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By Yisroel Friedman, Beis Moshiach

In all previous generations, Jewish children were constantly under the positive influence of the educational framework, for they were in school year-round. Children almost never came in contact with the street, and consequently they did not experience conflicts and confusion with regard to their Torah-true education.

However, times changed. The vacation period was extended, particularly during the summer. Children found themselves with lots of time on their hands and were exposed to the vagaries of the street. This caused a great deal of damage to the work that their teachers put into them the rest of the year.

Something had to be done about the summer vacation from school. A number of ideas were proposed, but the most practical suggestion was that yeshivos should organize special summer programs in the form of summer camps. These camps, according to the plan, would offer the children all sorts of physical activities while providing the children with a 24-hour-a-day environment al taharas ha’kodesh, with time devoted to Torah study and davening.

This is how the first summer camps in the U.S. came to be. They served students in yeshivos and religious schools. These camps filled a need but it was a far cry from the demands of the times. On the one hand, camps like these were sorely lacking for children who attended public school, and on the other hand, even the programs that were made for religious children served more as “cities of refuge” from the negative influences of the street. They did not take advantage of the opportunity to fully invest in the positive development of the children during the summer months.

Chabad camps were different. They ushered in a complete youth movement through which the Rebbe has made a revolution in the field of chinuch as a whole.

A Chabad camp not only opened its doors to every Jewish child, no matter whether they attended a yeshiva or public school, it not only served as a barrier to block the secular world from intruding in the children’s lives, but it served as a new educational tool. This proved itself to be a powerful tool, whose impact on many areas was even greater than the yeshiva. In fact, chinuch in camp is what strengthened and influenced the chinuch of the entire year.

It’s not that it was either a camp or a yeshiva, but a completely different entity, which was more than the sum of its parts, as the Rebbe put it, “a camp on the outside and a yeshiva on the inside.” The fact that while in camp there were no outside influences like secular studies, an undesirable environment or the influence of parents and home, gave camp additional educational power.

The camp experience succeeded in influencing its campers to conduct themselves properly, “with Chassidic light and warmth” to the point of making them into true Chassidim. This happened because the children spent many weeks in the “Rebbe’s domain,” as the Rebbe put it in one of his talks:

“Gan Yisroel was founded so that children are not in the domain of their parents but in the Rebbe’s domain. In a number of ways the success is greater than that within the walls of yeshiva, since within the walls of yeshiva, after school the children go home, while in Gan Yisroel he spends weeks without interruption in the Rebbe’s domain.”

On one of the Rebbe’s visits to camp Gan Yisroel, the Rebbe said that although he doesn’t leave New York, he still traveled to camp because camp is part of headquarters at 770!

In camp, the children spend the entire day in a Chassidic atmosphere, so that camp becomes “the anvil upon which Chassidim are formed,” as the Rebbe put it, and its influence is tremendous.

The impact of camp left a deep impression in the hearts of children who attended yeshivos and from Chassidic homes no less than in the hearts of children who attended public school. All of them went home having been spiritually uplifted, and with much positive baggage whose fruits were harvested all year round.

This “youth movement” of the summer camps continued to grow, until it became universal, i.e., there are summer camps around the world in which hundreds and thousands of children are educated with “Chassidic light and warmth.” Camp became a proven method “to conquer children and youth, and through them, to conquer the hearts of their parents and families.”

The Rebbe visiting Camp Emuna in 5717

The Rebbe, as Nasi to all members of the generation, was concerned not only for the chinuch of boys but of girls as well. This is why he founded Camp Emuna for girls. It was 5713 (1953) and Rabbi J.J. Hecht a”h had a private audience with the Rebbe in which the conversation focused on the need for camps. There was a need for camps for girls in particular since there were a number of camps for boys at that time. After some discussion, it was decided to first open a camp for girls, and the Rebbe gave his blessings for the success of the new mosad.

Camp Emuna opened that year. Property was purchased in the Catskill Mountains, in Greenfield Park. It was called Emuna because the Rebbe said, “emuna is the foundation for everything.”

In 5716 (1956), at the initiative of Merkaz L’Inyanei Chinuch, it was decided that a camp along these lines would be started for boys. This was Camp Gan Yisroel. After the idea was proposed, Rabbi Moshe Lazar and Rabbi Yosef Weinbaum, who were bachurim in Tomchei Tmimim-770, had a private audience with the Rebbe.

