Summer camps

Because they need to stay afloat.

Most camps don’t make a lot of money, especially the learning ones

Rabbi J……
quite simply it is the high cost of doing business. Housing and watching/entertaining and feeding the children 24/7. Maintaining the premises, liability insurance for places that have swimming can be astronomical.

When I went to camp in 1965 it was $204 for each month. Now the charge exceeds that per day.
I have written that the CTL children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc. do (have not gone off) go to camp, Instead we invested on an inground swimming pool, tennis, basketball, ball fields, etc in the compound. The children get to spend the entire summer with their extended family under the watchful eyes of family members, not overworked, underpaid teenagers. Over the past 40 years we have, as a family saved untold thousands keeping the children here and not shipping them off to camp.
I am not against camping. The late Mrs. CTL and I went to summer camp. My parents met at summer camp in the early 1930s. BUT times have changed and I am not comfortable with my extended offspring living in a cabin with 20 children and 1 or 2 teenagers as the supervision. Too much can and does go wrong.
How many of these camps are firetraps, built in hamlets without true building codes and enforcement. Yesterday I already saw the story in YWN of a camp fire this season in a girls camp.

BTW>>>>>>the expenses you have during the rest of the year has absolutely no bearing on the cost of running a summer camp and how much must be charged to break even.

Food and board for starters

There are 2 ways to deal with this – thru avdut and thru herut.

Thru avdut: sign up as a rebbe to the camp to get a discount for your kids

Thru herut: take your spouse and your kids and enjoy the time together.

The short answer is because then can. Most are run as a for-profit business and they do that very well. The same for girl’s seminaries, matza and esrogim. If people did not pay it they would charge less.

An additional factor here is that each camp feels pressure to out do each other in lavishness of the trips. Remember when a trip outside of camp was a hike or at most a bus trip to Woodburn for pizza (bought at the camper expense)? Now if a traveling camp does not fly to exotic places like Alaska it is a nebach. This does not answer everything but it all comes back to the level of materialism that WE create puts pressure on the weakest.

When it comes to camps and seminaries it is worse. You try explaining to your kid why Mom and Dad think it is insane to pay for a month of camp close to what they pay for a years worth of tuition. Let me know how it goes.

@Rocky, The high end camps like Kol Ree Nah always took fancy major trips like Florida in 1977, if anything the style of the major trips went down, I remember going to Lake George, Hershy, Niagara Falls, Washington DC etc. for major trips and this was not a high end camp, just your typical mainstream chasidisher camp in the mid to late 70s

CA: Grammar police here. You probably meant room and board. Food is board.

As long as camp is the subject- here is a thought to ponder.I never understood how parents who keep a watchful chinuch eye on their children all year, hand them over to a 19 year old to be the mechanech for 2 months. Does the director really know if the counselor is 100% mentally stable? And even if he is, I know I have invested a lot in knowing how to speak in a way that builds a child etc. and ways to nurture in a positive way his yiddishkeit. Why would I want that to be absent 1/6 of the year or possibly even be destructive. That everyone is doing it and it all seems to work out- usually, is not a sufficient answer when dealing with our most important investment.
I can specifically remember a horrifying experience that occurred with the OD and my bunk when the OD was ensuring we were going to sleep. That was 40+ years ago and the generation has worsened in a way that such an incident is not hard to imagine happening these days.
Any thoughts?

@Neville
The camp I went to in 1965 now charges $1500 per week and only runs for a 6 week season.
In their email alumni newsletter and fundraising pitch I received this week there are approx 225 campers this year.
Then again, in 1965 my father paid about $3300 for his Lincoln 4dr full sized sedan, the last Lincoln I bought for Mrs. CTL (just before Covid) was more than $50,000.
Camp 7 times as expensive, auto 17 times as expensive

@Neville
Sorry, my math and concentration was great affected by the fast.
When I was a camper in 1965, there were the expected sports, swimming, boating, arts and crafts, color war and a couple of plays. We didn’t go on trips.

Now the camp not only has a computer lab, photography and video production studio, but this year added a 1/2 $Million Robotics building.

What ever happened to spending hours outdoors playing ball?
The dining hall now offers a salad bar as well as both vegetarian and vegan options. I remember lots of Government surplus pasta, canned fruits, peanut butter and butter.
Then we good get one treat each weekday from the canteen. All packages arriving by mail had to be opened in front of the head counselor and if you got a box of candy sent by a relative it had to be shared with the entire bunk.
Now Amazon trucks drop more than 100 packages a day. Some campers bring mini refrigerators, all have done electronics.
It is a different world

Bja613, by the time your watchful chinuch eye discovers that your child’s new rebbe or morah has no clue on how to teach children, it is usually too late and has caused more damage than a summer counselor can cause

@bja, you did not answer the other comments.
PS I think more damage was done by fellow campers then by the 19–21-year-old counselors.

@CTL, the taste and smell of the fish franks from the camp kitchen still makes me cringe, almost all the food of gvmt. surplus, you were allowed off premises once a week for a hike, and color war brought out hidden talents that no one knew that person had.

Anyway while we’re on the topic of camps

Which overnight camp did you go to when you were younger

I went to Naarim and Ohr Shraga

@Coffee Addict
The difference between boarding and lodging is that a boarder receives food as well as sleeping accommodations.

Reminds me of a Fyvush Finkel Song
Ikh Bin a “Boarder” bay Mayn Vayb

So nu? Go to day camps. Summer camps these days fulfill a very different need than they used to. One that many would argue is contrived. It’s a special opportunity and shouldn’t be seen as a necessity that has to happen every year from age 9 through 18.

@common-saychel Everyone had EconoPhone/Presto cards to call home. One year the waiters got fed up from not collecting any tips in first half or visiting day, so they ganged up on all the kids making them call home and beg their parents to tip the waiter $25.

“The rapid decline in the quality of the children of the last generations may in fact be affected by the lack of parental continuity during the summer. It will be hard to prove otherwise so the fact that this hefker has been going on for 70 years does not prove anything…”

I respectfully disagree with your point about the “rapid decline” of kids in the most recent generation. While there are issues unique to each generation, I think today’s kids are much more comfortable with their yiddishkeit and more capable of functioning in a world full of challenges than the post-War generation in which many of us grew up