Israelis flock to U.S. camps to flee the madness.
by Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor Jewish Week 08/03/2001Note:
For several summers MANY years ago I was on the staff at Camp Moshava and each summer, as the campers joined for the first service I noted with great pain if yet once again a young camper would be saying the mourner's kaddish. A quarter century later I am stunned by the thought that the madness of Oslo has caused such an unbelievable turn of events
Aaron Lerner, IMRAGod answered Job from out of a whirlwind, but He's answering the Kaddish of Israeli wartime orphans with a summer breeze in the Poconos; a deer tentatively walking out of the woods; a bale of hay on a hilltop farm.
While American Jews fly East to show solidarity, more than 1,000 Israelis - campers, counselors and staff - have flown West, summering in Jewish camps here, a respite from the anxiety and shiva calls of the last 10 months.
At Camp Moshava, an Orthodox coed camp in Indian Orchard, Pa., Israelis comprise more than 10 percent of the population. The 45 adults, 90 counselors and specialty staff, 64 campers and 23 day-campers are on a four-to eight-week furlough, some subsidized by the camp.
Nothing tells the story of war more chillingly than the recitation of Kaddish by little boys whose voices have yet to change. As surely as there is a God, He is summering in the Poconos, too, listening to orphans praising His name in memory of those shot in the head or brutalized before their time.
"Well," says camp director Alan Silverman, who himself comes to Moshava from his home on the West Bank, "this summer we have Ruthy Gillis and her five children," whose husband and father, Shmuel, 42, was murdered by Palestinians in February; "and Avihu Cohen," whose father, Baruch, 59, was murdered by Palestinians in March; and "the brother and sister of Kobe Mandell," 14, whose head was smashed in May; and the cousin of Hillel Lieberman, 36, who was murdered near Joseph's burning tomb in October; and Silverman's voice trails off .
In this camp, will I see you in September is not the issue. The question is, who has not been seen since September? Maybe there's an Israeli in the room who's enjoying life's final July and August.
The freshwater lake down the hill is absolutely still in the late afternoon. A smoky haze rises from dark green mountains, in whose bowl the camp rests. Children walk from the pool wrapped in towels and flopping thongs. A boy drags a bunt down the first-base line while an arts-and-craftsy "Walls of Jerusalem" stands beyond right field. In the dining room, large pre-Oslo wooden shelet signs depict an Israel in full: borders from Suez to the Jordan.
Photos of soldiers missing in action are on every dining room door. Campers stand on their wooden benches, shaking the tables and rafters, as they have for years here, to chant triumphal songs of Jerusalem, accompanied by a man on accordion - of course, the accordion.
The year could have been 1948 or 1967, but then this summer is different. A little boy, 3 years old, with almost white hair, darts among the side tables where grownups sit, and a woman whispers: "That's Shai Gillis."
Ruthy Gillis, 38, sits on a bench outside the dining room in the dusk. Wisps of hair float out of the dark scarf that covers her head.
Was Shmuel blond like Shai?
"When he was a child," says Ruthy. "When I met Shmuel, his hair was more brown."
She remembers his hair, and walking with Shmuel when he courted her. "He was so quiet, tzanua," modest. They went walking in Jerusalem at night, through the artist colony by the windmill.
Ruthy and Shmuel once actually visited Moshava together, when they briefly lived in Boston. She returns, a widow and icon.
"Alan [Silverman] offered me a job in melechet yad [arts and crafts]," says Ruthy. "I give some sichot [classes] here and there. I rest here and there. Relaxing? It's not home, but the children ..."
She stops and thinks about her five children in the bulletproof school bus that goes on that road where their father was gunned down. Ruthy looks up. "The children are enjoying camp so much that it makes me happy," she says.
Happy for the first time in a while. "The people that killed Shmuel didn't know anything about him," says Ruthy. "They just knew he was a Jew."
He was a doctor and the last patient he treated was a Palestinian before his head was hit by Palestinian bullets.
Now, "Both my sons say Kaddish; Amichai, 12, and Noam, who's 8 1/2. It's very hard for them, especially in new places. Everyone looks at you. But the boys took it upon themselves, three times a day. I appreciate them." Shai sings himself to sleep with a ballad about Bar Kochba, the ancient hero. "Maybe he thinks we need a hero," says Ruthy.
The counselors, but not the bunkmates, of the Gillis children were briefed ahead of time about the orphans on the next cot. Channah Spiegelman, the head counselor, says: "Ruthy told us her kids needed some time and space away from everything that was going on. They themselves asked that it not be discussed in the bunk until they became more comfortable with their peers."
Ruthy addressed the staff, and even a rally of Jewish campers in New York City. Looking out over the crowd, this shy woman found herself telling her story in a language that wasn't her own: "Until five months ago I had a normal family life ..."
All over Israel are Jews who had a normal family life. Now they're sending their children to America, a modern Kindertransport. The Jewish Agency reports a remarkable 6,000 Israeli applications for American camps, aside from those Israelis who made private arrangements. For those left behind, Boys Town Jerusalem hosted a four-day camp for 200 students from Gaza's Gush Katif.
In the morning, Moshava campers awake to a reveille of snappy IDF marching tunes. Newlyweds Avihu and Dikla Cohen, in their early 20s, playfully spray each other with water guns. They are a beautiful couple, engaged just before his father was shot in the head by Palestinians. They married soon after. Back in Israel, he is the town manager of Karmei Tzur, the village where the Gillises live, and now they say Kaddish together in the camp's wooden shul.
"After a horrible year in Israel, it's quiet here, peaceful," Avihu says. "The roads are open. I can live like a normal person."
Surrounded by the spectacular Pennsylvania mountains and forests, Dikla says you can feel God in a place like this. "Deer come out of the woods."
"Last year we even saw a bear," says Avihu. "William Penn, he came here after being persecuted because of religion. Do you know what's the meaning of Pennsylvania? 'Sylvania' means trees, a paradise. This is Penn's paradise."
Dikla says it reminds her of davening, "Wow, Hashem, what great things you created!"
Avihu smiles: "My wife says Americans have Olam Habah b'Olam Hazeh," the World-to-Come in the here and now.
Avihu adds, "Everywhere you go in this camp you see Hebrew, you see a map, you see a flag."
It's safe. "Everyone feels comfortable with everyone," says Dikla. "Everyone knows that everyone is Jewish here, what are the mitzvot, what is Jerusalem. Everyone is concerned with what is going on in Israel."
When they were dating in Israel, Avihu says he always had to check if the roads were open between his Efrat home and Dikla's in Jerusalem. His father, Baruch, was murdered on that Efrat-Jerusalem road.
"Here, in Pennsylvania, I drive happy," says Avihu. "The window is down. I don't have to look in mirrors. Every half-mile, another farm. Everyone lives on his own property with no fence. Just living. When I drive, at first I think, don't they have a situation to worry about? But they have to worry about just one thing - when to cut the hay. It's beautiful."
On Tisha b'Av, the campers marched down into the valley by the tennis courts, walking through fiery torchlight held aloft by camp staff, including Avihu and Dikla. The campers sang all the sad songs about Jerusalem. It is one of the great American Jewish camp traditions, the papier-mache mock-up of Jerusalem burning on a barge in the lake with Lamentations, and now Kaddish, by firelight and flashlight. All through the Poconos and the Catskills, torches were smoking and children were wide-eyed.
Jerusalem was burning, all over the world.