The Rebbe gave his approval to the idea and blessed them with great success. He then took out a checkbook and wrote them a check for $3000 and gave it to them as his participation in the project.

Shortly thereafter, they had another private audience in which the Rebbe said that since they were still young bachurim, they needed to include an older person who could dedicate his time to the camp and be responsible for the financial end of things. A number of candidates for the job were suggested and Rabbi Kehos Weiss was chosen.

Rabbi Weiss was already married, and he agreed to take on the job. The Rebbe said they should establish a special committee for the camp. The members of the committee were Rabbi Chadakov, Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Kazarnovsky, Rabbi J.J. Hecht, and the lawyer Isaac Strol.

After the committee was formed, the Rebbe asked that all the members come see him together. This time, they received detailed instructions regarding everything having to do with organizing and running the camp. Among other things, the Rebbe said that it didn’t pay to buy property the first time, that they should find a suitable place to rent, and he blessed them with great success and yashar koach for all their efforts.

The organizers had a number of private meetings with the Rebbe in which they received instructions and guidance both in writing and orally, regarding every single detail. This was accompanied by many brachos for outstanding success.

As soon as they received the Rebbe’s approval, the organizers went to the Catskills to look for a suitable place for a camp, but they didn’t find what they were looking for. It was only at the last minute, a few weeks before camp was to open, that they managed (through Rabbi J.J. Hecht) to rent a suitable place in Ellenville that had been used the previous year by a camp named “Israel.”

After receiving a report about the place, the Rebbe gave his consent and instructed them to immediately make the necessary renovations so that all would be ready in time.

Once they found a location, the organizers asked the Rebbe to pick a name for the camp. A number of names were suggested, including Machane Nafesh, but the Rebbe said it should be called Machane Gan Yisroel.

A few days later, at the Shavuos farbrengen of 5716, the Rebbe publicly referred to camp Gan Yisroel and said, “Since it says in the Zohar that there are GaN (numerically equivalent to 53) sidras in the Torah, and each Jew has a letter in the Torah, the camp was named Gan Yisroel.”

The Rebbe gave the organizers many blessings, whether in private meetings or in public, during the course of farbrengens. At the Shavuos farbrengen the Rebbe said, “May Hashem make it successful materially and spiritually, with success that is beyond the natural order, with more success every year.”

The Rebbe suggested that parents send their children to camp Gan Yisroel and Emuna, and even publicly announced that he advised this to everybody so it would be good for them both materially and spiritually.

The Rebbe visiting Camp Gan Yisroel on 15 Tammuz 5717

“Everything is by Divine providence. All those who have heard of the camp Gan Yisroel, should send their children to this camp. And they should also try to influence their acquaintances to send their children to camp too. This will give the children success materially and spiritually, as well as to the parents, materially and spiritually. There are certainly other camps where they learn al taharas ha’kodesh, and it’s materially good there too, but the ones I know about are camps Gan Yisroel (for boys) and Emuna (for girls). Therefore, I advise parents who want their children to have a materially and spiritually successful summer, and through the summer will come success in the future, to send their children to these camps.”

The year Gan Yisroel was founded, nearly one hundred children registered, with many of them coming from public schools – children who had no Jewish chinuch at home – and it enjoyed great success.

We can see how important the Rebbe regarded camp by the personal interest he took in it, in all details, and especially by the fact that he made three historic visits there. As we know, every moment of the Rebbe’s time is extremely precious, and despite this, the Rebbe allotted nearly a full day to each visit, including the long trips there and back. (It is said that the Rebbe once said in the winter that he was still working on making up for the time he lost on the day he went to camp!)

***

The Rebbe was interested not only in camps in the U.S. but in Eretz Yisrael too, and that is how separate camps for boys and girls were started in Eretz Yisrael. At that time, the Reshet Oholei Yosef Yitzchok was expanding and the Rebbe wanted the children to receive a Chassidic chinuch during their summer vacation too.

The Rebbe gave many instructions regarding these camps. One of the most important things to the Rebbe was that the camp be in Kfar Chabad. In those years there were a number of Chabad institutions that were empty in the summer. These served as camp headquarters during summer vacation.

