Language:
English
Year of publication:
2011
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2011) 31-57
Keywords:
Camp Ramah
;
Camps Case studies
;
Jews History 1945-
;
Jews Case studies Identity
;
Conservative Judaism History 20th century
;
Black Hebrews History 20th century
Abstract:
In the 1960s, Jews faced a growing number of possible definitions of what it meant to be a Jew and how to act like an American Jew. A close study of this dynamic suggests how they formulated choices and asserted authority. It also reveals the existence of a surfeit of authorities, all claimed and legitimated by those within the Conservative movement. In this essay, I offer a reading of the context of Jewish life in the postwar period that locates Jewish summer camping as a critical site for understanding Jewish socialization as it was conceived by rabbis and educators. The case study that is the focus of this chapter relates a crisis concerning the authenticity of the Jewishness of a group of young Black Jews who visited Camp Ramah in the summer of 1965. The teenage campers and their counselors and teachers hosted a Sabbath visit with Black Jewish teenagers who belonged to an organization called Hatzaad Harishon (The First Step), which was devoted to linking Black Jews and Jews of European descent, groups that had rarely recognized each other's legitimacy or claims to Jewishness. The authenticity of the Jewishness of the camp's guests became a source of crisis, making visible the often implicit conflict among competing ideas about what constituted the central values and symbols of postwar American Judaism.
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