Summer mostly is the time for fun, but one of the saddest of Jewish holidays also occurs during that season.
In fact, Tisha B’Av — the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av, which marks the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem and a number of other Jewish catastrophes — is the only major Jewish holiday that occurs then, except when Rosh HaShanah falls early. (The minor festival of Tu B’Av — the 15th of Av — follows a few days later.)
This poses a challenge for Jewish summer camps. As Jerry Kaye, director of Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute in Oconomowoc, said, “They couldn’t give us Chanukah?
What would it have hurt? Or Purim would have been nice.”
Nevertheless, the sorrows of Judaism and Jewish history are part of Jewish life; and camps have found ways to involve campers in marking this day.
At Olin-Sang-Ruby, a Reform movement camp, for example, there is a genizah — a depository in which to bury religious books and other objects that synagogues want to discard.
Kaye said that Reform synagogues from all over the state send materials to be interred in the genizah; and the campers do this in a ceremony on Tisha B’Av. “For us, it has proved to be a very positive kind of thing,” Kaye said.
Moreover, the camp leads into Tisha B’Av by calling the campers together on the first day of Av and making “a statement about tikkun olam [repair of the world], offering programs to kids about social action,” Kaye said.
On the evening of Tisha B’Av, Olin-Sang-Ruby holds “an all camp commemoration, which is typically a program that runs through a survey of the historical impact of Tisha B’Av,” Kaye said.
He also said that the camp, in keeping with Reform practice, “provides the opportunity for campers to choose at what level they want to do personal commemoration” of the day. While the camp “does not fast as a community,” individual campers and staff may choose to do so.
More traditional observance of the day occurs at Camp Ramah, the Conservative movement camp located in Conover.
Hillary Gordon, project coordinator at the camp, said that on erev Tisha B’Av, after praying the evening service in the dining hall, campers walk along a path to the gymnasium; and older kids (entering 11th grade) stand along the path with candles.
Then in the gymnasium, one person from each of the different age groups (from entering sixth grade to entering eleventh) reads aloud a chapter of the biblical book of Lamentations, which is read in synagogues on the day.
Lamentations is read again during the camp’s services the following day; and each age-level group of campers participates in special programs that last the day.
In the evening, the camp comes together again for “a program that is more uplifting,”
said Gordon. Last year, for example, the camp did a “multi-media presentation on the return to Zion.” Then comes the evening service and the breaking of the fast.
Gordon said Camp Ramah doesn’t require anybody to fast, but “the majority of the camp staff adults and the post-bar mitzvah kids do fast.”
At Habonim Camp Tavor in Three Rivers, Mich., evening activities on erev Tisha B’Av will focus on Jewish historical events. To set the scene, campers will participate in a guided meditation, according to camp education director Tamara Berger. “It will help the campers understand the context” and what Jews experienced in historical times, she said.
The next morning, the historical theme will continue with a rotation of activities that includes art, poetry and a “museum.”
Later in the day the focus will shift from what has happened in the past to Jewish survival and continuity. Campers will choose from a menu of topics about modern Jewish life in different places, in different areas of life and in different community organizations.
At Camp Tavor, one of seven summer camps in Canada and the United States affiliated with Habonim/Dror, the Progressive Labor Zionist Youth movement, fasting is optional. Though some of the older campers do fast, drinking water is required, Berger said.
Tisha B’Av plans are still in progress at Camp Young Judaea-Midwest in Waupaca.
But, last year, this Hadassah-sponsored camp endeavored to emphasize how the Jewish people have overcome many adversities in the distant past and more recently, such as the Rabin assassination and the current intifada.
Assistant camp director Daniel Schnitzer said an interview that at Camp Young Judaea they try to show their campers, who range from 8 to 14 years old, that suffering should not be “used as an excuse for self-pity” or negative behavior, but as an incentive for positive action.
With understanding of what it is to suffer should come the desire to alleviate suffering in others, he said. To that end, Young Judaea campers last year did community service projects, including visiting residents of a Wisconsin veterans’ home, helping in an animal shelter and creating a work of art for a community center in France where Jews are suffering anti-Semitic attacks.
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