In the early 1950s, when future rabbi Burton Wax was a camper at Camp Moshava, then located in Rolling Prairie, Ind., the cabins weren’t permanent and had to be dismantled after every summer session, there was no swimming facility, the “baseball field” was just a piece of flat land and to get from the boys’ side to the girls’ you had to go up several flights of steps – the two sides weren’t level.
But religious life at the camp “was just like today,” Rabbi Wax said. And that may be the key to the camp’s longevity and the amazing loyalty so many families show to it.
Many of those families celebrated Camp Moshava’s 75th anniversary at a Sunday, Dec. 7 event in Skokie.
What keeps campers sending their children to Moshava once they become parents and kids going back summer after summer? The friendships, the continuity and perhaps most of all the Israeli influence that pervades every aspect of the camp, from color wars to post-Shabbat-dinner singing, some of those family members say.
Michelle Friedman, who attended the camp, as did her father and her children, says with a laugh that “at some point I had to say to my children, you have to stop going to camp and get a job.”
One of her sons made aliyah (immigrated to Israel) a year ago, and Moshava, she says, was an important reason for his decision to live in the Jewish State.
“What makes Moshava unique is how, along with having fun and having a great overnight camp experience, Jewish values and Israel are threaded into everything they do,” Friedman says.
“It’s the love for Israel, the idea of working for Israel, understanding the history of Israel. It is definitely a Zionist camp and that makes it unique from some of the other (Jewish) camps.”
Early years
In 1939, a number of rabbis and other prominent members of Chicago’s Jewish community decided that “a summer camp for the youth groups of Hapoel Hamizrachi (now called Religious Zionists) was an absolute necessity,” according to historical information from the camp. They purchased a 12-acre tract of land in Rolling Prairie, Ind., where the facility would be located for the next 15 years.
They weren’t easy years. “It took convincing and persuasion to interest children in coming to this almost completely desolate site, and then to get their parents to agree to send them,” the historical brochure relates, and goes on to note that “the area was almost completely surrounded by swamp.
Though physical facilities were certainly lacking, the spirit of the youngsters and their leaders created enough of a fire for the camp to continually progress … “
Ultimately a dining hall, an infirmary and an extra kitchen so meat meals could be served were added. One who was instrumental in helping to provide these facilities, camp parent Sol Lazar, pronounced himself “amazed by (campers’) singing and their love for Yiddishkeit, and … convinced that as long as Camp Moshava was given an opportunity to service Jewish youth, Yiddishkeit would continue to exist.”
What might be called the camp’s modern era began in 1955, when a group launched a campaign to raise the $75,000 needed to buy the present campsite in Wild Rose, Wis.
Improvements to the site came quickly: a new sports field, a “black topped” one; a combination synagogue and recreation hall; cabins and a “shower house”; a larger dining hall and kitchen; tennis, basketball and volleyball courts; classroom building; staff lounge and amphitheater; and living accommodations for married staff members.
More physical additions followed, but the spiritual side of the camp also expanded, with the first shaliach (Israeli cultural emissary) from the Bnei Akiva movement coming to the camp in 1964, where he found success “adding Israeli spirit and new invocations to the programs in the camp.” Since that year Israeli representatives have been an important addition to camp every summer.
Today the camp serves girls and boys from third grade to high school. The list of accommodations and activities at Moshava is typical of modern-day summer camps: heated swimming pool, indoor and outdoor synagogues, health center, gym with two basketball courts, baseball, soccer and basketball courts outdoors, roller hockey fields, zipline and climbing wall, wiffle ball field. Activities include drama, sports, arts and crafts, music field trips and more.
But what gives Moshava its unique flavor, according to camp families, has nothing to do with sports facilities and everything to do with the three daily prayer services that every camper attends, the daily shiurim (Torah lessons) and, perhaps even more important, the Israeli flavor that permeates every aspect of the camp.
“It’s the closest you can get to what living in Israel is like without actually being there,” said Ora Aaron, Rabbi Wax’s daughter, and mother of Ilana, all of whom attended the camp.
Beyond providing fun and personal spiritual experience, Aaron says she thinks the camp has a mission in the larger Jewish community.
“It builds on what kids learn in school – loving Israel, wanting to be in Israel. It brings it to another level, and that’s very important.”
Her daughter, Ilana Aaron, now 20, was at Camp Moshava for nine summers, missing only one when she spent a year and a half in Israel. This year she will be going back as a counselor.
“I started going because it had been part of my family, all my friends were going there and it seemed like the right thing to do,” she says. “I kept going back because I had great friends and wonderful experiences there. They were the experiences of a lifetime, some of the best summers I’ve ever had.”
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