The camp was set up in tents that were set up on a piece of land that belonged to Bais Rivka, which was run by Rabbi Shmuel Chefer. They also used Bais Rivka’s dining room. The girls’ elementary school in Kfar Chabad had small buildings where the camp’s secretaries worked.

Rabbi Itche Gansburg describes those days:

After finding a place for the camp, we began planning the program. Since I am Russian-born, I had never been to camp. I didn’t know what children did in camp and what they would enjoy, so we consulted with the Ministry of Education which has a special camp department, and they sent us two supervisors to give us a brief course on camp programming.

The first rule we learned was that we needed a theme, for this enabled the children to absorb a message that they would remember. We decided that our theme would be Shlomo HaMelech and the Queen of Sheba.

Our imagination worked overtime, and baruch Hashem, we worked out a terrific program. We included plays and color war, in which we divided the kids into two teams, one representing Shlomo HaMelech and one representing the Queen of Sheba, at the end of which all the nations acknowledge Shlomo’s wisdom and began to recognize the Creator of the world and the One who runs it.

In order to get the kids involved, we hid papers yellowed with age that were burned around the edges with ‘ancient writing’ on them. On the first day of camp, we took the children to the empty field of Kfar Chabad where papers were hidden under a rock. One of the girls who was in on the secret ‘happened’ to sit on the rock. A counselor warned her about snakes that might be under the rock, and naturally, she picked up the rock and ‘discovered’ the papers.

The children were excited by the discovery and grew even more excited when we brought a ‘professor’ from Tel Aviv University, supposedly a big expert in archaeology, who told the children that these were ancient writings from the time of Shlomo HaMelech that told of the historic meeting between him and the Queen of Sheba.

When the astonished children asked the professor what he thought the papers were worth, he mentioned a number in the five figures. His ploy was so successful that one of the elders of the Kfar came over to me the next day, and asked to see the writings from the time of Shlomo HaMelech that were worth $40,000.

Over 200 children were registered for the first trip of camp. We divided them into bunks, with each bunk getting a large tent. We gave out special camp hats and began activities.

Some of the counselors were Lubavitcher girls, but we didn’t have enough Lubavitcher girls to run the camp, so we had to take non-Lubavitchers too. Things got sticky because some of these girls came from groups that were opposed to Chabad, but we had no choice.

Our approach was always to increase the light, and this was true with the counselors as well. We didn’t debate with them, and didn’t deal with their questions. We simply showed them the light in Toras HaChassidus and this was more effective than any debates we might have had.

The following years, we had pre-camp training for the counselors in the course of which we emphasized the Nasi, under whom we were working. We explained at length what a Rebbe is, what our connection to the Rebbe is, what the Rebbe does for us, and what we need to do for him.

At the end of camp, we wrote panim to the Rebbe with the children, and in later years, we even sent pictures to the Rebbe of camp, and received responses from the Rebbe. In certain years, we got letters for each bunk.

The counselors were given a special program in which they heard interesting lectures about the role of a Rebbe, and had Yemei Iyun towards the end of camp. Many non-Lubavitcher counselors became close to Chabad as a result of working for us, and some of them became actual Lubavitchers.

***

Many problems arose in camp, some of them completely unexpected. For example, one day one of the girls complained about terrible pains. We took her to the hospital where they said she had appendicitis and needed to be operated on immediately. We tried reaching her mother, with the phone number that she had listed at registration, but nobody answered the phone.

Having no alternative, my wife signed the form, giving the hospital permission to do the operation, and baruch Hashem, it was successful. It turned out that the mother was on a trip to Netanya at the time, and it was first a few days later that we managed to reach her and to inform her about her daughter.

In another instance, during the boys’ trip, we had a mischievous child who tried to go to a nearby room via the window! He didn’t make it, and he fell from the second story and broke his arm. Breaking an arm is no big deal but when a child is in camp that is not insured, it’s another story entirely.

The Rebbe visiting Camp Gan Yisroel in 5716

The parents sued the camp administration, which was responsible for her son. I hired a lawyer who told me to say that the camp administration only took responsibility for normal children, and not for children who went from room to room via the windows! “I can’t place guards at all the windows,” I said. The judge accepted this and absolved me of all responsibility.

