Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. Our next guest is Sandra Fox, author of a new book called The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America. Since that title is pretty self-explanatory, let's just bring Sandra Fox on. Now, in addition to writing this book, she is a visiting assistant professor at NYU and director of the Archive of the American Jewish Left in the Digital Age. She also hosts a podcast in Yiddish, I understand called Vaybertaytsh: A Feminist Podcast in Yiddish. Sandra, congratulations on the book, and welcome to WNYC.

Sandra Fox: Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled.

Brian Lehrer: First question, Allan Sherman was a Jewish comedian who did a lot of explicitly Jewish humor, and that Letter from Camp Song was his biggest hit. Does it appear in the book?

Sandra Fox: It actually doesn't, but as I heard it play, I remembered that before I went away for sleepaway camp my dad played that for me. I don't think I've heard it much since [laughter], but it was really nostalgic, so thank you.

Brian Lehrer: I read that it's been translated into and sung in Hebrew, but I couldn't find it. Oh, well. Did you ever hear that?

Sandra Fox: No.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Now to be clear with the listeners, when the title refers to summer camp and Jewish culture in postwar America, you mean explicitly Jewish camps where the content had a lot to do specifically with Judaism one way or another, right?

Sandra Fox: Right. Actually, there are so many different kinds of camps that cater to Jews. Some are more explicitly Jewish in their orientations. Some have a lot of different kind of educational content, mostly informal or experiential Jewish learning, and some don't. It may be the Jewish content is just wearing white on Friday nights to mark the Sabbath. All of those kinds of camps are great. This particular book that I just wrote focuses on the kind of the most highly intensively educational and ideological Jewish camps.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and I asked that question that way because even for me, I went to and then worked at some summer camps where most of the kids were Jewish, but these were sports camps and arts camps that were definitely secular. They just had a lot of Jewish kids. Maybe some of our listeners have been to camps like those, but that's not what you're writing about. You're writing about camps that emphasized more progressive or more conservative Judaism, Zionism, Yiddish, things like that. When and where did Jewish summer camps start?

Sandra Fox: Jewish summer camps start really where American summer camps start, which happened to be here basically in the New York area. In the progressive era, really the early 20th century, camps start to get founded by various kinds of social service agencies, agencies that are working to help immigrant children. Also, there were camps for middle-class children that were more well-to-do, and Jews are in the right place at the right time. They're in the New York area or other parts of the Northeast where camp is really gaining traction among white children in particular.

As the summer camp sector starts to grow, Jewish families want to send their kids to camp, and they're getting a lot of encouragement from various Jewish social service organizations to do so. A lot of the camps that served Gentiles did not allow Jews either explicitly or implicitly. Jews were barred from going to camps, and so a specifically Jewish sector of camps came into being.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, this is your chance to tell a summer camp story on the radio in this case in the context of Sandra Fox's book, The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America. 212-433-WNYC. Shout out the name of your Jewish summer camp if you like. Tell us if it reinforced or developed your Jewish sense of yourself in any way, and beyond that, you can even choose one unforgettable summer camp memory of any kind. If you want to tell the story briefly, just remember the words the FCC doesn't let us say on the radio, even the Hebrew or Yiddish translations of those words.

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. What happened in the period after World War II, the late '40s through the 1960s after the Holocaust? That's a period in your book.

Sandra Fox: A lot of historians painted that period for a long time as a golden era of American Judaism. This is when American Jews are becoming more socially mobile and affluent. They're more accepted in white culture in America. They're moving to the suburbs and in the suburbs, they create new synagogues and all sorts of different kinds of organizations, sisterhoods, Hebrew schools, and summer camps. In some ways that is a golden era, but at the same time, Jews were very, very concerned about how all of those changes suddenly being basically accepted into society more fully, and becoming more affluent middle class.

How that would change Judaism. They didn't necessarily understand how young Jews would be able to square what they saw as authentic Jewishness, whether that was based on ideas of the shtetl in Eastern Europe mythologized and nostalgized as it was almost fiddler on the roof like and the suburbs in America. Summer camps, which had existed before, become increasingly educational and focused on promoting various forms of Jewish culture. They look towards either the past in Eastern Europe, in the case of camps that engaged more with Yiddish culture.

