesex.org/page.html?ArticleID=162760.

The Foundation for Jewish Camping, initiator of the incentive program, was founded in 1998 by Wexner fellows Elisa Spungen Bildner and her husband Rob.

"In the course of engagement with other lay leaders and activists in the Jewish community, they came to the conclusion that Jewish summer camp, as a powerful force for Jewish identity and Jewish community building, was under-funded, under-recognized, and under-utilized as a strategy," explained Maggie Bar-Tura, chief operating officer of the foundation.

To push the agenda of Jewish summer camping among both funders and the Jewish community, they created the Foundation for Jewish Camping.

One emphasis of the foundation is to professionalize the field of Jewish camping and bring to bear the best of for-profit business practices in the not-for-profit world -- concepts like customer service, consumer patterns, brand loyalty, marketing, market-driven policies, and supply and demand.

The foundation has two broad strategic approaches. On the supply side, it is working with camps to improve leadership and train staff, from third-year bunk counselors up to executive directors. It also makes grants to promote operational and program excellence. For example, 20 camps are now using a Web-based consumer satisfaction survey to benchmark how they are doing and to increase retention.

On the demand side, the foundation is promoting the value of Jewish camping.

"We are working to raise awareness in the Jewish community of Jewish summer camp -- why a dollar spent is a dollar well invested in terms of identity, a sense of joy in being Jewish, having Jewish friends, and being engaged in the future in the Jewish community," Bar Tura said.

As part of this effort, the foundation is trying to make the choice to send a child to a Jewish camp for the first time an easier one. In 2007, it launched its Campership Incentive Program, which was kick-started by a generous matching gift of $15 million from an anonymous donor, the largest gift yet to the field of Jewish camping.

That year, the foundation partnered with seven Jewish communities, both federations and other communal institutions, to provide incentiveships in the form of matching grants to the community for the number of children recruited to attend not-for-profit Jewish camps.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County joined for the summer of 2008, as one of 20 communities involved.

Bar-Tura explained that the foundation’s goal is to reduce its matching funds each year, reaching zero over four years, as the communities increase their commitments and eventually take on full responsibility.

Bar-Tura called the program a "triple whammy," citing three benefits: Getting thousands of new kids into Jewish summer camps, putting Jewish summer camps front and center on the agenda of increasing numbers of Jewish communities, and attracting new donors who either have had a wonderful camping experience themselves or have observed their children or grandchildren having one.

Bar-Tura is thrilled that the Middlesex federation has joined the program.

"The MetroWest federation got engaged in 2007, and we hope that Middlesex and MetroWest will be groundbreakers for many other federations across New Jersey," she said.

Spack hopes this program brings families into the Jewish community. It may also give people a different perspective on federation, he said.

"Federation is not just an organization that reaches out and invites people to give," he said. "Here you have an opportunity where we’re going to give and an opportunity for you to be the beneficiary."

But most of all, Spack cared about how attending summer camp could affect a child’s life-long experience as a Jew and looked to the incentiveship program as a first step -- "an inspiration and stimulation to encourage kids who have not yet sampled these experiences to do so."