“Tag” may be a fun and archetypal children’s game; but for campers at the camps of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, “tag” will mean something larger and richer.
This coming summer, the two largest of those camps will be implementing for their first time the TAG Initiatives. This is a program of the Mandel Center for Jewish Education, a department of the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America.
As Mark Shapiro, the Milwaukee JCC’s associate executive director, explained, the acronym “TAG” stands for three Hebrew words: Torah, avodah and gimilut chasadim.
And these, in turn, come from a famous passage from Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Sages, 1:2): “On three things the world stands: Torah, good works and acts of kindness.”
According to Rabbi Laurie Phillips, associate director of the Mandel Center, the TAG Initiatives present ways to focus on different Jewish values and incorporate them into “every arena at camp: sports, drama, arts and crafts, discussions, stories.”
And this effort fits in with what the JCC sees as using its camps and its other programs to provide “Inspiring Jewish Journeys” for participants, Shapiro said.
“We see what the JCC offers as a pathway to leading a Jewish life,” Shapiro said, and this encompasses “early childhood to the most senior adult” programs.
As for camping, Shapiro pointed out that numerous studies of the U.S. Jewish population show that “two of the most important events that happen in a child’s and a young teen’s life to help them identify themselves as Jewish and put them on a path to leading a Jewish life are Jewish camping and a trip to Israel.”
Therefore, the JCC camps work to “enable kids to have fun with Jewish camping and to explore Judaism on their own terms,” he said. “Jewish values and the responsibilities we have from them are taught in a practical yet informal way at camp.”
More that’s new
In a telephone interview, Phillips said the TAG Initiatives began in the summer of 2004, and today more than 120 Jewish camps make use of the program.
Each year, the Mandel Center sets up five different Jewish values topics for the initiatives, each with “drama, discussion, art and music components,” according to the JCC Association’s Web site. This year’s topics will be:
• “Drama: Stumbling Blocks.” Phillips said this uses games and skits to explore and expand on the teaching that “You shall not curse the deaf nor put a stumbling block before the blind” (Leviticus 19:14).
• “Teva/Nature and the Environment: ‘To Work and to Protect’” treats a verse in Genesis about how people have the responsibility to work and protect the land.
• “Touching Torah,” involving the Torah portions which are read in the synagogue during the summer.
• “Israel: People and Places,” an initiative that will be based on four short stories involving Israeli teens that explore such themes as living with human diversity both in Israel and in the participating camps.
• “Kashrut: ‘Keeping it Cool … Keeping it Kosher’” which will explore “all the elements around eating kosher, but also how to behave in a kosher way,” Phillips said.
Shapiro said that two of the JCC camp programs’ full-time staff members will attend a training seminar in the TAG Initiatives at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Brandeis, Calif.
These staff members will then bring the initiatives back to be implemented at the Steve & Shari Sadek Family Camp Interlaken, the overnight camp in Eagle River, and the Albert & Ann Deshur JCC Rainbow Day Camp in Fredonia.
The TAG Initiatives are not the only new things scheduled to happen at the JCC’s camps this coming summer.
Rainbow director Lenny Kass said that this year his camp and Interlaken will be collaborating on a combined day and resident camping program for third to fifth grade children. This will enable them to spend one week at Rainbow and one week of overnight camp at Interlaken with their Rainbow counselors.
This will be “a great camp for kids who would like to try an overnight experience,” Kass said, and will make a “nice transition” between the two types of camping.
Rainbow will also be upgrading some of its sports areas, will inaugurate a new program of bicycle trips to state parks near the camp, and will be holding a celebration of the Rainbow Day Camp program, Kass said.
For even younger children, the Aleph Camp for two- and three-year-olds and the Gesher Camp for kindergarteners and first graders will offer weekly themes that guide the campers’ exploration.
According to Rachel Greenspan, the JCC’s infant-toddler program director, this year’s themes will include: “Kids in the Kitchen,” “Puppet Palooza” and a “Nature of Things” exploration of nature.
For more information about JCC camps and their programs, call 414-964-4444 or visit www.jccmilwaukee.org.
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