Or towards the contemporary present in Israel at that time to source this sense of authenticity. Basically, the message at all of these different kinds of camps was that there was something inherently inauthentic about life in, let's say, the New York suburbs. That to become a "ideal or authentic Jew," you would go off to summer camp and be immersed in a different kind of Jewish culture based on somewhere else.

Brian Lehrer: Before we get too far away from that Allan Sherman song, Happy in Manhattan, has a call about that. Happy you are on WNYC. Hello?

Happy: Well, my mom went to camp with Allan Sherman. Allan Sherman, who wrote the song was also a camp person.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe that song, once he was a grownup was based on actual experience as a camper.

Happy: I'm sure.

Brian Lehrer: Did your mother have the same experiences that he sings about in the song, like people were getting poison ivy and ptomaine poisoning from the food in the camp and the campers, the counselors hated the waiters and the lake had alligators and all that stuff?

Happy: Well, I've never found an alligator, and I've looked. The worst night turned up in camp was snapping turtles and rattlesnakes.

Brian Lehrer: Happy, thank you very much. Judy, on the Upper West Side, you're on WNYC with a camp memory, I think, Judy Hello, you're on the air.

Judy: Hi, good morning, Brian. Thanks for taking the call. I told her I have two camps, but the first camp I have to give a shout-out to is a very old, established famous left-wing Yiddish camp, English and Yiddish Camp Kinder Ring, which is celebrating its 100th year this year. My brother went to that camp. I was not able to go but it's still around and I know people who go there now and it was an amazing place back then on Sylvan Lake in Hopewell Junction, New York.

Brian Lehrer: What was amazing about it, anything you can pinpoint?

Judy: It was totally integrated in a way that we did not see in the '50s in New York. There were all colors and kinds of kids in that camp back then in the '50s, and they made a point of it, and that was fabulous.

Brian Lehrer: Yet it was considered a Jewish summer camp?

Judy: Well, they forget it sometimes they did do Yiddish Kite and some theater things, Sholem Aleichem that kind of thing, and pretty much everybody [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You're describing a diverse environment where probably not everybody was Jewish.

Judy: That's correct. Although I think most of the people who ran the camp were Jewish.

Brian Lehrer: Judy, thank you. Thank you very much. Do you know that camp in particular?

Sandra Fox: I do. I'm really happy it got a shout-out. It actually doesn't feature that much in my book because they destroyed a lot of their documents during the McCarthy era. It was a communist Jewish camp, and so integrating people of all different backgrounds was part of their ideology. Unfortunately, their archives are pretty small because of what they did to just leave no trace.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. Your expertise academically is in the Jewish left, and you have that Jewish feminism podcast in Yiddish. Did you go to a camp like that?

Sandra Fox: Actually, no. I'm a millennial, I'm 34. When I was growing up, there were only two camps that were even related to that Yiddish leftist background still around Kinderland and Kinder Ring. That was not really, it's not a mainstream part of Jewish educational culture at this point. I went to a Zionist summer camp and I took a very interesting kind of windy path to Yiddishsm. I think that actually looking back now at the trajectory of writing this book, it actually followed a lot of my own trying to understand where I came from Jewishly and where I wanted to go.

Brian Lehrer: Before we take another call, you can imagine how many people are calling in wanting to tell their summer camp stories. People may assume that your book is largely about the littler kids at sleepaway camp and the Jewish culture that they were being filled with there. Also, your book is significantly about the oldest campers and counselors, the high school-age ones. Part of the context is that the camp directors actually wanted them to socialize, maybe even wanted them to have sex in the woods. Can you talk about that?

