Summertime Blues and Whites

Stand for Israel  |  July 15, 2019

Once American children arrive at college (and often even before), they are bombarded with anti-Israel messages from the BDS movement and other enemies of the Jewish state. But now, Deborah Fineblum writes for our friends at JNS, summer camps are working to educate youngsters to stand for Israel:

Aviva Weinstein fell in love with Israel thousands of miles from the Jewish homeland at Camp Ramah in the Poconos.

Weinstein is among the generations of North American Jewish teens who have forged lifelong attachments to the Jewish state in the intimate petri dish of an overnight Jewish camp environment, where friendships, values and Jewish peoplehood are born and raised.

Strengthening Weinstein’s attachment further were the six weeks last summer when she absorbed the sights, sounds and atmosphere of the Jewish state as part of Ramah’s Israel Seminar. So this summer, when the 18-year-old heads back to her old camp, it will be as a counselor who has much to teach. “Being in Israel, connecting to Israelis, I was inspired in ways I can now share with my campers.”

This inspiration and connection come at a crucial time in American and Jewish history as the college campuses these youngsters will soon walk onto become increasingly hostile to Israel, and sometimes, even to Jews…