At Camp George, a Jewish overnight camp located near Parry Sound, the infirmary – known as the health and wellness centre or by its Hebrew name the mirpa’ah – is much more than a place to treat cuts and bruises, explains camp director Jeff Rose.
“It’s a place where campers can go to find support. They’re doling out a lot of TLC there as much as they are any medicine,” he said.
Camp George, Canada’s only Reform Jewish overnight camp, is celebrating its 18th summer this year and is in the process of updating some of its facilities.
To mark its landmark birthday and to raise money to renovate the mirpa’ah, Camp George is hosting a dinner and dance event at Temple Sinai Congregation on April 30.
Dubbed Rockin’ on the Chai Way, the event will feature music by Slice of Life, a 10-piece cover band in which Camp George’s doctor for the past 16 years, David Saslove, plays and his daughter, Alex Saslove, sings.
There will also be musical performances by several Camp George counsellors and alumni, said Cheryl Ackerman, the event’s committee chair, who is married to Saslove.
“Our daughter [Alex] has been at camp since she was three. She’s now 20. That’s not atypical for Camp George, for parents and their kids to have been involved in the camp since its inception,” she said.
Ackerman said the event is open not only to those directly affiliated with Camp George but to “anyone who loves to dance and who wants a good dinner and to have a fun evening.”
To build the new health and wellness centre, which the camp hopes to do by 2017, the fundraising goal is about $400,000, Rose said. “We’ve been focused this whole year on “chai” and healthy living as we endeavour to build this centre… It’ll be a place where campers can come to relax, get away and meet with a support team [of health professionals],” he said, noting the camp always has a rotating team of one doctor and two nurses on staff.
The 18th birthday is a real milestone for Camp George, Rose said, because the camp has long felt like the new kid in town among the range of more established Jewish summer camps in Ontario.
“We initially started with between 50 and 100 campers, and now we get close to 500 campers annually. So our camp has really become its own entity within a landscape of Jewish camps,” Rose said, noting that Camp George’s plan is to continue expanding its facilities.
Its identity as a Reform camp is reflected in its values and much of its activities, he said, listing, as examples, programs that teach campers about tikkun olam and “egalitarian Jewish values.”
READ: PASSOVER DAY CAMP OFFERS ACTING, SINGING AND DANCE TRAINING
In addition to singing Jewish songs at mealtimes, reciting blessings after meals and having Israeli staff members who give campers insight into what it’s like to live in Israel, Rose said the camp has a focus on what he called “social action programming.”
“For example, every summer we devote one day when one of the units goes into the community to give back. They’ll go to an old age home, to a home for the blind… They’ve done a car wash to raise money for a local fire department,” he said.
Tickets for the April 30 event can be purchased here.