Sandra Fox: Yes. This is all really fitting with the stuff you've been doing this week about teens and mental health. Jewish camps are in many ways, not unique. All kinds of Americans go to camp. I think that in terms of religious groups, Mormons are actually more likely to go to camp than Jews. There are a couple of things that make the Jewish camp experience a little bit unique. One is that Jews, no matter where they've moved in the United States their camps tend to follow the pattern that was created here in the northeast of summer camp sessions that were at least three weeks long.

Often four weeks long, and then people would go for eight weeks. This is not the case in a lot of other areas of America where camp is more like a week or two. That's just to give context of how long people are in camp. They can really create these relationships both to other people and also to the camp. In terms of the youth culture element, the other thing that's unique about Jewish camps is that they've historically kept campers at camp longer than most secular or non-denominational camps in America.

When most teenagers are off getting a job in an ice cream shop, a lot of the campers in especially these Jewishly educational camps continue to be campers or counselors in training through high school, which means that you have this teenage presence at camp. Something that was really important to me to bring out in the book was how that youth culture played out and what you were alluding to before vis-a-vis romance and sexuality. Campers came to camp wanting to have sexual and romantic experiences that is very normal and nothing specifically Jewish there.

What started to happen over the course of the post-war decades is that as more and more Jews were choosing to marry outside the faith, camp leaders who were very concerned about this and how this might lead to more and more assimilation, started to actually see a reason to encourage, at least turn a blind eye, if not encourage coupling. That is a huge part of summer camp culture. In the last couple years, specifically around the Me Too movement, young Jews today are starting to talk about the fact that that's actually had some negative consequences at camp and a culture of sexual harassment.

Brian Lehrer: Huh. It's interesting that you mentioned the teenage aspect of this when kids might have been working because the main camp that I was at that really had an impact on me was a teenage performing arts camp in the Berkshires called Camp Tomoka in Beckett, Massachusetts. Although when I was there as a 15-year-old, my parents were paying part of the tuition and I was actually washing pots in the kitchen after dinner to partially work my way through. At that camp Tomoka in the Berkshires, I actually got to do my first radio shows because one of the counselors was a DJ.

He hooked up two turntables to the Camp PA system and set up radio as a camp activity. I said, "Oh, that sounds like fun." That's where I did my first radio shows. There was this idea, even though it was a secular camp that a lot of the kids and a lot of the kids were Jewish were still developing as kids and the parents wanted a camper experience for them, not just the job.

Sandra Fox: Absolutely. A lot of Jewish camps have focused on leadership development in the older teenage years. To explain or justify why sending a camper to camp even past 15, 16, even 17 years old is worthwhile.

Brian Lehrer: Matan in Union Square. You're on WNYC. Hi, Matan.

Matan: Hi. How is the doing, Brian?

Brian Kehrer: Doing all right.

Matan: I just wanted to call and say that I went to Camp Saba in Rocky Mouth, Missouri, and so did my older brother. When Jerry Garcia died, they had a big bonfire and all sang Friend of the Devil and other songs that Jerry Garcia had.

Brian Lehrer: Grateful Dead Camp.

Matan: Yes. That right.

Brian Lehrer: That's your summer camp memory. How about Lee in the East Village? You're on WNYC. Hi Lee.

Lee: Hi. My experience was in the 60s. My camp was called Camp Algonquin, unfortunately, it is no longer, I want to interject that it was the inspiration and filmed on the grounds at that time out of business camp for a wonderfully bad, gloriously bad, horribly cold sleepaway camp, which was thinly available to people that in fact were at the camp, the counselors and owners, et cetera. The camp was wonderful. This was not a fancy camp, but I was lucky to go to camp. To me it really mirrored, I would say, the suburban existence of many Jewish people of that era.

In fact, maybe even earlier, one of the owners, in fact, had been a-- when a lot of Jews played basketball, was in fact a professional basketball player. We learned basketball wonderfully. It was somewhat religious because we had a kosher mess hall. We had services, but I think again, it reflected the suburban Jewish existence in the '60s by going to camp. It was a wonderful experience. I just want to add one last thing. I'm a physician. I'm going to be the camp physician at my son's camp this summer, and I am thrilled with the possibility of going back to camp, possibly even a bit more than my own son.

