Camp Kvutza’s dining hall or “chadar”, where campers gathered to eat their meals, quaff down “bug juice” and assemble for various cultural events. [Lori (Lewis) Singer photo]
Some 70 years ago, the Canadian Labour Zionist Youth movement set up a chain of summer camps with the intention of teaching its values to young Jews across the country.
This September, alumni of Ontario’s Camp Kvutza will gather in Toronto to share memories and rekindle old friendships as they remember their summer experiences of yore.
In keeping with its founders’ philosophy, Camp Kvutza – which was located on the northeastern shores of Lake Erie in Lowbanks, Ont., before it closed in 1965 – was unlike other summer camps.
A spartan, kibbutz-like affair, Kvutza campers were taught to appreciate the values of hard work, love for Israel (with an eye on encouraging aliyah) and on finding creative ways to entertain themselves.
Despite their less-than-glamourous surroundings, Kvutza campers were some of the happiest around. This, according to Tobi “Pidgy” Gordon, 62, who is on the organizing committee for this year’s reunion.
Gordon’s grandfather was a member of the Farband and helped organize the camp in the 1940s, and she was a camper there from 1950 to 1963.
She said her camping experiences helped shape the woman she is today.
“A lot of my lingering feeling [from Camp Kvutza] is the memory of Jewish cultural influence… love of folk-dancing, singing,” she told The CJN in a recent interview.
Another important lesson learned at Kvutza was to value people over objects.
“The camp wasn’t about things, it was about friendships and people,” Gordon added. “I was lucky I was there during its heyday.”
Today, Gordon writes in depth about her experiences and memories of camp on her blog, Kvutza Memories (kvutzamemories.blogspot.com).
Invitations to the reunion went out via e-mail earlier this year, and Gordon said the organizing committee expects anywhere from 200 to 300 people to attend.
So far, nearly 160 “Kvutzaniks” from around the United States and Canada have responded to the online invitation.
But there is no cap to the number of attendees, Gordon said.
According to Naomi Fromstein (neé Talesnick), another member of the reunion’s organizing committee and an ex-camper, Kvutza helped kids “develop individual talent, leadership capabilities, confidence and self-reliance.”
Fromstein said she made a promise to herself that she would organize a Kvutza reunion one day. Now that she’s helped bring it to fruition, the anticipation of seeing old friends has made her giddy with excitement.
“Kvutza’s programming… was marvellous, creative and crazy!” she wrote in an e-mail. “The staff would wake the campers up during the night, drag us half asleep to the waterfront, orchard or baseball field… to launch whatever the Maccabiah-like program was that they had planned for that year. We were divided into teams, competed, lost our voices from cheering like maniacs, and had an absolute blast. Even now, as I write over 40 years later, I feel a gush of the thrill that we experienced during those times.”
The camp also turned out some high-profile, creative people.
One such product of the camp is Teme Kernerman, a renowned instructor of Israeli folk-dance both in Canada and abroad.
Kernerman, who joined Kvutza as a counsellor in the mid 1950s, will attend the reunion and is also on its planning committee. She credits the camp with paving the way to her future.
“Kvutza was the place that initiated my journey into dance,” she said, recalling how the camp’s focus on cultural dance events forced her to learn the art that would later become her passion.
“I went in as an arts and crafts teacher and came out as a dance instructor,” she said. “At Kvutza, we had nothing but our creativity. This made everyone more involved.”
In addition, one of the camp’s earliest directors, Michel Herzog, now a nonagenarian living in New York, is rumoured to be attending the reunion, Gordon said.
The Camp Kvutza reunion will take place at Bialik Hebrew Day School 2760 Bathurst St., on Sunday, Sept. 21 at 1 p.m.
The Kvutza organizing committee chose the school because that’s where the original Habonim Labour Zionist offices were housed, and because “every summer the campers gathered in the Viewmount parking lot to board the buses that took us to re-congregate with our friends at our much-loved camp,” Fromstein said.
The reunion also coincides with Israel’s 60th birthday year and seemed a fitting time to hold it, she added.
For more information or to RSVP, e-mail [email protected].