This summer, I went to camp. Now, before you picture me squeezed onto a bunk bed eating s’mores with a flashlight under my chin — well, actually, that’s not entirely wrong. I will be volunteering for two weeks at URJ Crane Lake Camp in the beautiful Berkshire Mountains of West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, serving as a faculty rabbi for our campers and staff. And I cannot wait.
I want to share with you what Camp means in my mind and why going to Crane Lake isn’t a departure from my sacred work. It is, at its very core, an expression of it.
My connection to Jewish camping is deep and personal. Many of you know that I served as senior song leader at URJ’s Kutz Camp during my formative years, and that music, community, and Jewish living woven together in an outdoor setting is something I carry with me always — onto our bimah, into our classrooms, and around the Shabbat table. Camp shaped who I became as a Jew and, ultimately, as a rabbi.
When I arrive at Crane Lake, I won’t just be bringing Judaism to the campers. The truth is, they’ll be bringing Judaism to me. There is something irreplaceable about a child’s face when Shabbat candles are lit at dusk over a lake, when 350 kids lift their voices in Lecha Dodi under an open sky, when a twelve-year-old suddenly asks a question about God that stops you in your tracks and reminds you why you were called to this work in the first place. Camp strips away the noise and gives us back what is essential: k’lal Yisrael — a sense of belonging to one another and to something larger than ourselves.
For a rabbi, the risk of spiritual depletion is real. We give of ourselves week after week, year after year — in moments of grief, in moments of celebration, in moments of communal fear (and our community has known too many of those lately). Returning to the living laboratory of Jewish life that camp provides is how I refill my own well. I come back to you renewed, re-inspired, and re-rooted in the very reasons I chose this path.
You might reasonably ask: what does a week at camp in the Berkshires have to do with our congregation here in Syosset?
Everything.
The children at Crane Lake Camp are not abstractions. Many of them are your children. They are the sons and daughters of congregations just like ours, from across the Northeast, some even from our congregation, who have entrusted the Reform Jewish movement with something precious: a week — or a summer — of their children’s hearts. When I walk into that camp, I carry North Shore Synagogue with me. I carry our values, our warmth, our commitment to joyful and serious Jewish living all at once. I have the opportunity to meet families whose kids could one day be part of our community, and to show them what a rabbi who loves this work actually looks like.
Beyond that, the connections I forge at camp strengthen our congregation in ways that are hard to quantify but easy to feel. Ideas I encounter there find their way into Shabbat services. Songs we sing at camp echo in our sanctuary. A conversation about Torah with a teenager in the Berkshires shapes a d’var Torah you will hear from this bimah. Camp and congregation are not separate worlds — they are two chambers of the same Jewish heart.
Research within the Reform Movement has shown, time and again, that intensive Jewish camp experiences are among the most powerful predictors of lifelong Jewish engagement. A child who spends summers at a URJ camp is more likely to join a synagogue, to raise Jewish children of their own, to give to Jewish causes, and to feel that being Jewish is a source of pride and meaning — not obligation or afterthought.
In a moment when antisemitism is rising, when Jewish identity is contested and complicated, when it is sometimes easier to drift away than to lean in — Jewish camping is an act of resistance. It is a declaration that our traditions are worth celebrating, that Jewish community is worth building, and that the next generation deserves to inherit not just the weight of our history, but the joy of it.
When I stand in front of those campers and we welcome Shabbat together, I am not just a rabbi. I am a link in an unbroken chain, passing something sacred forward. That is the holiest work I know how to do.
I’ll be sure to share stories when I return. In the meantime, if your children or grandchildren have not yet experienced a URJ camp summer, I would love to talk with you about it. There is a reason I keep going back.
Summer Camp and Connections (Rabbi Shalhevet)
August 1, 2026 by nssadmin • Blog
This summer, I went to camp. Now, before you picture me squeezed onto a bunk bed eating s’mores with a flashlight under my chin — well, actually, that’s not entirely wrong. I will be volunteering for two weeks at URJ Crane Lake Camp in the beautiful Berkshire Mountains of West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, serving as a faculty rabbi for our campers and staff. And I cannot wait.
I want to share with you what Camp means in my mind and why going to Crane Lake isn’t a departure from my sacred work. It is, at its very core, an expression of it.
My connection to Jewish camping is deep and personal. Many of you know that I served as senior song leader at URJ’s Kutz Camp during my formative years, and that music, community, and Jewish living woven together in an outdoor setting is something I carry with me always — onto our bimah, into our classrooms, and around the Shabbat table. Camp shaped who I became as a Jew and, ultimately, as a rabbi.
When I arrive at Crane Lake, I won’t just be bringing Judaism to the campers. The truth is, they’ll be bringing Judaism to me. There is something irreplaceable about a child’s face when Shabbat candles are lit at dusk over a lake, when 350 kids lift their voices in Lecha Dodi under an open sky, when a twelve-year-old suddenly asks a question about God that stops you in your tracks and reminds you why you were called to this work in the first place. Camp strips away the noise and gives us back what is essential: k’lal Yisrael — a sense of belonging to one another and to something larger than ourselves.
For a rabbi, the risk of spiritual depletion is real. We give of ourselves week after week, year after year — in moments of grief, in moments of celebration, in moments of communal fear (and our community has known too many of those lately). Returning to the living laboratory of Jewish life that camp provides is how I refill my own well. I come back to you renewed, re-inspired, and re-rooted in the very reasons I chose this path.
You might reasonably ask: what does a week at camp in the Berkshires have to do with our congregation here in Syosset?
Everything.
The children at Crane Lake Camp are not abstractions. Many of them are your children. They are the sons and daughters of congregations just like ours, from across the Northeast, some even from our congregation, who have entrusted the Reform Jewish movement with something precious: a week — or a summer — of their children’s hearts. When I walk into that camp, I carry North Shore Synagogue with me. I carry our values, our warmth, our commitment to joyful and serious Jewish living all at once. I have the opportunity to meet families whose kids could one day be part of our community, and to show them what a rabbi who loves this work actually looks like.
Beyond that, the connections I forge at camp strengthen our congregation in ways that are hard to quantify but easy to feel. Ideas I encounter there find their way into Shabbat services. Songs we sing at camp echo in our sanctuary. A conversation about Torah with a teenager in the Berkshires shapes a d’var Torah you will hear from this bimah. Camp and congregation are not separate worlds — they are two chambers of the same Jewish heart.
Research within the Reform Movement has shown, time and again, that intensive Jewish camp experiences are among the most powerful predictors of lifelong Jewish engagement. A child who spends summers at a URJ camp is more likely to join a synagogue, to raise Jewish children of their own, to give to Jewish causes, and to feel that being Jewish is a source of pride and meaning — not obligation or afterthought.
In a moment when antisemitism is rising, when Jewish identity is contested and complicated, when it is sometimes easier to drift away than to lean in — Jewish camping is an act of resistance. It is a declaration that our traditions are worth celebrating, that Jewish community is worth building, and that the next generation deserves to inherit not just the weight of our history, but the joy of it.
When I stand in front of those campers and we welcome Shabbat together, I am not just a rabbi. I am a link in an unbroken chain, passing something sacred forward. That is the holiest work I know how to do.
I’ll be sure to share stories when I return. In the meantime, if your children or grandchildren have not yet experienced a URJ camp summer, I would love to talk with you about it. There is a reason I keep going back.