Sex and the Jewish summer camp

Many Jewish camps encourage sexual experimentation as part of their ideological agenda, writes SANDRA FOX in her new book on the American Jewish camp experience.

There is plenty of evidence in popular culture to suggest that romance and sexuality permeate American camps of all kinds.

What makes Jewish camps’ romantic and sexual cultures distinctly free, well known, and widespread relates to how and why camping leaders have managed, directed, and encouraged them from the top down. 

That adolescent campers would arrive interested in dating and sexuality from the mid-20^th century onward was all but inevitable and obvious; that camp leaders would fuse those inevitable interests with communal and ideological goals — curbing assimilation, imbuing children with Jewish nationalist sentiments or religious identity, and combating rising rates of interfaith marriage — was specific to the Jewish camp.

Mingling like campers at the social, the generations at camps fostered these sexual cultures together, less through discourse than through everyday decisions that sought to balance leniency, ideology, and control.

When I asked the alumni if they could recall times when their camps’ rules or their counsellors’ oversight curbed their relationships, few to none could. But while laissez-faire approaches toward romantic and sexual expression gave campers a feeling of freedom and autonomy, camp leaders played crucial roles in shaping the camp sexual and romantic cultures from the top down.

Counsellors cheered or egged on their campers, participating in or overhearing the before-bedtime who-kissed-who discussions, encouraging campers to make moves, and doling out advice.

From camp dances to dating games, moreover, staff members scheduled moments for heterosexual romance to bloom, educated campers about puberty and sexuality in both educational and informal activities, and emphasised Jewish marriage as an ideal through role modelling, education, and simulated wedding ceremonies.