March 13, 2008
Calling (E-mailing) All Jewish Campers
by Jacob Berkman
You’ve got camp: Viral marketing aims to find new Jewish campers


February 6, 2008
$8.4 Million Grant to Launch Specialty Camps
by Jacob Berkman
The Jim Joseph Foundation has allocated $8.4 million to the Foundation for Jewish Camping to develop and launch four camps that will combine a Jewish curriculum with a specific concentration.


September 11, 2007
Elisa Spungen Bildner: Raising the Profile of Jewish Camping
by Susan Josephs
Elisa Spungen Bildner and her husband, Robert Bildner, armed with their growing reputation as a philanthropic dynamic duo intent on revitalizing the Jewish community, went on to establish the Foundation for Jewish Camping. Nine years later, the $12 million public foundation provides funding, scholarships, professional development programs and other resources to the 130 Jewish overnight summer camps and their 60,000 campers in North America. The Foundation plucked Jewish camping from an obscure part of Jewish communal awareness and stuck it into the forefront, she says.


August 28, 2007
Summer Camp: The New It Cause
by Carolyn Slutsky
Tens of millions of dollars are pouring into the camping network, but is it just the continuity flavor of the month?


May 4, 2007
Overnight Sensations
by Carolyn Slutsky
Identity-building sleep-away camps get $15 million shot in the arm to create Campership Incentive Program in communities across the country.


March 26, 2007
S’more the Merrier: Summer Camps Abound For Every Kind of Kid
by Lisa Black
Summer camps abound for every kind of kid, from atheists to pre-criminologists. But the traditional, steeped-in-nature-and-bugspray variety remains king of the forest.


March 26, 2007
Camp Meds--Rx for a Positive Summer Experience
by Pearl Salkin
Camps are becoming increasingly more accommodating to campers on medication, making for more healthy, happy camp experiences.


December 27, 2006
As camps get more professional, directors turn to CEO-like training
by Jacob Berkman
The Foundation for Jewish Camping and Brandeis University will offer a fellowship to train the next generation of directors of nonprofit Jewish camps, the two announced at a Nov. 29 cocktail reception in New York at The Samuel Bronfman Foundation.


November 9, 2006
A camping pro’s dreams turn to transforming summers for 60,000 kids
by Johanna Ginsberg
Skip Vichness is the new board chairman of the eight-year-old Foundation for Jewish Camping. In this position, Vichness, a longtime New Jerseyan who now lives in Manhattan, replaces FJC founders Robert and Elisa Spungen Bildner of Montclair, who have shifted over to head the organization’s board of trustees.


August 11, 2006
More Jewish Parents Picking Secular Path to Camp
by Julie Gruenbaum Fax
According to a new study, only about 40 percent of the kids’ families say they intend to send them back to Jewish camp the following summer -- compared to 60 percent who intend to return to non-Jewish camps. That is one of the surprising findings that camp directors and lay leaders will have to grapple with as they analyze and incorporate into their marketing and programming a study of the Southern California overnight camping market commissioned by the New York-based Foundation for Jewish Camping and supported by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.


June 23, 2006
Appreciating The Values Of Camp
by Gary Rosenblatt - Editor and Publisher
Appreciating the Values of Camp


June 22, 2006
Campfire stories and lumpy pottery
by Chanan Tigay
Campfire stories and lumpy pottery make way for Jewish specialty camps


May 11, 2006
Sports stars anchor Y’s specialty camps
by Ron Kaplan, NJJN Staff Writer
Three legendary Jewish sports figures will lend their expertise as New Jersey YM-YWHA Camps inaugurate specialty summer programs designed to develop skills in sports and other areas.


April 14, 2006
Hiking to havdalah - camp cinches Jewish identity
by ELLEN SCHUR BROWN, Editor, Family Section
It might look like a rough-hewn cabin with canvas walls and spider webs, but to philanthropists it’s the future of Jewish identity.


March 10, 2006
Is Jewish Camping Poised For Takeoff?
by Doug Chandler - Special To The Jewish Week
Foundation’’s first conference aims to place issue atop communal agenda, as millions could pour into movement.


March 7, 2006
Not just about fun: Camp seen as key to building Jewish identity
by Chanan Tigay
Continuity and identity long have been buzzwords in the Jewish community — and one essential component of establishing them as facts on the ground, advocates believe, is summer camp.


February 16, 2006
Producing Leaders is a benefit of camping
by Jerry Silverman, President, Foundation for Jewish Camping
In recent months, I''ve read article after article decrying the lack of continuity in the Jewish community and asking where will the next generation of Jewish leaders come from and how will we maintain continuity? One answer is, and has been, available to Jews for more than 100 years, and that is the 130 non-profit Jewish overnight camps across North America.


