Conversation with Jewish Day Camp Leaders (2024)

We sincerely thank the camp leaders who shared their time, candor, and insights.

Use these links to find each conversation in the interview below:

• What changes have you seen in the day camp world over the past 10 years?
• We’d love to hear your vision for day camps over the next 10 years and their role in the Jewish ecosystem.
• Looking to the next 10 years, what are the trends that you see, and what areas of running a camp will need innovation?
• One potentially complicating factor affecting how day camps operate is that many of them are part of parent organizations. What are the implications and how does your organization handle them?
• Day camps have significant number of campers and staff from faiths other than the Jewish faith. What does this mean for your organization?
• As we wrap up, what message would you like to leave our readers with?

Michael Miloff:What changes have you seen in the day camp world over the past 10 years?

Jenni Zeftel: The biggest thing that has changed is actually less the day camps themselves than perceptions in the Jewish communal world about day camps. Increasingly, the day camp field and its impact are being taken seriously, with growing investment in day camps, including in personnel. In 2014, I could count on one hand the number of day camp attendees at Foundation for Jewish Camp’s (FJC) Leaders Assembly. In 2022, there were over 100 day camp attendees, reflecting that more and more parent agencies are investing in their day camp leadership, and making sure they participate in field-wide gatherings like Leaders Assembly.

CarrieDarsky: The rate of change for the last 10 and even 20 years has been significant, and the pace will continue to increase, as the world is moving so quickly.

For the JCCs, a trend is to see day camp beyond its traditional bread-and-butter role, which, along with early childhood centers and health & fitness/membership, are where most JCCs run profitable businesses to support other mission-driven assets of their operation. As expenses increase and the margin of profitability gets smaller, the question arises as to how camps can serve communities throughout the year, increase membership value, and build stronger community. Day camps have the capacity to help JCCs do everything better, including in the areas of Jewish programming and community engagement.

I also agree with the talent trend that Jenni mentioned. In the past 10 years, we and the field as a whole have elevated our commitment and investment in the hiring and development of stellar professionals. It’s not just one camp director anymore, either. It’s an entire team, and where it used to be maybe one or two full-time camp professionals, we’re seeing three to six full-time day camp professionals working year-round for our larger camps.

"It’s not just about hiring a body but also about building a pipeline and developing staff from an early to mid-career place...They could be our future camp director."

I want us to think about our staff as a separate community. It’s not just about hiring a body but also about building a pipeline and developing staff from an early to mid-career place. We’re actually identifying them as top talent and saying, “How are we going to invest in that person? They could be our future camp director.”

Another major change has been the relationship of camps to parents of campers and of staff.

In this supplemental 2023 Camp Insights report, camps share innovations and ideas for managing the changingRole of Parents.

The pandemic certainly made a difference in how we communicate the importance of health and safety and our overall responsiveness to parents. Parents now want instant communication. If they see one snapshot of their kid not being happy in a picture posted online, the phone rings off the hook, with parents asking, “What’s wrong with my kid?” And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with their kid, but the parents’ sense of urgency and panic impacts our staff’s ability to respond and not react. This is not something for which, historically, we have trained our staff, but it’s something we need to do better.

BiniDachs: We started the Moshava B’air Day Camp Network 14 years ago and now currently have six camps. It started with the idea of being a feeder into our sleepaway camps, growing the movement by getting younger participants involved earlier.

Our camper families are composed of 2 different types of families. We have one group of parents who are searching for a mission-driven camp, and they’ll pay higher tuition prices because they want the camp, the movement, and the idealism. Then you have a group who basically want “what’s easy, cheap, and convenient.” The growing competition in the marketplace has been the hardest part. We have to keep up with the product, branding, and selling, whether it’s offering an early-bird special, a hot lunch, free busing, towel services, or an extra week for free.

AaronGreenberg: Day camps have developed from being mom-and-pop operations to much more high-quality, sophisticated systems. This increasing professionalism has taken place across the board: in operations, data management, facilities, communications, and talent.

Support from FJC, JCamp 180, and others, which was previously provided only to overnight camps, also has helped open things up for day camps.

There are now more full-time day camp directors able to focus more on camp because they aren’t also doing multiple jobs in addition to camp. Salaries have gone up to more respectable levels and we have seen day camps go from paying seasonal staff as little as $300 for the summer to paying salaries much closer to minimum wage. As a result, securing high quality staff has become easier.

