Kugel, Campfires, and the Key to Jewish Continuity

This summer, my young son went off to Jewish camp. No helicopter-parent texts. No screens. No antisemitic signs calling for harm, which have become ubiquitous in New York. Just a safe wooded campus, a pack of new friends, and — unexpectedly — pure joy.

He’s not thriving because of intense religious study or ideological indoctrination. He’s thriving because camp is fun, immersive, and unapologetically Jewish. An American flag waves beside an Israeli flag. Israeli counselors teach their culture and songs. Hebrew slips naturally into daily chatter. Shabbat and challah are not “programs,” but part of the week’s rhythm.

In an era when we wring our hands over Jewish continuity — declining synagogue membership, falling Hebrew school enrollment, soaring intermarriage — my son and nearly 190,000 other young people are living the solution.

The data is striking. The Foundation for Jewish Camp reports that attendance has not only rebounded from pandemic lows, but surpassed pre-2020 levels. Among overnight camp families, 96 percent say their child feels proud to be Jewish because of camp.

Ninety-two percent report camp had a “deep and positive impact” on their child’s Jewish identity. These are not marginal gains; they are the kinds of outcomes most Jewish institutions can only dream of.

Our mistake is treating Jewish continuity as a crisis to be solved through worry and guilt. We lecture eight-year-olds about antisemitism. We guilt teenagers over intermarriage rates. We turn heritage into homework. These issues matter, but they are the wrong entry point. Love of Judaism is not built in fear — it’s built in joy and through communal connectivity.

Watch a cabin full of kids debate whether their team name should be the “Maccabee Warriors” or the “Sabra Squad,” and you’ll understand what actually works. Identity doesn’t grow from lectures. It grows from belonging.

Jewish camps succeed because they create what sociologists call a thick culture: identity woven through daily practice, not reserved for holidays. Where else can a kid drop a Hebrew phrase into conversation and be instantly understood? Where else is keeping kosher a communal adventure rather than a burden?

And camp is not some ahistorical novelty — it is the modern heir to centuries of joy-centered Jewish environments. In the shtetl, the marketplace was as much a social hub as an economic one, filled with song, food, and ritual woven into daily life. On the kibbutz, Shabbat began not in a sanctuary but with communal meals, music, and dancing under the stars. Early American Jewish settlement houses mixed Hebrew songs with sewing classes, Yiddish theater with English lessons — places where Jewish life was lived, not lectured. And only a generation ago, Jewish camps were the norm and many visited historical Jewish social spaces like the Catskills.

This model doesn’t end when camp does. Across the country, Jewish cultural festivals are drawing crowds — many of them non-Jews. In Los Angeles, Siverlake’s Chabad’s Jewish Culture Festival draws thousands. In Buffalo, interfaith food festivals use shared meals to build bridges. In Poland, of all places, the TISH Jewish Food Festival drew 2,100 people in a single weekend.

At one street fair in New York, I saw a Korean-American family learning to braid challah while an older Jewish woman showed them photos of her grandmother’s recipe book. This wasn’t dialogue for dialogue’s sake — it was Jewish life made tangible, accessible, joyful.

Like camp, these public celebrations make Jewish visibility feel safe and celebrated at a time when many Jews hide their Star of David necklaces. A Hanukkah lighting in the town square or a kosher food truck rally quietly proclaims: We’re here, we’re proud, and we’re worth knowing.

The formula is simple. Developmental psychologists tell us that between ages 7 and 12, children form deep attachments to identity and tradition. They’re old enough to ask “why” but still young enough to feel wonder. Camps and festivals turn that window into a lifelong anchor, embedding Jewishness in their most formative memories.

Consider this: more than 3,000 Israeli counselors worked at American Jewish camps this past summer — an 11 percent increase over last year — building living bridges between Israeli and American Jewry. After a bruising year for Jewish life on campus, camps also saw a 25 percent surge in young adult staff. As one counselor told me, “Camp let me be a proud Jewish adult in a safe place where I didn’t feel alone.”

As Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught, “It is a great mitzvah to be happy always.” Camps and festivals are not just feel-good activities — they are living embodiments of that mitzvah, proving that joy is not an indulgence but a sustaining force for Jewish life.

I’m not naïve. Summer camp can’t solve every challenge facing American Jewry. It won’t bridge every political divide over Israel or settle every tension between tradition and modernity.

But when my son comes home singing “Oseh Shalom” in three-part harmony, when he insists on challah French toast on Sundays, when he asks if we can build a Sukkah big enough for his friends — I see something more powerful than any policy memo.

I see a child who links Jewishness with friendship, not fear; with music, not misery; with community, not conflict.

At a moment when young Jews often feel alienated from traditional institutions, when campus discourse turns toxic, when even the definition of Jewishness feels contested — camps and cultural celebrations offer something radical: joy as resistance, fun as foundation, belonging as birthright.

We keep searching for the secret to Jewish continuity as if it’s locked in some ancient text or cutting-edge program. But maybe it’s been here all along — in the smoky sweetness of a campfire, in the off-key chorus of kids singing Havdalah, in the simple magic of finding your people and feeling, finally, at home.

That’s not just nostalgia. That’s strategy. And it might just be our future.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a scholar with the Sutherland Institute.