February 14, 2006
Building Jewish Souls One Smile at A Time
by Jordan Dale
In my twenty years as executive director of Surprise Lake Camp, we''ve always been asked the question, What percentage of your campers is Jewish? The answer has remained the same--somewhere between 95% and 100%. What has changed, however, is the reaction to who we consider to be Jewish.


January 27, 2006
‘Beyond Miriam’ tackles campers’ emotional issues
by Susan H. Kahn Assistant Editor
Guide for camp directors addresses poor body image, eating disorders and cutting


January 26, 2006
Jewish summer camp gets grant for counselors
by Katy Moore Tribune-Herald staff writer
A local Jewish summer camp hopes a recently received grant will help retain camp counselors year after year. The Greene Family Camp, located in Bruceville, was chosen with 28 other camps around the country as a recipient for the 2006 Cornerstone Fellowship.


December 30, 2005
Even Utopia Has a Price Tag
by Lea Lion, Contributing Writer
Late in the summer of 1987, my parents shipped me off to the Cleveland Jewish Community Center’s cleverly named Camp Wise. It was August, the weather was hot, and the little village of wooden cabins with tent flaps for walls was a welcome change from the air-conditioned houses of the city.


September 29, 2005
BENEFIT CONCERT TO AID HURRICANE KATRINA RELIEF EFFORTS
Foundation for Jewish Camping, the umbrella organization of more than 120 Jewish overnight camps in North America, is lending support for a benefit concert, “Walk the Walk,” to aid Hurricane Katrina relief efforts...


September 29, 2005
North Texans host more evacuees
by Steve Israel
The Jewish community laid out its welcome mat once again last week, reprising its role as a major sanctuary for Gulf Coast evacuees this hurricane season.


August 21, 2005
The Gifts Of Jewish Camp
by Robert A. Sklar
It’s woods and water, fun and friendship, sun and spirituality. It’s also a building block of Jewish identity. It’s Jewish summer camp.


July 27, 2005
Faith & fun
by Jane Lampman
As the morning light seeps through the trees, kids pour out of the woods onto a semicircle of benches and begin the Rah-Rah-Ray chapel service with an enthusiastic song, Open the Eyes of My Heart.


July 15, 2005
Beyond the Birds and the Bees
by Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Education Editor
It was lights out in the guys bunk at Camp Alonim, and the beginning of the nightly brag session. Some of the 15 and 16 year olds started egging each other on to share details of who snuck where with whom and how far they got.


July 8, 2005
Overnight Jewish camp welcomes kids with gay parents
A Jewish camp for children plans to open its doors to children from interfaith, interracial and same-sex families, according to a news release from the Foundation for Jewish Camping, which supports the facility.


July 8, 2005
Jewish camps seek diversity to break down prejudice
by Chanan Tigay
Jody Bartone's kids had outgrown day camp a few years back, and she was looking to find a sleep-away camp where they could spend the summer.


February 25, 2005
Foundation''s new director extols benefits of Jewish camping
by Howard Blas
After 25 years of selling and marketing such products as Stride Rite, Keds and Levi Strauss, Jerry Silverman brings his business sense and passion to a product that lasts many years longer than your average pair of shoes or jeans.


February 4, 2005
More than fun and games
by Janet Silver Ghent
Not so long ago, Jerry Silverman was an executive with Levi Strauss, living in Walnut Creek and doing the dad thing. As the father of five, he enjoyed visiting the Jewish camps his kids attended and eventually became involved as a lay leader.


February 4, 2005
Hello muddah, hello faddah
by Jennifer Goldberg
Allan Sherman’s 1960s hit Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, chronicles the misadventures of a young boy at summer camp, complete with alligators in the lake, missing campers and food poisoning. Thankfully, times have changed.


January 6, 2005
Happy (specialized) campers
by Johanna Ginsberg
In the idyllic setting of the Berkshire Mountains, a region known for its cultural arts offerings, campers with a special interest in music and arts gather in the morning to study a Judaic text; in the afternoon, they create an artistic representation of that text.


December 13, 2004
National Foundation for Jewish Camping
by Cindy Sher
It’s not every day you hear about CEOs of major for-profit corporations leaving their jobs for the nonprofit world. But something inspired Jerry Silverman to do just that.


September 3, 2004
Happy Campers
by Rob Eshman, Editor-in-Chief
We are driving to pick up our son from camp. He’s been there three weeks, the longest stretch he’s been away from us since his birth.