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

Saul 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. “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.

“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

But this summer, they are trying something new and offering what they’re calling a “genderful”—a portmanteau of gender and wonderful—cabin that will be home to all genders.

The camp has for years made a point of asking everyone what pronouns they use, even if it means explaining what a pronoun is to the youngest campers, and has adopted gender-inclusive Hebrew (see sidebar on next page). But there are campers who may not have been comfortable being assigned to a girls or boys cabin, Lipschultz said.

“In some ways it’s great we’re doing this and in some ways we’re behind the eightball. It’s not like non-binary and gender-fluid children have just appeared in the last year. We’re continually growing and doing better as we understand issues,” Lipschultz said.

The genderful cabin will house campers of different ages, and most of the time they will do activities within their age groups. But there will also be some specific programming for the group, usually around the times of the day that had been a challenge for non-binary kids in a traditional cabin, such as getting ready for bedtime. A number of Jewish camps in the United States have offered all-gender cabins, but Gesher is the first in Canada. Camp Moshava, a Habonim Dror camp in Maryland, has had a gender-inclusive cabin for a number of years, said director Talia Rodwin.

The all-gender cabin is part of Moshava’s relaxed approach to gender. In addition to the regular camp activities, there is also a “Queer Kids Club” campers can join.

Moshava also has no rules around what is an appropriate bathing suit, Rodwin said, which relieves the tension some kids feel about swimming in public and finding a suit that they are comfortable wearing.

Most of the 50 campers at Machane Lev don’t attend another camp. “All Young Judaea camps try to accommodate LGBTQ+ in their camp,” says Risa Epstein. “But there are still camp institutions, there’s still other kids there that might not be as open or there’s bullying incidents. That doesn’t exist at Machane Lev.

“No one has to play any stereotypes. You’re going to find your people.”

Saul came to Machane Lev as a camper the first year it opened, in 2018, and has come back on staff every year since. “It’s been really magical to watch people come in and leave at the end of the week completely different, with so much new confidence, with such a sense of themselves and the ways that they are valued.

“I think all of our campers come in with a lot of hard stuff. I think it’s hard to be a queer Jewish teenager.”

Exploring and celebrating the dual identity of queer and Jewish is woven into much of Machane Lev’s programming. On Shabbat they’ll eat rainbow challahs and they learn about Jewish “queeroes” instead of Jewish heroes. Friday night prayers are gender-inclusive.

Spending one Shabbat a year together at camp is a balm for both campers and counsellors. Rach Klein, educational director at Machane Lev and a PhD student in art history, says for many of the staff, it’s the camp they needed when they were kids. The first year Klein worked at camp she was living in Halifax and doing Shabbat by herself every week.

“To suddenly be in community and not just with other Jewish people but with other queer Jewish people was revelatory. This extends to a lot of our staff who live in queer space a lot of the time but don’t always find communities to pray with or feel good showing up as themselves in.”

Some campers attend Jewish day schools, where they hide their identity, while other

“In some ways it’s great we’re doing this and in some ways we’re behind the eight-ball.”

- Shoshana Lipschultz

The revolution starts in Hebrew

In 2015, the Habonim Dror movement voted to change the Hebrew language spoken at its North American summer camps to make it gender-inclusive.

“Whereas we in Habonim Dror North America recognize that gender binary is a false dichotomy,” began the resolution passed at the movement’s conference addressing the fact that Hebrew is a gendered language. “[A]t least a few of our chaverimot are such people who do not fit into the gender binary,” the resolution continued.

The solution was to add a third non-gendered ending to the singular and plural words used for people at camp, such as campers, counsellors and the names of units or sections. A third ending, “chol”, from the Hebrew word for inclusive can be added to singular nouns, so a counsellor becomes madrichol, in addition to the traditional madrich/a. Groups of people, including the names of sections or units, take an “imot” ending, so the Bonim unit became the Bonimot. Gender-inclusive Hebrew is now used at all Habonim camps, said Talia Rodwin, director of Camp Moshava, a Habonim Dror camp in Maryland.

“We use it if we don’t know the gender of the person, or if they prefer it,” Rodwin said.

The gender-inclusive language was based on what similar groups were pioneering in Israel, but it’s “definitely not common practice,” she said.

It took about one summer to become accustomed to the changes and rewrite camp cheers and songs, but now it feels natural, she said.

“Within Habonim Dror circles it’s completely recognized and I think it makes a really big difference to the campers who are hearing it and using it and feeling very seen and recognized by this language.” “We found at Lev, it’s not only non-binary kids who need non-gender specific spaces. We have kids who are just kind of different and need a space to be themselves”

- Rach Klein

campers may have little experience of Jewish life, she said.

To keep the feeling of Jewish community going, Machane Lev started year-round programming for campers, most of whom live in the Toronto area. There are Hanukkah parties, family Shabbat dinners, and during COVID, camp programs on Zoom.

Joe, who has gone to Machane Lev for years, adores it all, says his mother. Sari says her fourth child was born “a very cute girl,” but from the time he could walk, he raided his brother’s closet and dressed in typical boy clothing. By Grade 1, he had changed.

Joe and Sari are not their real names, because almost nobody knows that the outgoing, strapping high school kid who loves to play hockey is biologically a girl. (Joe takes a hormone-blocker to delay puberty and will soon be old enough to start testosterone, his mother says.)

Joe has “confidence in spades” but is probably the only trans kid in his high school. Camp, however, has shown him he is not alone, says Sari. Campers and staff from Machane Lev, along with his school friends and his hockey team, all showed up to help him celebrate his bar mitzvah not long ago, she said.

Even the most confident trans kids grow up with some secrecy, that becomes “almost second nature to them,” but the staff at camp are great role models, says Sari. “They’ve gone on to university… and they [campers] see how successful these kids are, there’s no barriers, there’s nothing holding them back,” she said.

“When you go somewhere like this [camp], you’re focused on being the best version of yourself, celebrating diversity, not trying to fit into a mold,” she said.

Camps like Machane Lev and Gesher are also showing mainstream camps how to be more welcoming to a camper population that is increasingly diverse.

Rach Klein has consulted with the directors of the camp she attended as a child. “It’s not going to be easy because we have these inherited systems… But at some point if we want to prioritize the benefit of our kids we’re going to have to make a shift in how we’re thinking about gender,” she said.

Some of the changes aren’t especially difficult, says Klein. It can mean renaming boys camp and girls camp to lakeside and mountain, and making sure there are gender-neutral washrooms and changing spaces. It also means offering all-gender cabins, so campers can choose where they want to live.

“We found at Lev, it’s not only non-binary kids who need non-gender specific spaces. We have kids show up who are straight and cisgendered who are just kind of different and just need a space to be themselves,” she said.

But the lessons to be learned from a place like Machane Lev are deeper than just gender-neutral washrooms. It’s also about changing attitudes, said Saul Freedman-Lawson.

“All of our youth benefit from more expansive ideas around gender…from letting go of some of that kind of pressure to be a certain kind of Jewish girl or Jewish boy,” they said.

“Are we on some level sending our kids to camp because we hope they will build Jewish networks and date Jewishly and form straight Jewish marriages, or are we hoping that they will build a more expansive community?” n