Brian Lehrer: The nostalgia kicks in. Lee, thank you very much. Here's another jam band connection, I think. Josh in Astoria. You're on WNYC. Hi Josh.

Josh: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I missed the name of the communist camp you were talking about a little while ago, but it sounds suspiciously similar like the one my dad went to in the Catskills Kinderwelt not to be confused with Kinder Ring or Kinder Land, it was the labor Zionist camp that my grandparents were involved with. One of my dad's favorite memories, one of his crowning achievements in life, is getting the best waiter award when he was, I think 16 and now hangs in the music room in their house.

I went to a summer camp in New Hampshire called Camp Young JudaeaWhen Jerry Garcia died, I tried to organize a minion. I was 15. It didn't really take, but I have a theory that the reason the band Phish got so popular in the '90s is because a lot of the kids that I went to in summer camp and some of the other summer camps in the greater Boston area were all populated by this progressive tie-dye, wearing pots, smoking hippies who are 14, 15, 16. Right at the age where you're starting to get into these kinds of bands.

We all traded tapes, we all listened to Phish. By that point, Phish had really gotten popular on the East Coast. Yes, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: I'm just curious.

Josh: I'd like to think that I had a small part in--

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Since you're telling this in the teenage context, was there anything in your experience like Sandra was describing where the camp seemed to promote hooking up in one way or another so that in the long run Jews would marry Jews?

Josh: I don't think there was any of that. I certainly didn't do any hooking up myself, unfortunately. That came later. Some of my friends I know definitely were experimenting with that kind of stuff, but no, it wasn't that birthright--

Brian Lehrer: Structurally. Josh, thank you very much. Well, to that point, Sandra, were these camps always co-ed? The camp I worked at in the Adirondacks as a counselor was an all-boys camp, Balfour Lake Camp, and again, mostly Jews, but not a Jewish-themed camp. It had a sister camp down the road, Camp Che-Na-Wah, which I understand Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended once upon a time as a camper. After the campers went to bed, the counselors from the two camps were allowed to gather together in a space at the girls camp.

Was there a co-ed model and a brother-sister camps model?

Sandra Fox: The kinds of camps I studied were all co-ed actually. Jewish organizations tended to embrace the co-ed model very early when that started to get introduced in the camping world in the 1920s or so. A lot of them were ran by very progressive-leaning Jews, even if they weren't Jewishly religiously affiliated. A lot of camps that had mostly Jewish campers were ran by very progressive people and they embraced the idea of co-educational camping. There were camps, of course, that you've described.

I think my grandmother actually went to a camp that was not co-ed, but Jewish. The kinds of camps I studied that really are affiliated with Zionist movements or Yiddish organizations or the reform and conservative movements of Judaism are all co-ed. Today a lot of the camps, even for Orthodox children are to some extent co-ed. Not all of them, but modern Orthodox camps. Some are co-ed and some aren't.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, your book is explicitly a history book, Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Post-war America. What's the state of Jewish summer camp today?

Sandra Fox: It looks pretty good. It's facing a bunch of different challenges, but it's prepared to take them on because the Jewish camping world has become so professionalized and there's a lot of different organizations and philanthropic endeavors that back it up. Some of the challenges that do jump out are the fact that camp is really expensive now, so that four to eight-week model is becoming out of reach for a lot of families. I see a lot of camps are creating two-week sessions to accommodate that change.

Also, in line with what we were talking about with teenagers, the pressure on teenagers to do things that are "worthwhile" for their college applications is so huge that I know a lot of camps are creating specialty programs so that campers can spin what they did at their Jewish summer camp as something useful for their college applications. They are innovating to fit the new era.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it with Sandra Fox, author of The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Post-War America. Fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing it with us and callers. Thank you.

Sandra Fox: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: That's the Brian Lehrer Show for today. Produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our Daily Politics Podcast. We have Brianna Brady as an intern. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio with Juliana Fonda and Matt Marando at the audio controls. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for Allison.

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