Also important to note is that a high percentage of day camps were open and vibrant during the pandemic. This seems to correlate to day camp registration being near an all-time high. We have put time, energy, and money into day camps, and we are seeing the results.

"Day camps stand on their own in terms of quality and impact. And being a local day camp provides us with family engagement opportunities; we are in their neighborhoods, we see the parents every single day, we see them all year long, and we can easily connect with them."

There was once a perception that day camps existed simply as feeders for overnight camps. In reality, while a good number of day campers go on to overnight camp, for some campers, Jewish day camp is their Jewish summer camp experience. Day camps stand on their own in terms of quality and impact. And being a local day camp provides us with family engagement opportunities; we are in their neighborhoods, we see the parents every single day, we see them all year long, and we can easily connect with them. When we do a camp reunion, the kids live within 15 or 20 minutes.

Michael Miloff: We’d love to hear your vision for day camps over the next 10 years and their role in the Jewish ecosystem.

AaronGreenberg: Unlike some other Jewish organizations, the registration numbers at Jewish day camps have been growing with many communities embracing day camps as an important springboard to year-round engagement. For some of these families, we are their central Jewish organization and their entrée to Jewish community. Our vision can be for year-round engagement, not just an eight-week experience.

In addition to kids and families, day camps also have an opportunity to engage their staff members, who typically reside in the area and are a part of our community beyond just being employees.

Engagement with Israel also has been growing at day camps. More camps are bringing in Israeli staff (shlichim and shinshinim), to enhance the Israel experience for campers and counselors.

CarrieDarsky:In New Jersey where I live, private camps are the largest competitors of our Jewish camps, not because parents don’t want Jewish, but because the private camps are offering things that the JCC camp can’t, whether it’s a lake facility or a climbing tower 10 times the size of the one that the J has or a much smaller staff to camper ratio because the profits are invested back into camp as opposed to supporting the center. As Bini said, you have to be able to offer towel service, lunches, and everything that the private camp offers. So, I’d love to see the value of Jewish camp seen and elevated as a must have that you can’t compromise – can I send my own towels and my kid gets the Jewish infusion that will ignite their Jewish self-confidence for their lifetime? And, as Aaron said, if you’re not seeing your camp families as part of your year-round community and planning how to engage them off-season, you are missing an opportunity to reinforce their Jewish identity and extend it to the whole family unit – this applies to campers and staff.

Jenni Zeftel: It’s more important than ever that we give day camps the resources needed to provide what they can uniquely offer. Whereas overnight camp provides this amazing, immersive, normative Jewish experience that happens in a bubble, day camp creates a bridge from the joyful Judaism of camp to home and the whole family.

"Day camp creates a bridge from the joyful Judaism of camp to home and the whole family."

Day camps have a really important role to play in engaging the under-affiliated Jewish population, who are just not going to step foot inside of normative Jewish spaces such as overnight camps, synagogues, and day schools. They are not looking for an experience where everyone is Jewish. Day camp is really the only place that offers them something that is explicitly Jewish in content, but not necessarily in population. I think that’s something that more and more families are looking for.

Day camps also can play an important role in fighting antisemitism by being explicitly Jewish and joyful in content while being diverse in population. Through them, we have an incredible opportunity to build allyship with people of other faiths and backgrounds.

BiniDachs: We do a lot of parent-child learning activities at night. We do community-building. We do open houses and concerts just to bring parents into our community.

We find parents come for the extra educational piece that they might not be getting in their school or their synagogue. Something parents find exciting is that we send them their kids’ schedule, with weekly wrap-ups and videos at the end of every day, and tell them, “Here’s what your child did.” They also can come into our camp and do many of the activities themselves. If parents want that immersive day camp experience, they get it from us, because the parent basically has a window.
We also focus on staff education and providing community for them.

AaronGreenberg:When we were kids way back when, it was almost automatic that parents would send their kids to Jewish day camp. At some point, parents became more sophisticated and said, “We are not sending our kids to the Jewish camp unless they are equal in quality to secular camps.” Parents appreciate when the Jewish experience is integrated into it, but not if you run a mediocre camp. You have to run a high-quality camp. If you do that, then they’ll say, “I will send my kid to the Jewish day camp because it is an outstanding camp and because it has a strong Jewish component.”