There were also halachic problems that arose. Whenever we had a question, we consulted with Rabbi Shneur Zalman Garelik, the rav of Kfar Chabad. One of the interesting questions was: is it permissible for me to sit at the Shabbos table with the girls as they sang? The rav paskened that it was permissible since I was like their father.

I would like to mention Rabbi Yosef Hartman, who was a yeshiva bachur at the time, who served as head counselor for a few years. A great deal of the credit for the incredible educational success we enjoyed goes to him.

What follows are some of the instructions we received from the Rebbe:

In 5715 (1955), we had some problems with budgets from various government offices. When we wrote to the Rebbe about it, the Rebbe wrote back, in a letter dated 11 Tammuz:

Regarding what you write that you cannot receive assistance from the offices for the camp – obviously, this is quite shocking, for how are you different than other mosdos that annually receive significant financial assistance? … Another advantage is that it is now prior to the elections, and a number of offices are interested in having people satisfied with them, and perhaps there is more time. May it be, at least from here-on-in, that the efforts in every matter not be left to the last minute.

Nearly every year, starting from Pesach time, the Rebbe would write about camp. Here, for example, in a letter dated Rosh Chodesh Iyar 5716, the Rebbe writes:

It’s surprising that you don’t mention a word about the program for the summer camp.

When camp opened, I received a letter from the Rebbe, at the end of which the Rebbe wrote:

Certainly you will continue regarding the camp… You must take advantage of this auspicious time, and certainly you will collaborate with the other members of the Reshet regarding setting the children up properly in the Chabad camp, so that it makes an impression on all visitors, among whom will certainly be representatives of the ministries. You should use the camp to improve the ministries’ regard for other matters of the Reshet, as Chazal say, one mitzva drawing another mitzva along.

After a number of years in which the camp was called Kaitanat Chabad, I thought it was time it had a proper name. I asked the Rebbe about this and in a letter dated 18 Sivan 5718 the Rebbe answered:

In reply to your letters of 4 and 9 and 13 Sivan, in which you write about a name for the camp, surely in the meantime you received a letter from here suggesting that all the summer camps in all countries be called by the same name, Gan Yisroel of the Merkaz L’Inyanei Chinuch, branch X.

In that same letter, the Rebbe reacted to activities that were done with an emphasis that this is how Chabad does it and that we are doing it because this is the Chabad custom. Since dozens of children from other frum backgrounds attended our camp, the Rebbe wrote:

In general, it requires some thought as to whether you should emphasize Chabad every step of the way, since in a number of areas the point is to draw in as broad a circle as possible and to influence them in ways of pleasantness, and this way of wording it can frighten off certain types of people. Obviously, we don’t know whether this is so regarding the camp. But in any case, you need to think about this – in the discussions regarding advertising, etc.

The Rebbe said we should examine every detail associated with the camp, even those things that seems peripheral. For example, when I wrote to the Rebbe that I was asked to prepare a detailed blueprint of the camp, and that this would cost a lot of money, the Rebbe wrote, in a letter dated 25 Adar 5718:

I just received your letter of 19 Adar. Regarding the request for an engineer’s blueprint of the camp, it pays to say things as they are, to the one who made this condition – that it will cost what you say it will cost, and why shouldn’t we protect Jewish money and suffice with a more general plan.

Obviously, you need to clarify ahead of time whether, technically speaking, it’s possible to build a camp without this blueprint. If it is essential regardless, then on the contrary, the expenses of the general blueprint are unnecessary.

The Rebbe went on to address the problem of transportation. It was convenient for us to take the children on trips in taxis and not on buses, but the government officials insisted on buses. The Rebbe wrote:

Regarding the demand of the ministry…that they travel by regular bus and the like – you must see how others do it. Then it will be clarified either way, either their demand is justified or you will have evidence to back your demand for support for traveling by taxi.

***

Today, Lubavitch day camps and overnight camps are taken as a matter of course. Thousands of children, who don’t learn about Judaism the rest of the year, have wonderful Jewish educational experiences in the summer months.

Like many other things, the Rebbe is the one who thought of using this tool to increase the light of Judaism and to spread the wellsprings. The thousands of children, who became observant thanks to the Rebbe’s vision, speak for themselves.

*

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