Clad in T-shirts, two dozen 13-year-olds from former Communist countries were called to the Torah one day this month in a collective Bar Mitzvah celebrated at their summer camp.
The boys – from Hungary, Ukraine, Russia and Slovakia – were among some 2,000 Jewish youths from Eastern Europe who attended the camp this summer near the town of Szarvas, in southern Hungary.
Camp counselors taught the Bar Mitzvah boys how to lay tefillin, put on a tallit and say the Torah blessings. They learned about the meaning of the ceremony in Jewish tradition. For many of the boys, it was their first encounter with these tenets of Judaism.
After the informal ceremony, which took place in a synagogue set up in what used to be a dining hall, dozens of other campers pelted them with candy and all danced around the Torah to lively Israeli music. Each boy received a certificate.
“We have a collective Bar Mitzvah like this at every two-week camp session during the summer,” said Itzhak Roth, an Israeli who comes to Szarvas each summer as camp director.
The camp, which is run under the auspices of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, is in its sixth year of operation.
It opened in 1990 in a former commercial campsite purchased by the Lauder Foundation in 1989 and renovated to fulfill Jewish needs.
Jewish summer camps have opened in increasing numbers in formerly Communist countries.
All, the camps provide an introduction to Judaism and Jewish education for children who otherwise may have little Jewish awareness or sense of Jewish identity. Many youths’ experiences at Jewish camp are their first intensive contact with Jewish tradition – and possibly their only Jewish educational experience during the year.
The Szarvas daily program is a mix of normal summer camp recreational activities and Jewish education.
The children sing camp songs around campfires, but they are Hebrew songs.
Arts and crafts projects employ methods and materials common to summer camps around the world, but have a Jewish flavor: Children are encouraged to draw and model Jewish symbols.
They learn Israeli dances, study basic Hebrew and learn about Jewish holidays and history, including the Holocaust.
Skits, pageants, and other participatory events revolve around Jewish themes.
“We can’t really do too much in two weeks,” said Hanna Roth, who works with her husband as part of the Szarvas camp staff. “we want to get them curious, get them to be interested and maybe then go home and look into Judaism, into Jewish self-awareness, Jewish identity.”
Szarvas draws an international group of campers. More than half of the 2,000 campers who come each summer are Hungarian.
The rest come from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Croatia, Yugoslavia and the former Soviet republics. The camp session in early August also included children from Albania for the first time. Fewer than 20 Jewish families live in Albania, and the 15 Albanian children at camp represented almost all Albanian Jewish youth.
In addition to the children’s camp sessions, a week-long family camp session at the end of the summer provides a learning and relaxation experience for parents and their children.
“The children from the various countries come from scattered villages in which they really are a minority,” Roth said.
“Here they see that they are part of a nation,” she said. “They meet with children from different countries and see that their problems are the same. Many say they have never had an experience with so many Jews. It gives them the experience that they are part of a nation, [it] gives them a sense of pride.”
A survey carried out among campers last year showed that nearly 90 percent of the children felt that the Szarvas experience strengthened their sense of Jewish identity to some extent. Fully 50 percent said it strengthened it greatly.
“We make friends here that we keep in touch with after the camp session,” said a Hungarian girl who attended Szarvas as a camper and now is a counselor.
She described the phenomenon of children going home from camp to their assimilated families and introducing Jewish practice into the home.
“Sometimes the parents don’t know what to do – they don’t know Jewish tradition, so they cannot give anything,” she said.
In Russia, according to the JDC, Jewish Sunday schools were opened in at least three cities at the request of campers returning from Szarvas who wanted to continue their Jewish education.
In addition, the camp is strictly kosher. Mealtimes at Szarvas are multilingual cacophony. More than 400 youngsters eat together in a cavernous dining hall decorated with murals and other artwork depicting Jewish themes.
The words for blessings and Hebrew songs – transliterated into both Latin and Cyrillic letters – hang on huge wall placards, and the conversation is punctuated by loud choruses of Jewish songs and cheerleader-type Hebrew chants, led by camp director Roth, who roams among the tables with a microphone in hand.
The children wave their arms, embrace each other and sway together as if at a rock concert as they sing songs such as “Tum Balalaika” and “Am Yisrael Chai.”
“It is a dream that came true,” said Ilona Seifert, wiping away tears. Seigert served as president of the Hungarian Jewish community organization during the Communist regime and now works with the JDC.
“We, the Holocaust survivors, see that it is a new Jewish future,” she said. “You can’t believe what is our feeling. Fifty years after Auschwitz, when the children were killed, we have a new Jewish life. They learn what it means to be a Jew – Am Yisrael Chai. It is a most beautiful feeling for us.”
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