2006-06-14-Camp Mountain Chai

By Donald H. Harrison

ANGELUS OAKS, Calif.— The international staff has begun its training at Camp Mountain Chai in preparation for the June 27 opening of the San Diego Jewish community's own sleepover camp for children between the ages of third and eleventh grades.

As I toured the facility, located 130 miles and about 2 hours, 15 minutes driving time northeast of the United Jewish Federation's headquarters in Kearny Mesa, the counselors were practicing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation techniques; teaching each other games from their countries that they, in turn, could teach campers; and acclimating themselves to life at an altitude of 7,500 feet among pines and snow-clad mountain vistas (yes, even in summer) in the San Bernardino National Forest east of Redlands. It is in a little hamlet called Angelus Oaks, in San Bernardino County, two counties north of San Diego.

As I observed with Ed Samiljan, a board member and treasurer of the camp, and his Balboa Park-area neighbor, Arthur Dorf, who is sending his two grandsons to camp to better acquaint them with the Jewish side of their mixed Jewish and Catholic heritage, I couldn't help but smile remembering the fun I had some 50 years ago when I attended sleep-away camps in the mountains of New York and Massachusetts. The memories last that long!

Richard Farr, a counselor from Australia, gathered his colleagues into a circle and asked them to guess whether the coin he was holding would land on its heads and tails side. They should do so by placing their hands either on their heads or on their, er, tails. They did, he flipped the coin, and all those who had picked the wrong part of their anatomy were instructed to sit or squat down in the circle. Another flip, another group sat down, until there was but one counselor standing. "An oice brigh-ker," he explained, which, of course, is Australian for "ice-breaker." It's the kind of activity depending purely on chance, one which any camper can be the "winner" regardless of physical prowess. Not a bad way for choosing people to do this or that activity either.

Next Liron Lanciano, a counselor from Israel, took a stick and extending her arms stiffly rotated her body, so that the stick traced the diameter of a circle in the dirt. Then she put a group of five counselors in each circle. There were 10 human feet in the circle, she said. To test the counselors' ingenuity, she asked them to make it so there were only 8 feet in the circle. That was easy, two counselors simply lifted one of their legs behind them. Next, she wanted only 5 feet. Now all the counselors stood on one leg, while keeping the other leg off the ground. But when the Israeli called for only 4 legs to be in the circle, then 3, then 2, and finally just one, the fun—and ingenuity—began. In some cases, counselors climbed on the backs of others to avoid having their feet in the circle; in other cases they stood on each other's feet. Whatever they did, it required team work.

A ropes course, which the counselors practiced, also demanded reliance on partners. One of the courses involved two cables joined in a V-shape. Two participants put their palms to each other's palms for balance, then advanced together down the separate legs of the V, keeping their balance by steadying themselves against each other. The other counselors, meanwhile, surrounded them, encouraging them verbally while standing at the ready to catch them should the participants fall.

Besides such games and other outdoor activities like horseback riding, trail bike riding, canoeing in nearby Lake Jenks, swimming in the camp's large pool, basketball, volleyball, nature study, scuba diving (at a special facility in nearby Big Bear), and a newly installed 40-foot climbing wall, campers will also participate in specifically Jewish activities such as Shabbat prayer, Israeli dances, and Hebrew songs.

"You know we are not a 'Hebrew school in the woods,' but we want to be a place where kids learn to be more comfortable with their Jewish identity; with better knowledge of their culture, their traditions, their heritage," commented Len Keilen, Camp Mountain Chai's executive director.

Camp Director Len Keilen

"Unlike the 'movement' {such as Reform, Conservative, Orthodox} camps, where the kids are homogenous religiously, we will have kids of all religious backgrounds. So we want to stress the things that bring them together as Jews; not the things that pull them apart as Jews. So we are going to stress those things that we all have in common."

With more than a quarter-century experience running B'nai B'rith sleepover camps in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Keilen knows about building enduring Jewish memories. At an outdoor amphitheatre, where a Torah on loan from Congregation Beth Israel will be the focus of attention, campers will assemble to welcome the Shabbat with songs. Then, each week a different group of campers will conduct the services.

"Following the services we will do a traditional Shabbat dinner," Keilen said. "We will start with the blessings over the candles, the wine, the challah and a tradition that I will bring here, which was an important part of my camping career. Each week we will bring up a different group of kids and we will do a blessing over the children. And it is interesting ,we had a reunion at our old camp (in Starlight, Pennsylvania), and I had two people who were in graduate school who came up to me and said 'would you do the blessing over us on Friday night?' They remembered from the time when they were younger!"

