Rainbow challahs and all-gender cabins How non-binary kids (and their allies) are changing Jewish summer camp. STORY BY LILA SARICK ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAUL FREEDMAN-LAWSON
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aul Freedman-Lawson was especially nervous on the first day of camp.
A counsellor who met Saul that first day remembers watching the teenager step off the bus, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed solidly on the ground. “I was never much of a summer camp kid,” Saul recalled. A previous attempt at a traditional summer camp hadn’t gone well. Despite everyone’s best efforts and kindnesses, Saul felt like an “imposter.” And in the end, the camp director had to agree and called the family. The camp just wasn’t a good fit. For kids who are gender-fluid or trans, traditional camp is complicated. Residential summer camp is a strictly gendered place. Cabins and washrooms are designated for boys and for girls. Communal living means there is little privacy and not much room for a kid who is different than the norm. But for Saul, Machane Lev, a one-week Jewish camp for kids (and staff) who identify as LGBTQ and their allies, would prove to be different. 28 |
“Up until that point I had felt, and many people had made me feel, that something was wrong with me, and that I was in some way unnatural” - Saul Freedman-Lawson
“It was very exciting. I had never been in queer space like that before. I hadn’t been around trans adults before, I hadn’t been around small trans kids before. It really reshaped how I thought about myself in the world. “Up until that point I had felt, and many people had made me feel, that something was wrong with me, and that I was in some way unnatural,” Saul said. “I had this moment of meeting trans kids and going, ‘They’re fine, they’re perfect and there’s nothing wrong with them and therefore maybe there’s nothing wrong with me.’”
Machane Lev, which will host campers for a fifth year this summer, started when Gaela Mintz, a social worker who works with trans and non-binary kids, was looking for a Jewish summer camp for a little trans girl she knew. As Mintz began to research the options, she found the camps she approached were “weird” about the idea and she was worried the child would be the guinea pig for a trial run. Frustrated, Mintz turned to Risa Epstein, national executive director at Canadian Young Judaea, and wondered aloud, “What do we need to do, start our own camp?” And so Machane Lev (Camp Heart) was born. It runs on the site of Camp Solelim in Sudbury, Ont., when Solelim’s session is over and is the only Jewish camp of its kind in Canada. Other camps are starting to rethink how to find a place for campers who are non-binary or just need something a little different. At Camp Gesher, an Ontario camp that’s part of the left-leaning Habonim Dror movement, they have had trans, non-binary and gender-fluid kids and staff at camp for years, said camp director Shoshana Lipschultz. Campers have been placed in the cabin that matches their biology.
