A kosher corner for campers in Lake Como, PA

LAKEWOOD, Pennsylvania — There was a time when you couldn’t get kosher sushi or iced coffee while at sleepaway camp.

But most campers don’t remember those dark days.

“No sushi?” asked Yael, a 13-year-old camper from Camp Lavi in Lakewood, Pennsylvania. “How’d you survive?”

Welcome to the Pocono Mountains, home to approximately 50 sleepaway camps — and an impressive spread of kosher food.

There have always been pizza parlors and ice cream stands, bars and even Chinese takeout in this bucolic corner of Pennsylvania, but it wasn’t until about a decade and a half ago that Lakewood — home to the religiously observant camps of Morasha, Lavi, Moshava, Camp Ramah in the Poconos, Nesher and Seneca Lake — could verify that the local ice cream shop’s soft serves and sprinkles were 100% kosher.

Rabbi Mark Dratch, the former camp rabbi at Morasha who is now the executive director of the Rabbinical Council of America, recalls that Lakewood’s premier ice cream stand, Jericho Dairy Bar, known locally as Jericho’s, has served kosher ice cream and toppings for at least 16 years.

Jericho’s is owned by Lakewood local Fay Woodmansee (who would not answer repeated phone calls and requests for an interview).

Despite what is a sometimes less than warm manner to customers, there is almost always a long line outside Jericho’s during the summer months, as kids and adults ponder which flavor to choose for their Flurry, Jericho’s beloved mix of soft serve ice cream with the chocolate bar bits of one’s choosing. There are also hard ice cream flavors, fruit-flavored ices, shakes and floats, as well as non-kosher burgers, hoagies and fries.

“Jericho’s was the first stop even before we would get to camp and unload the car; we would stop there,” said Dratch.

Offering proper kosher supervision for the ice cream wasn’t difficult, said Dratch. The ice cream is kept separate from the non-kosher foods also made at Jericho’s, “because it wouldn’t make sense to have the deep fryer next to the freezer,” he said.

The ice creams and toppings also have proper supervision and the Jericho’s staff were “very meticulous and careful,” he said. “They understood what they were serving and did it with great respect and decency and trustworthiness.”

Dratch said he would stop in from time to time to do a surprise kosher check and go through the inventory. The process worked so well that the Jericho’s staff wouldn’t use any new products until they had shown it to the rabbi.

After Dratch left his post as the Morasha rabbi, other camp rabbis have taken over the task of supervising Jericho’s kosher supervision. The sleepaway camp is a short walk away from the ice cream stand.

Of course, said Dratch, it made sense to keep kosher, given the tremendous population growth that happens in Lakewood, also known as Lake Como, each summer. His son did a study during high school on the local population, finding that there are about 250 permanent residents of the town, with an increase to about 10,000 during the summer.

Seasonal seasoned kosher pizza

Jericho’s, like Como Pizza, the town’s kosher pizza joint, is only open during the summer months.

The kosher pizza place opened 14 years ago, said Seth Feuerstein-Rudin, who is now a partner in the business with the original owner, Josh Chaitovsky. Hailing from Teaneck, New Jersey, Feuerstein-Rudin, who is 24, worked at nearby Camp Nesher for four years as a nature specialist.

‘We’ve become a food court in the Poconos’

Now he lives in an apartment in Lakewood during the summer season, from July through August, churning out pizzas and garlic knots with his staff, for a steady stream of customers.

It was Chaitovsky’s idea to open a pizza store when he was still a camper at Morasha. He got together with a group of friends and opened up Como Pizza in a storefront in the tiny town, down the road from the library and catty corner from Jericho’s. They’d never made pizza before, but tested a few recipes at home before they came up with their current version, a fairly thin pizza base with a thick crust that is slightly floury to the touch.

That was all they served until two summers ago when they added sushi as part of a partnership with with Stop, Shop & Roll, a sushi restaurant in Cedarhurst, Long Island. This summer, they added a café with different coffee drinks on the third side of the simple, shack-like storefront.

“We’ve become a food court in the Poconos,” said Feuerstein-Rudin.

An island of observant Judaism in the Poconos wilds

Creating an environment of observant Judaism in the Poconos is no small feat, commented Rabbi Joel Seltzer, executive director of Camp Ramah in the Poconos.

“It involves creating a wholly immersive educational experience, one that is largely contained within the eruv” – the halachic borders of the camp community – “of camp,” said Seltzer. “However, our friends at Como Pizza and Jericho’s have helped immensely in giving our campers and staff a fully kosher place to grab a slice, some fries or ice cream.”

Camps can order pizza deliveries for groups at camp, and while Seltzer did treat staff to a Cholov Yisrael ice cream truck one night this summer, there’s no better treat than a Jericho’s Flurry at the end of a long, hard, day of camp.

Like Jericho’s, Como Pizza is nearly always busy, especially during the quiet, summer nights when little else is available on the dark, two-lane roads of this region. There’s a wide-screen TV outside, and inside the screen-doored pizza shop are walls covered with paper plate greetings drawn by patrons of the various camps.

“I couldn’t say how many customers we serve, but we regularly serve half a dozen camps,” said Feuerstein-Rudin. They also offer pizza- and sushi-making workshops throughout the summer.

Como Pizza opens up the first week of July and closes up shop when the camps shutter in August. When the summer ends, Feuerstein-Rudin heads back to the New York area, where he and Chaitovsky own another Como Pizza branch in Washington Heights as well as a snack food brand, Farmer’s Pantry.

But it’s their Lake Como location that made their name.

“It’s come to the fact, if you ask anyone, that no one could imagine what it was like not to have Como Pizza, or what we did before we had sushi,” said Feuerstein-Rudin. “It’s become a staple of all the camps.”