Given the centrality of Shabbat celebration to the weekly cycle of Jewish residential camps, it is surprising how little Shabbat-at-camp has been studied. This participant observational study of three American Jewish residential camps has focused on how Shabbat-at-camp is created and how the ritual celebrations engage the older campers. This study…

Missing from the growing literature on Jewish camps is Lukinsky's (1968) pioneering study of the curriculum to teach responsibility that he designed for the 1966 Ramah American Seminar. Reviewing this work I discovered that Lukinsky--under Schwab's (1971) influence--creates a rare balance between his own perspectives as an educational practitioner…

How do Jewish residential summer camps provide campers and staff with opportunities to learn and grow as Jews? Sales and Saxe (2004) have viewed this growth through the lens of their socialization theory. This article asks: Can there be more to the camp experience than being socialized into the norms and values of a well-aligned Jewish…

What is the place of teaching about other world religions in a Jewish educational curriculum for adolescents? This article explores a course in world religions that has been taught at the Genesis Program at Brandeis University since 2001. Based on a participant observational study during 2002 and 2012, the author traces how the teachers construct…

In his retrospective essay, Seymour Fox (1997) identified "vision" as the essential element that shaped the Ramah camp system. I will take a critical look at Fox's main claims: (1) A particular model of vision was essential to the development of Camp Ramah; and (2) That model of vision should guide contemporary Jewish educators in creating Jewish…

In this article, the author shares a few points of clarification to amplify the argument he puts forth in his article titled, "Beyond More Jews Doing Jewish: Clarifying the Goals of Informal Jewish Education." The author argues that socialization and education are two social processes that often overlap and reinforce one another. The purpose of…

Why has it been so difficult to define the goals of Jewish informal education? Often informal educators define their work in terms of the goals of Jewish socialization. Those terms have worked to attract funders' support, but also limited the educational creativity of this field. This article argues for a dual defining of goals: socialization and…