All food at the camp is kosher, and a typical Shabbat evening dinner will include "chicken or roast beef or turkey, challah, chicken soup, potatoes, vegetables—the works," Keilen said. "Then we will spend about an hour singing. We have a wonderful music instructor coming from Israel, Chen Gusler, and he is outstanding. He plays the guitar, keyboard, harmonica, anything you can give him, and the kids will love him—he is like a big teddy bear—and he will be leading singing in the dining hall. You will see kids standing up on their chairs, singing, the ruach (the spirit) is a big thing that will make camp special.

"From there we will go to Israeli dancing. We have a big tent behind the dining hall, and Tami (Tessler, from Omer, Israel) will be doing Israeli dance—that will create the Friday night spirit.

"Saturday morning, again, we have services done by the kids, and we do something special. Not all our kids can read Hebrew, and even those that can, don't understand Hebrew, so we do an interpretation of the Torah portion in English, using puppets. It is called, 'Saturday Torah Live.' Our older campers and staff write the script and I call it Bill Cosby's philosophy; 'they have fun, and if they are not careful they will learn something' because in order to put on the puppet show they have to study the parsha so they know what the puppet show should be about.

"So the older kids are learning a little bit of Torah, and the (younger) kids love it, it is a favorite part of the service for them. It is done with songs, and gags, and humor, but the kids walk away with an understanding of what the portion is...."

Besides Shabbat, the camp will be suffused with other reminders of Jewish culture. For example, the six lodge buildings on the 18-acre site—which still is used the other three seasons of the year as a retreat center—will be identified with their pre-existing English names, as well as translations and transliterations of those names into Hebrew. Thus campers will soon learn that coyote, deer, eagle, falcon, owl and wolf are known in Hebrew respectively as ze'ev aravot, tzvi, aieet, baz, yanshuf, and ze'ev.

During the summer, campers also will get to participate in a Maccabiah competition—known as "color wars" at some camps—in which the entire camp will be divided into the blue team and the white team and will compete in a variety of activities. "There will be a sports competition, singing competition, and they will create banners and plaques, and it will be a real day of ruach for the kids," predicted Joanne Morgenthal, the camp's associate director who was a staff member for seven years and an assistant director for a year at the B'nai B'rith Perlman Camp in the Pocono Mountains on the Pennsylvania-New York border before being hired away by Keilen.

I asked Morgenthal to describe a typical day in a camper's life, and was surprised by just how busy the campers will be. I can imagine after a day such as this everyone of them will sleep like logs in bunk beds that Morgenthal and the camp's marketing director, Giya Pnematicatis (a South African of Greek origin) personally tested. (Morgenthal took the top bunk.)

"They wake up about 8 o'clock, and we will meet at our flagpole for a morning ceremony at which we will raise both the American and the Israeli flags," followed by a morning prayer, camp songs, and a joke of the day before heading for breakfast. "After breakfast the kids will go back to the cabins and clean the cabins with the staff, and then they will head out to activities.

"Our activities in the morning will be one elective activity, the kids can choose one specific area that they really want to learn solid skills in and they will do that every day for the entire week at that specific time, such as archery, basketball, rock climbing, ceramics, drama, singing, Israeli dancing, and a wide range of other activities here at Camp Mountain Chai," Morgenthal said.

"Then, after their first elective, the kids will have a bunk activity where the kids will come together with the other kids from their cabins, and they will go out to an activity whether it be canoeing, rock climbing, mountain biking, arts and crafts, drama again, and then we will all get

Tami Tessler of Omer, Israel, right, shows dance steps to
   Hannah Wenke of Sydney, Australia, and Dina Patel of
   Bornmouth, England—all Camp Mountain Chai staffers.

together for lunch. After lunch the kids will have a little bit of down time to rest, a 45-minute rest period, and then we go right back into our three periods of the afternoon, one of which is an elective... and the other two periods are cabin times (in which) with their groups of the same age, they will go to the lake, or go to the pool, or ... the ropes course, that sort of thing....

"We then have about a 45-minute shower time for the kids; they go back to the cabin and get ready for dinner. We have dinner, and after dinner there is a general activity time, in which camp is open for the kids — we place our counselors all around the camp for supervision and the kids can go and participate in whatever they want to do.

"If they want to grab a ball and play basketball, if they just want to sit by the pool, or sit by a tree, that is fine too. And then we will have our evening activity— the whole camp will get together and we will do different activities on different nights. One night may be a campfire, another night a talent show, we will do a night where the cabins prepare lip sync to a song, and they get up and perform it in front of the rest of the group. We do a night where the counselors are doing silly funny races, that the campers get to laugh at them for...."