We need to ensure that potential staff members – and their parents – see being a counselor at a Jewish camp as a means of growth and path toward becoming more independent and engaged in Jewish life.

Michael Miloff: Looking to the next 10 years, what are the trends that you see, and what areas of running a camp will need innovation?

Jenni Zeftel: In terms of in-the-moment trends, the field needs to focus on mental health for campers, staff, and families. It also needs to be innovative about talent, including during the CIT years. The CIT years are a linchpin, a key part of the talent pipeline, and we don’t invest enough in that area. So mental health and talent, and of course, Israel education and security are more important than ever.

"In terms of in-the-moment trends, the field needs to focus on mental health for campers, staff, and families. It also needs to be innovative about talent, including during the CIT years. The CIT years are a linchpin, a key part of the talent pipeline, and we don’t invest enough in that area."

In terms of evergreen trends, the field needs to rethink how it looks at scholarships. We need to make camp more affordable for families in financially vulnerable situations, including for those who may not meet historical requirements for financial aid. Our organization is in the middle of a promising pilot program funded by The Tepper Foundation that’s exploring how we can do that.

Note: The goal of The Tepper Foundation pilot is to incent financially vulnerable families to send their children to day camp. To this end, $100,000 in scholarship funds was equally distributed across five day camps. To date, camps had exceeded the initial goal of 40 additional campers.

We also need to continue investing in the development of day camp professionals.

And most of all, I feel that we need to provide Jewish camps with coaching, guidance, tools and resources so that they’re really clear about their Jewish missions and visions. When you’re serving a population that isn’t all Jewish, that’s something that can get a little bit hazy. But it’s so important to have a really clear North Star.

CarrieDarsky: I second all those things. I haven’t met a CEO of a Jewish nonprofit yet who didn’t have a profound Jewish camping experience at some point in their life, either as a staff member or as a camper. At the same time, both our day and resident camps need a better leadership pipeline for CEO, C-suite roles, even lay leadership roles. We need to start that work much earlier, with our CITs and our counselors.

We face other important questions. Day camps enjoy the benefit of sending people home at the end of the day. What does that mean for continuing the good work that we do in camp during the day? When we talk about mental health - and we know some campers are going home to a complicated environment - what is our role? And post-October 7, where does educating about antisemitism and allyship fit into the camp community?

BiniDachs: Iam scared of rising costs and the impact on tuition cost over the next 10 years. A key part of our model has been that we rent our day schools, which has helped the local school community Jewish day schools. But the day schools are facing rising costs and increasing the rent they charge our day camps. So, we have been looking at the pros and cons of purchasing facilities. We also are pursuing grants and funding for scholarships; we recently secured one for the children of parents working in Jewish education.

Finding and keeping amazing lay leadership, executives, and other staff has been getting harder over the past 10 years. We have full-time directors who say, “Yeah, this is great for now,” and then they get offered a sleepaway camp director position and take it or become a high school principal. We often are seen as a stepping stone. How do we maintain that day camp is enough? That it, too, is a pinnacle. Or that as a Jewish educator, you could stay in day camping for 20, 30 years because it reaches so many kids and is just as impactful as sleepaway camp.

AaronGreenberg:I am concerned and optimistic at the same time. I’m seeing more and more executive directors and staff members of synagogues and JCCs who are of other faiths, which was unheard of when I began. This is not necessarily a negative, but it does present challenges for those without that shared Jewish experience and knowledge. On a recent trip to Israel with 13 day camp professionals, we had a number of participants of other faiths who benefitted greatly by experiencing Israel, which they could then bring to their home communities. For day camps to be effective when hiring staff of other faiths, we need to increase our efforts to teach Judaism/Israel 101, at least from a Jewish camp perspective.

There are many causes for optimism. Eight Jewish day camps including their counselors participated in FJC’s Cornerstone this year. That’s the most ever. It’s fantastic. Next, we need to invest in professional development for our veteran day camp directors and our assistant directors at day camps.

Note: FJC’s Cornerstone Fellowship is a gathering of counselors nominated from 60-plus camps, who attend workshops, training sessions, and immersive experiences.

