Published: 2 October 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
“The FOMOs (people who never went to camp,) the Nostalgics (former campers,) the Do-Overs (former campers who had a rotten time,) and Tagalongs (people brought by their friends.)”
I nodded, pretending to be a fifth kind — the impassive reporter, only in search of a story.
Secretly, I know exactly which type I am. I am a Nostalgic.
When I was 15, my parents packed my suitcase, shoved me in a minivan, and drove me to camp. The Union of Reform Judaism’s first camp in Washington State had opened, and as committed Reform Jews they saw fit to offer up their daughter, an acned, sulky Iphigenia, as a sacrifice to the cause.
I got out of the car, and the camp director approached me, grinning beneath a baseball cap. “What part of camp are you most excited for?” he asked, extending his hand. “Leaving,” I said.
Three of the happiest weeks of my life passed. On the last night of camp I sat on the cabin porch with a counsellor. “You know,” she said, “I didn’t think you were going to be cool.
“On the first day of camp, I heard a girl in our unit say, ‘There’s something about that Jenny Singer that makes me want to smash her face in.’ But you are cool.” I stared at her — my counsellor thought I was cool! I had become a camp person.
Not everyone feels this way about Jewish summer camp.
FULL STORY Rosé, sex and bonfires: Inside the world of adult Jewish summer camp (Forward)
Photo: Sara Knobel
