How Jewish summer camp became a refuge for LGBTQ+ youth

(JTA) — These previous few weeks, many dad and mom in my circle have been counting pairs of socks, labeling them with their youngsters’ names and packing duffle luggage as they put together to ship their youngsters to summer time camp. It’s an thrilling week for folks and children alike. This yr, it’s additionally doubtlessly lifesaving.

Saving a life is of the best import in Jewish legislation, and that worth — pikuah nefesh — makes breaking many different legal guidelines attainable, even obligatory, for the aim of saving a life. This yr, it’s American legislation and the fear-based local weather igniting new native and nationwide campaigns focusing on LGBTQ+ folks, and significantly transgender youth, that’s posing a big risk to the wellbeing and lives of some Jewish teenagers.

Camp has at all times provided a refuge to teenagers. The Jewish group’s funding in Jewish summer time camp can be an funding in people who find themselves on the leading edge of making transformative, affirmative, inventive Jewish areas. LGBTQ+ and ally workers are utilizing their creativity and fervour to make sure that their establishments are automobiles for hatzalah — for saving lives and for the thriving of teenagers of all gender and sexual identities, and people nonetheless within the very developmentally acceptable technique of experimenting and determining who they’re and is perhaps.

Final Sunday, I spent two hours as a part of a Zoom coaching for counselors and camp professionals from Jewish summer time camps from everywhere in the nation. Every of them can be working Transferring Traditions’ Tzelem teen teams as an elective to offer LGBTQ+ teenagers with a devoted protected, sacred house to discover and have a good time the varied ways in which Judaism and Jewish group can honor them as who they’re — human beings created within the picture of God, B’tzelem Elohim.

Among the many issues we mentioned was how workers must navigate the intricacies of latest laws whereas additionally staying true to their ethics and values. At some camps, division heads and counselors — like college academics in Florida — must interact in Talmudic-like authorized contortions to tell trans campers that they see them however can’t name them by their pronouns with out informing their dad and mom due to the brand new legal guidelines. Camp leaders will even must resolve the right way to discuss to campers — and to their typically politically various mum or dad our bodies in methods which can be instructional, compassionate and clear, not a straightforward job in such a divisive, fear-fueled nationwide local weather.

I’m glad to say that that is taking place, due to the various courageous and dedicated Jewish educators and camp leaders who’re answering this name. Eight years in the past, I spearheaded the creation of Tzelem by Transferring Traditions by way of a collaboration with Keshet. Transferring Traditions already had an extended historical past of working Rosh Hodesh teams for ladies and Shevet for boys: transformative, small, mentor-led affinity teams that help teenagers  to construct resilience, a powerful sense of self and the inspiration of a life-long Jewish group. I believed that for some teenagers, a LGBTQ+ or particularly trans and non-binary affinity house and mentor can be the easiest way to make sure that the constructive outcomes of Rosh Hodesh teams and Shevet had been extending to LGBTQ+ teenagers as properly.

The board and workers centered their instructional work on the expertise of listening and studying from non-binary, transgender and LGBQ+ youth. Doing this work takes shifting past polarized positions and opening ourselves as much as the chance that God’s picture (and God for that matter) is way more different than we ever imagined.

Charles M. Blow wrote within the New York Instances lately concerning the migration of LGBTQ youngsters and their households from states with discriminatory legal guidelines to states with protections — and the potential for extra of those inside American political refugees. Jewish educators who work with Transferring Traditions have been sharing their very own painful choices to maneuver to guard their members of the family. As they transfer, they go away behind family and friends who can’t relocate and drain their communities of their abilities and a few of the superb youngsters who was once a part of the tapestry of Jewish youth teams, Hebrew colleges and friendship teams within the communities the place they lived. Many Jews with their very own ancestral trauma joke with each other about by no means setting down roots too strongly, that they maintain one suitcase packed. However this isn’t a joke and it’s not the previous — it’s actual and it’s taking place proper now.

This can be a second of disaster to which the American Jewish group should reply with the identical rigor and monetary assets we might muster to assist oppressed Jews anyplace else on this planet. And we shouldn’t cease at serving to Jews. Simply as HIAS has for a few years, we should always prolong our assets and experience in resettlement past the oppressed of our personal folks. Did we ever think about the refugees may very well be internally displaced Jewish households with transgender youngsters? I didn’t, however right here we’re.

One small technique to begin is to make it possible for extra Jewish summer time camps could be momentary locations of refuge. I’m deeply grateful that extra camps are doing that this summer time. However as trans and LGBTQ youngsters discover freedom this summer time, let’s work on methods to assist them and their households defend their freedom all year long. Let’s work for the day when each state within the Union is usually a protected haven for trans and nonbinary and all LGBTQ+ teenagers.

Jewish summer time camps had been created at a really completely different time in American Jewish historical past than the one we live in now. They had been an intervention typically by Jews who had been in the US longer and had been extra more likely to have financial means — to offer poorer, extra lately immigrated Jews who lived in sizzling crowded metropolis residences a chance to ship their youngsters to breathe recent air, play on open fields and swim in lakes below the open sky. LGTBQ+ youngsters needn’t solely recent air to breathe, however the skill to be in communities the place they’ll cease holding their breath, holding their fears quietly, the place they’ll breathe simple understanding they belong and that they’re acknowledged for who they’re.

is the chief program officer for Transferring Traditions. Not too long ago introduced as a winner of the 2023 Covenant Award, she is a nationally famend Jewish educator.

The views and opinions expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the views of JTA or its mum or dad firm, 70 Faces Media.