Commenting on the programming, Keilen said, "we try to find a balance. If you look at some camps on the internet, you will see some camps are all specialty camps, where first thing after breakfast they do specialties all day, while other camps are all cabin-group-oriented. We want to give kids an opportunity to do the things they want to do, but we also know from experience that the magic of camp when we talk about 'community.' is bonding with the kids in your cabin." The schedule therefore includes some "elective" or "specialty" activities, and some general activities which they enjoy with their cabin-mates.

Besides Israelis, Australians, and Americans, the camp staff includes counselors from South Africa and England. Not all these counselors are Jewish, but all will learn and participate in the Jewish activities. According to Keilen, the benefits of an international staff run in two directions: the campers get to meet people from other interesting backgrounds while, at the same time, the counselors receive positive exposure to the Jewish world.

* * *

When the camp opens June 27, it will be the end of the long chapter of preparations and the beginning of the new chapter of realization. It has been approximately six years since the time a committee of the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County decided to authorize a needs assessment to see whether members of the Jewish community thought a sleep-over camp was necessary.

As a result of the assessment, a more formal feasibility study was undertaken, again with positive results. Samiljan, today the treasurer, joined with such community leaders as Murray and Elaine Galinson, Todd Kobernick and Dr. Jack Bark in forming a

                                                                                           Ed Samiljan, left, and Arthur Dorf at camp entrance

separate non-profit organization to run Camp Mountain Chai, whose name was suggested by Oscar Worm in a contest run in the now defunct San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage and judged by the Galinsons. Elaine Galinson today chairs the camp's board, while Kobernick serves as the president.

Initially, the organizers announced that the camp would be located on a property in Idyllwild, California, somewhat closer to San Diego County, but after spending $150,000 for site testing and the like, the organizers determined that property did not have sufficient water service to support 250 campers and an additional complement of staff members.

Driving up to the camp, Samiljan remembered that as a dark period, in which financial backers of the camp, who in the aggregate have to date pledged $6 million for its success were asked, in light of the news, whether they wanted to abandon the project and cancel the balance of their unused pledges. The backers responded that to the contrary, the need for the camp still existed, especially in light of studies that indicate that there are three strong paths to insuring that a child will maintain his or her Jewish identity—Jewish day school, trips to Israel, and Jewish summer camp.

The camp's organizers put out word with the American Camping Association and with other camps that they were looking for a site, and eventually they were contacted about the availability of the Alpine Meadows Conference Center, which previously had housed a program for troubled youth. The owner had spent millions of dollars adapting the camp to year-round weather conditions, which includes snow in the winter.

In deciding to purchase the camp/ conference center, the board realized that it could serve the Jewish community not only as a summer camp for children, but also as a retreat center during the year for various Jewish congregations and organizations of San Diego. Numerous synagogues have held events at the camp since it was dedicated on Sept. 14, 2005, in ceremonies at the amphitheatre that in the future will double during summers as an outdoor synagogue.

At the same time, the camp has been able to retain as customers many of the non-Jewish organizations that had used the Alpine Meadows Conference Center under the old management during the off-season. These include some Orange County schools, and various church and civic groups, said Samiljan. As kosher food has been made the exclusive meal service in the camp, groups that are using the conference center in the off-season are complying with the rules of kashrut, for them an interesting cross-cultural experience.

Samiljan said that Jewish camps typically have to be subsidized from other sources, and he is hoping that by building up the off-season retreat business the camp will be self-sufficient.

The fee for a two-week session of camp, the minimum time period, is $1,700 without scholarship. Camping can be extended over a longer period at approximately $850 a week, according to Samiljan. A variety of scholarship funds have been set up for students, based on financial need, he said. He said the board of directors—taking a cue from the popular "Operation Birthright" program which guarantees every Jewish child a trip to Israel—has agreed to create a "Campright" program which stipulates that no child ever will be turned away on the grounds that his or her family cannot afford to pay.

This means that if parents or guardians meet confidentially with a committee of the board and a finding of financial need is made, a camper will be admitted to the camp "for a very nominal sum."

Samiljan said a surprise of West Coast camping has been that some families wait until the last minute to decide whether to send their children to camp—instead of booking a year in advance as is done at some East Coast camps. The first year enrollment thus far is 115 campers, and Samiljan hopes that a few more might yet be added to the rolls before the June 27 start up. He is confident the camp will enroll its full complement—250 campers—in the summer of 2007.

Information on the camp is available at its website, www.campmountainchai.com or by calling its administrative center at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center in La Jolla at (858) 535-1995 or the camp offices in Angelus Oaks at (909) 794-3800.