Less and less do we hear that donors will not give to day camps because they also serve campers of other faiths. In fact, many day camps are having great success telling their stories and fundraising for camp. We explain to donors that investing in Jewish day camps impacts not only Jewish day camps – but it also can impact every organization affected downstream by day camps as campers get older, such as Jewish overnight camps, Jewish youth groups, Hillels, Chabad etc. Let’s continue to get past this idea of “We only want to help Jewish kids,” because when we do, we can make an even bigger difference.

"Investing in Jewish day camps impacts not only Jewish day camps – but it also can impact every organization affected downstream."

Michael Miloff: One potentially complicating factor affecting how day camps operate is that many of them are part of parent organizations. What are the implications and how does your organization handle them?

AaronGreenberg:Most, but not all, of our camps have parent organizations, be they synagogues or JCCs. Each JCC and synagogue is run independently. When the JCCs and synagogues have leadership that gets it and invest in the camp and professionals, it works like magic, and then they are super successful.

"When the JCCs and synagogues have leadership that gets it and invest in the camp and professionals, it works like magic."

BiniDachs: The B’nai Akiva national body, and particularly our executive board, oversees our day camps. The communities can make a sub-board to help run the camp and oversee the director and the finances.

This past year, we’ve hired someone to be the director of operations of all our camps. We’re trying to make a community of our camp directors, too. We have director groups that meet monthly or bimonthly. We’ve started an assistant director group. We are excited about opportunities for cost sharing. We bring in a vendor or an entertainer to go to all six of our camps if we can. We’ve just hired an educational director to write the curriculum for all our day camps together.

CarrieDarsky: I see the JCCA as a giant bathtub, and my job is to add the water to help all boats rise in this tide. I see our role as doing what the camps and our J’s can’t do for themselves. We have this incredible vantage point that allows us to see everybody. We ask if there is something that we can do to fill the gaps. That can be amplifying their stories and vision or sharing best practices. It can mean bringing a stellar person from one JCC camp to another, including elevating them from their camp role to a CEO role when they’re ready.

Some camps want our help and some don't, and that’s okay. We should be here for those that deeply need us. We should be available and accessible to everyone, but I shouldn’t have to put one product out there for everyone, because there is no uniformity among the camps at this moment.

Jenni Zeftel: When I was a day camp director at the 14th Street Y, I had an amazing executive director. When people said, “Well, doesn’t your parent agency just see camp as a cash cow?” I didn’t know what they were talking about. I agree with Aaron that when executive leadership view day camp as crucial to the mission of the organization, only good things will happen. It’s our job to keep driving that point home to the executives and lay leadership of parent organizations.

Michael Miloff: Day camps have significant number of campers and staff from faiths other than the Jewish faith. What does this mean for your organization?

Jenni Zeftel: My experience at overnight camp was one of normative Judaism. Everyone was Jewish, and there’s a lot of beauty in that for a lot of people. But I also was so moved when I became the director of a day camp that was explicitly Jewish in content but welcomed people of other faiths and backgrounds. That felt more like home to me. It felt more like what I want my life and my community to be about. I don’t ever want to be in a place where everyone is the same. I think that there are very few cons to making sure that we have, on the menu of Jewish experiences, places that are explicitly Jewish in content yet welcoming to friends and neighbors of other faiths and backgrounds.

One potential con is that the Jewish mission or vision can get a little bit confused, and leadership might start to say things like, “Maybe we won’t lean this heavily into this piece of Jewish content, because we want to make sure that we’re welcoming to everyone.” But it doesn’t need to be that way. What I really want to do is support day camps in their being really clear about their Jewish missions, while still welcoming people of other faiths and backgrounds. You’re not going to reach an entire population of Jews in North America if you are not also reaching to their friends and neighbors from other faiths and backgrounds.

AaronGreenberg:When people of other faiths come to a Jewish day camp, they are not threatened by the Judaism of it or by the Israeli flag or the letter J there. Often the Jewish individuals seem more threatened. It’s almost like a litmus test: “Am I a good enough Jew to be doing this?” Many camp directors of other faiths do an excellent job of bringing Judaism to camp, as do seasonal staff of other faiths. That said, I would like to see a higher percentage of Jewish staff working at camp. I think we need to focus more on that, because in a lot of communities, they are there, and we are just not getting them.

