Summer Camp

An enthusiastic group of 72 bike riders and hikers, ages 13-73, arrived in Eilat on April 30 after biking since April 24 all the way from Jerusalem. They made the trip -- the Ramah Israel Challenge -- to support special needs programs at Ramah camps in the United States and Canada.

At the recent GISHA Conference on Jewish Special Education at Hebrew College, I had the privilege of hearing the personal story of a husband and wife and their years-long attempts to find a Jewish space in which their children – both struck with the same severe neurological disorder – could make Jewish friends and strengthen their Jewish identity.

My colleagues and I at the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC) have been following with interest the special needs dialogue and debate that has emerged in recent months and weeks online.

If you are involved in Jewish camps, can you please take 5-10 minutes to answer this survey on non-profit overnight Jewish summer camps and services for children with disabilities/special needs?

Last week, the New Normal ran two posts by Rabbi Rebecca Schorr, who is very nervous about the coming summer. Her son Ben, who has Asperger’s, learned recently that his beloved self-contained summer camp, Round Lake, is moving to become part of a campus that contains four other camps. Ben and his buddies will still have their own bunks, but they will spend much of the day in mainstream activities and social settings. Rabbi Schorr concluded that the Jewish community needs both self-contained and integrated summer camps. Now, we’re publishing a Q&A with Shelley Cohen, one of the architects of the change and also a mother of a child with a disability. She spoke with the blog about why Round Lake is making this change and how they determined they are to make it work for Ben and his friends.

Like many parents I was concerned that my son wasn’t getting enough sleep while he was away at sleep-away camp. As it turns out, it was my wife’s lack of sleep that posed a bigger concern. Each night beginning around 11:30 she would sit anxiously in front of the computer screen scanning each new photograph as it was uploaded from the camp. It was a slow process that lasted well into the wee hours.

Until two weeks ago, when he was revealed to have made up quotes and attributed them to Bob Dylan, Jonah Lehrer was one of the most successful journalists of his generation, and an It Boy, and a good boy, to boot.

At 31, he’s the author of three books that nimbly dance a line between the sciences and the humanities altogether invisible to most mere mortals: Imagine (containing the falsified quotes), How We Decide and Proust was a Neuroscientist.

Now that consensus seems to be emerging that intermarriage does not equal assimilation/demographic disaster, is the latest conventional wisdom that it causes one to turn against Israel?