Jews of Summer

Sandra Fox is visiting assistant professor of Hebrew Judaic Studies and Director of the Archive of the Jewish Left Project at New York University, and founder and executive producer of the Yiddish-language podcast Vaybertaytsh: A Feminist Podcast in Yiddish.

"The Jews of Summer is an important contribution to the study of postwar Jewish life. Sandra Fox's engaging and highly readable study of Jewish summer camping offers its fullest and most complex analysis, taking readers into every facet of Jewish camping. An original and essential contribution."—Riv-Ellen Prell, University of Minnesota "Rare is the book that is scholarly and entertaining, but The Jews of Summer is just that. Transporting the reader into the rhythms and romances of summer camp, Sandra Fox offers a deeply compelling lens into the profound and often generative ambivalences of postwar American Jewish life."—Lila Corwin Berman, Temple University "Though Jewish camping has roots going back to the Progressive Era, it really came into its golden age, along with American Judaism itself, in the postwar era. Jewish summer camp became not just a place to spend a summer, but a place to learnhowto be Jewish, as well as an ideological proving ground for the American Jewish future."All of this is wonderfully explored inThe Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America."—Rokhl Kafrissen, Tablet "The Jews of Summer is an essential and engaging addition to scholarship on Jewish camping. Summer is an appropriate season in which to read it—but any time of year will yield the same rewards."—Emily Schneider, Jewish Book Council "The Jews of Summer presents a rich historical narrative largely gleaned from camp archives and alumni interviews.... Not the least of its strengths is a compelling, multigenerational narrative about the importance of summer camp in postwar Jewish culture, an age of abundance that lasted from the 1940s until the mid-1970s."—Yeshua G. B. Tolle, Jewish Review of Books "Well-researched, with some wry photos (e.g., counselor dressed up as David Ben Gurion), this book offers a nostalgic glimpse into a part of American-Jewish history."—Hallie Cantor, Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews "Jews of Summer is particularly effective in tracing the evolution of Jewish summer camps in historical context, in representing the point of view of children and teenagers, and in calling attention to the overlooked history of Yiddish camps. Sandra Fox conveys a sense of optimism that summer camps will continue to be part of an evolving understanding of what is meant by Jewish authenticity."—Cynthia Bernstein, Contemporary Jewry "The immersive, sensory experiences of my own camp memories fit into the consensus view about the transformative power of Jewish summer camp that is explored in Fox's thematic chapters."—Rachel Gordan, H-Judaic "[Sandra Fox] does a highly effective job of depicting the camps as incubators of Jewish culture, religious practice, and political attitudes, and of identifying the camps' divergent ideas about how best to sustain Jewish heritage and traditions.... Especially impressive is the author's focus on the campers themselves: the youth cultures they created, and how, through a process of intergenerational negotiation, they forced changes to camp leaders' priorities and pedagogies, especially through resistance to Hebrew and Yiddish immersion."—Steven Mintz, American Historical Review

• Introduction: The Jewish Summer Camp: Between Fantasy and Reality1. "Under Optimum Conditions": American Jews and the Rise of the Summer Camp2. A Matter of Time: Constructing Camp Life for "Creative Survival"3. Jews Playing Games: Role-Play, Sociodrama, and Color War4. "A Little Suffering Goes a Long Way": Tisha B'Av, Ghetto Day, and the Shadow of the Holocaust5. The Language Cure: Embracing and Evolving Yiddishism and Hebraism6. "Is This What You Call Being Free?" Power and Youth Culture in the Camper Republic7. Summer Flings and Fuzzy Rings: Camper Romance, Erotic Zionism, and Intermarriage Anxiety8. Jewish Camping Post-PostwarConclusion