CarrieDarsky:We need to capitalize on the number of non-Jewish kids that attend Jewish camp and who feel allied with the Jewish community. I’m not sure if anybody has researched into the impact on non-Jewish kids that go to Jewish camp who actually care about Israel in this moment and who have returned to campus and seen their Jewish peers being antagonized. Where are they in that? Are they allying with them? Are they confused? How are we supporting them in this moment? I think we have this incredible opportunity in that camp builds community regardless of how you identify.

We have an opportunity to pull back the curtain on Jewish life. There’s no secret here. I think that we create exclusivity by saying, “Jews do it this way.” I’m wondering how we capitalize on a different approach, where we say, “Come be Jewish with us. You can do all that we do.” There’s nothing that precludes this, especially in a camp. It’s not a synagogue. There are no barriers in our camps that would prevent non-Jewish kids from “doing Jewish” with us.

It means sharing our Jewish values, including giving to others. We already do that for the kids that show up at camp. What does that mean for the non-Jewish parents that are dropping them off? What does it mean for engaging them outside of the camp space? There’s a real moment here in which our day camps can model what it means to actively practice your identity in this world.

BiniDachs:We are in a different space than some of the other camps. Most everyone in our resident camps comes from an Orthodox background, but our day camps have been able to accept families of different Jewish backgrounds. We have students coming from public, Jewish day, and non-Jewish private schools. Most of our parent body are members of synagogues. We try to promote Zionism and a love for Israel, which is definitely at a high point.

In terms of non-Jewish workers, we don’t have so many. Not because we wouldn’t like to have more. We do hire them as outside vendors, for example, someone who’s an expert athlete, gymnast, or pottery specialist. They might be a little bit more outside the community, but they accept their camp, they’re proud of it, and we engage them in that way. But we accept that they’re not looking for more.

Michael Miloff: As we wrap up, what message would you like to leave our readers with?

CarrieDarsky: In this moment, we really need to break down the barriers between the people doing all of this meaningful work. October 7 has increased collaboration across the North American Jewish community. We need to continue to come together, be less territorial about what lane we’re in, and increase collaboration. And with this group, it goes without saying but I always appreciate the reminder that camp is transformational – could we apply the principles/values that create these unique environments to other spaces to build a better world?

"We need to continue to come together, be less territorial about what lane we’re in, and increase collaboration."

AaronGreenberg: Will your kid automatically be Jewish if they go to day camp? Probably not on its own. It’s often about multiple touch points. In my ideal world, the kid goes to Jewish preschool, gets PJ library books, and goes to Jewish day camp. Maybe day school. For those who want it, the kid goes to Jewish overnight camp. Maybe Jewish youth group. Israel. The counselors, the teenagers and young adults who work at camp go to Hillel or Chabad. Perhaps they work out at a JCC and or attend synagogue. The future of Judaism needs everybody working together. We have to look at how can Jewish preschool, PJ Library, and day camp support each other and how day camp engagement can lead to greater engagement as participants get older.

Whenever I was in a challenging Federation meeting as a camp director, I would look around and ask, “How many of you went to Jewish day camp?” All the hands would go up, and I would say, “In 15 years, if you want anyone sitting around at this table, we need to get them involved at a crucial early age, whether it’s day camp or overnight camp. We have to give those touch points to everybody.”

At the upcoming Jewish Camp Summit in December, there will be little talk about whether someone is from a day camp or an overnight camp, and there will not be separate tracks. Day and overnight camps are viewed on an equal level, which is a significant and positive development. So again, lots of cause for optimism, but we can’t take anything for granted.

Jenni Zeftel: What I want readers to hear is that now, more than ever, the field of Jewish day camp has an unparalleled potential to lift the Jewish communal world across North America by bringing home joyful Judaism for the whole family, by engaging the under-affiliated population, by building allies, and by offering Judaism as a platform for lifelong learning and community building for everyone from five-year-olds to grandparents of those five-year-olds and everyone in between. This is a really critical moment to continue to invest in the field of Jewish day camp.

About Insights Interviews
Starting in 2024, we are exploring more deeply the challenges and opportunities posed by the top societal trends from the Camp Insights report, and the solutions that camps are developing in response. This exploration includesInsights Interviews,conversations with leaders and innovators from the camping field. You can find all Insights Interviews here.