Notes on Camp: Ep. 96

Break out the bug juice—it’s summer camp week on Unorthodox! We’re talking campfires, Color War, and Mark’s traumatic summer at a nudist camp.

Our first guest is Sandy Fox, a doctoral candidate studying language and everyday life in Zionist, Yiddishist, and denominational summer camps. She’s also the founder of Vaybertaytsh, a feminist podcast entirely in Yiddish. She explains how different Jewish ideologies shaped each kind of camp, tells us about a post-war summer camp for children of Holocaust survivors, and breaks the news that while summer camp is distinctly Jewish in many ways, Jews didn’t actually invent it (we totally reshaped color war, though).

Micah Hart, co-host of the podcast Campfires and Color Wars, talks to us about what summers were like as the camp director’s son, the difference between a Jewish camp and a camp where most of the campers happen to be Jewish, and what it means to be ‘camp hot.’

We also talk to writer Jordana Horn, who hated camp but whose kids love it—all six of them are attending some form of Jewish camp this summer. She tells us how Jewish camps give her children a space to develop their own Jewish identity and community, how social media has changed the camp experience for campers and their parents, and what really goes down when the kids ship out for the summer.

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Music: 

"Mikveh Bath" by Golem

"Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" by Allan Sherman

"Suburban Kids with Biblical Names" by Shitty Weekend

"Gucci Gucci" by Kreayshawn

"Rose's Turn" by Stephen Sondheim, performed by Bette Middler

"Hatikvah" performed by Francki Perez et Broadway

"That Power" by Childish Gambino