100 Israeli teens from evacuated communities return from ‘dream’ US camp experience
Group of teenagers from the Tsofim scouts were hosted by NJY Camps in Pennsylvania this summer, offering what organizers say is a model for deeper Israeli-Diaspora connections
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
Arriving at a large Jewish American camp in Pennsylvania this summer was like being on a different planet for several of the evacuated Israeli teens who were invited to destress abroad.
It was “an amazing experience. It was really fun, but also so distant from how we live,” said Lianne Abutbul, 17, an Israeli from the largely evacuated northern town of Kiryat Shmona.
Abutbul was one of 100 Israeli teenagers who returned last week after 10 days at NJY Camp’s Machane Am Echad program, which took place at a lakefront location in the Pocono Mountains. All the Israeli teens were members of Tzofim, the Israeli scout movement, and all had spent time as evacuees from their homes in the north or south of Israel due to the Israel-Hamas war and near-daily attacks by the Hezbollah terror organization.
“We know the trauma they went through. Some of them faced terrorists in their homes, so it’s amazing to be able to provide this space for them to process,” said NJY Camps CEO Michael Schlank, speaking by phone to The Times of Israel.
The group consisted of teenagers ranging in age from 13-17, plus more than a dozen Israeli adult counselors from Tzofim, some of whom were also evacuees, Schlank said. The experience was subsidized by the Jewish Agency, Mosaic United and “amazing” contributions from the “Jewish American philanthropic community,” he said.
The participants were first assessed to “make sure they could come 7,000 miles. Most of them hadn’t been on a plane, been to America or even left Israel. They are from the periphery and have been living in hotels [as evacuees], they have a whole host of challenges,” he said.
“One of the kids came here and saw the trees, and asked if they were real. One of the kids was yelling, ‘There are three lakes here!’ We have had staff and kids who said they hadn’t smiled in 10 months… The stories they tell are heartrending,” Schlank said.
Broadway, baby
Besides the American camp experience, the participants also visited New York City, went to a Mets game and saw the Broadway show “Hamilton.”
“We didn’t understand everything” about “Hamilton,” the hit show that uses hip-hop to tell the tale of the American Revolution, “but we really enjoyed the production,” said Liza Levitt, 17, also from Kiryat Shmona. One of the staff members had made a presentation ahead of time to help them understand some of the themes and story, she added.
It will be hard to explain the whole experience to their friends in Israel, Levitt said. “We went to New York, saw Times Square, we were on a lake inside a summer camp… We ate huge pancakes in the morning and so much junk food.”
These kinds of cultural experiences are exactly what the staff had in mind. “What’s more New York than Broadway?” said Will Eastman, one of the NJY Camp organizers. “We wanted them to have that experience, the ‘wow’ factor, and know that there are a lot of people in America who love them.”
Eastman, who called the group “one of the best groups we have ever worked with,” noted that, given the recent atmosphere in the United States, the foremost concern was security. The NJY Camp organization, which regularly hosts diverse Israeli groups, has more than doubled its security budget since October 7, Eastman said.
The trip was “a very unique opportunity,” said Elad Gabso, an adult social worker who went as part of the Israeli staff.
On one hand, it was “like a bubble, we were in New York and in the camp and having fun… but there was still a war going on in Israel. We got notices and it affected us. There was one night, there were rockets on the [Gaza] envelope, and we were up all night,” he recalled.
“These kids are from Tzofim chapters in Kiyrat Shmona, Ofakim, Ashkelon… we were skeptical at first [about] bringing kids from evacuated areas, but it’s an opportunity to connect,” said Yaniv Biran, CEO of Tzofim North America. Biran is an Israeli who grew up in the Tzofim movement and now lives in the US, where he manages the North American branch.
Israelis, Biran said, are “sometimes surprised that what happens in Israel also hurts Jewish Americans. Maybe it’s something for them to take home, that we have brothers here.”
Hollywood dreaming
On the trip, “everything was straight out of a movie,” said Ilay Shlomo, 16. From Sderot, Shlomo had been evacuated from the southern city with his family, but, unlike the evacuated participants from northern Israel, was able to return home in March.
Teenagers in Israel “are dealing with difficult situations,” he said, so despite the experiences at camp, which was “like a dream… we couldn’t forget what is happening” back home.
“No matter how much American Jews love Israel, we are not Israelis,” NJY’s Schlank said. This summer, “we very much recognized that however much we think we know, we don’t,” he said, giving the example of an event at camp where a number of balloons were popped, something the Americans didn’t think anything of, but was “triggering” for the Israelis.
These kinds of learning opportunities, created by meaningful inter-cultural interactions, are something that Schlank hopes can be “a model for how Diaspora and Israeli Jews connect going forward.”
Before October 7, “there were a lot of questions” about the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, but now there is more “unconditional love. I am not interested in your politics, this is about love, and I think that needs to go both ways,” Schlank said.
“My prayer for this is: when some of this balagan [mess] ends, I hope the lessons we have learned about how American Jews and Israeli Jews are connected are not lost,” he said.
