{"id":37117,"date":"2014-08-21T14:29:44","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T14:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37117"},"modified":"2014-11-28T22:18:34","modified_gmt":"2014-11-28T22:18:34","slug":"a-summer-camp-where-jews-of-color-go-to-feel-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37117","title":{"rendered":"A summer camp where Jews of color go to \u2018feel normal\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/a-summer-camp-where-jews-of-color-go-to-feel-normal\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>A summer camp where Jews of color go to \u2018feel normal\u2019<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Times of Israel<\/a><br \/>\n2014-08-20<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rebecca Spence<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>With an emphasis on diverse Diaspora Judaism, Camp Be\u2019chol Lashon has a markedly different mandate than most Jewish camps<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Petaluma,_California\" target=\"_blank\">PETALUMA, Calif.<\/a> (JTA) \u2014 On a cool Sunday evening, Jewish campers with nervous smiles took to the stage one by one to perform poems they had composed on the theme of identity.<\/p>\n<p>One girl riffed on being taunted for having \u201cfuzzy eyebrows\u201d and \u201cbushy hair.\u201d Another rhymed about being told \u201cYou don\u2019t look Jewish\u201d too many times to count.<\/p>\n<p>If this doesn\u2019t sound like your typical summer camp fare, it\u2019s because Camp Be\u2019chol Lashon has a markedly different mandate than most Jewish camps.<\/p>\n<p>Nestled in the misty hills of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marin_County,_California\" target=\"_blank\">Marin County<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Northern_California\" target=\"_blank\">northern California<\/a> camp is the country\u2019s only Jewish sleepaway camp geared to Jews of color.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPart of the goal is to make these kids feel normal in a Jewish context,\u201d said Diane Tobin, the founder and executive director of the camp\u2019s parent organization, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/San_Francisco\" target=\"_blank\">San Francisco<\/a>-based nonprofit Be\u2019chol Lashon, which promotes racial, ethnic and cultural diversity in Jewish life&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;The camp is not just for Jews of color, as evinced by one white camper\u2019s poem about her identity as a \u201cnerdy Jewish girl.\u201d It\u2019s also very much a family affair. Tobin\u2019s son, Jonah, is a junior counselor and her daughter, Sarah Spencer, serves as the camp\u2019s co-director.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe kids all come with very different stories about who they are and where they\u2019ve come to be,\u201d said Spencer, 38, a marriage and family therapist who is also the mother of two biracial children. \u201cHere they get to practice explaining who they are to one another and we help them to feel good about whatever that is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Savannah Henry, a 21-year-old counselor whose father is African-American, said that before her rabbi at Congregation Shir Hadash in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Los_Gatos,_California\" target=\"_blank\">Los Gatos, Calif.<\/a>, told her about Be\u2019chol Lashon, she had spent a miserable summer at a more mainstream Jewish camp&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/a-summer-camp-where-jews-of-color-go-to-feel-normal\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A summer camp where Jews of color go to \u2018feel normal\u2019 The Times of Israel 2014-08-20 Rebecca Spence With an emphasis on diverse Diaspora Judaism, Camp Be\u2019chol Lashon has a markedly different mandate than most Jewish camps PETALUMA, Calif. (JTA) \u2014 On a cool Sunday evening, Jewish campers with nervous smiles took to the stage [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3601,8,820,20],"tags":[17768,13323,17769,17770,17771],"class_list":["post-37117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-judaism","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-usa","tag-camp-bechol-lashon","tag-diane-tobin","tag-rebecca-spence","tag-the-times-of-israel","tag-times-of-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}