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For this Jewish surf camp in Virginia, the beach is their sanctuary

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (JTA) — On a recent morning at Sandbridge Beach, just a short drive down the coast from the city of Virginia Beach, an unexpected fog disrupted beachgoers’ otherwise picturesque summer setting.
The fog was so thick that even the water became invisible, and everyone was forced out of the water. Most swimmers and surfers retreated to their towels for a break.
But one group returned to their tent and, after a quick snack and a new layer of sunscreen, formed a circle. They began by singing the Jewish prayer “Mah Tovu”, mashed up with the hymn “Sanctuary.” Then after a brief introduction from camp director Danny Mishkin, who explained the concept of “B’tselem Elohim,” the idea that people are created in God’s image, campers took turns sharing what gifts they bring to their community.
Such is the dual mission of Sababa Beachaway, a Jewish overnight camp in Virginia Beach that specializes in ocean education and exploration through a Jewish lens. The camp offers four focus areas — surfing, sailing, scuba diving and an education track called “ocean discovery” — on top of typical camp activities and Jewish programming and prayer.
“We teach a more spiritual style of Jewish learning and Jewish engagement,” Mishkin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Mishkin explained that the camp’s approach to spirituality enhances campers’ connection to both their Judaism and to the ocean.
“It really does flow back and forth,” he went on. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, here’s the Jewish time.’ We’ll actually get to the beach, do a prayer about making the beach a sanctuary. So that they’re aware to nature, they’re aware to being fully present. It enhances their specialty, but also the specialties are very in-the-moment specialties and have a little bit of adrenaline rush to them. And that enhances our Jewish programming. They’re a little more open to a more spiritual life when you take them to the beach, which is a very innately spiritual place.”
Sababa director Danny Mishkin, standing in center, begins the morning by leading a moment of meditation. (Jacob Gurvis)
Maya Cohen, 16, said being at Sababa has helped her connect spiritually, which wasn’t as easy for her before camp. “I like the community. It feels like a second home to me,” she said.
Sababa just wrapped up its fifth summer, which consisted of three two-week sessions for campers ranging from 9 to 17 years old. Though the camp has experienced considerable growth — from 80 sessions sold its first summer to 230 this year — it’s been anything but smooth sailing.
Mishkin and his co-founder and co-director Lynn Lancaster created a day camp in New York in 2015, with help from a Jewish grant for out-of-the-box summer programs for teens. Both directors are synagogue veterans with a background in Jewish education and youth engagement.
Lancaster, a longtime sailor herself, said she and Mishkin chose to create a surfing program because it provided an opportunity that was not readily available to children in New York.
She also referenced “Race to Nowhere,” the 2010 documentary about the increasing burnout and depression children can experience in the face of mounting pressure to succeed at a young age. In other words, what better way to escape the pressures of school and college applications than to spend a summer at the beach?
Mishkin, who added that he sees Sababa as the place for “over-programmed kids,” has been surfing for around 20 years, since he took two lessons during his honeymoon in Hawaii and “became obsessed with it.”
After a few summers running the day camp, which started with only nine campers, Mishkin and Lancaster took the next step and launched an overnight camp in Virginia, with support from the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s incubator program. While some Jewish camps in California allow campers to specialize in surfing, Sababa may be the only Jewish camp primarily focused on the sport.
For the first two summers in 2018 and 2019, Sababa was based out of Old Dominion University in Norfolk. Then COVID hit. There was no camp in 2020, and in 2021, Sababa ran a scaled-back program in New York, where both directors live during the year.
Sababa then returned to Virginia last summer, moving to Virginia Wesleyan University, which Lancaster said has been the perfect spot. The campus features a swimming pool, climbing wall and sports fields. And the school accommodates Sababa’s need for a kosher kitchen, too.
“It’s been a nice, smooth five years. It was really easy-going,” Mishkin joked.
“What camp wouldn’t want to take a year off after two years of running? It was fabulous,” Lancaster added with a smile.
Starting last summer, Sababa became part of Commonpoint Queens, a social services organization in New York that runs local community programming and operates seven camps. A partner of New York’s UJA-Federation, Commonpoint’s camps are all Jewish and kosher or kosher-style, according to the group’s vice president of operations, Craig Lastres.
“It’s very difficult to survive as a mom-and-pop if you’re not attached to anything,” Lastres told JTA. Lastres said he tries to visit Sababa a few times each summer.
After navigating two COVID summers as an independent camp, Lancaster said being part of Commonpoint has been “a wonderful, wonderful thing for us.”
Since Sababa is not affiliated with a major Jewish denomination — and therefore is not connected to the Ramah or Reform camping networks — as an independent camp it did not receive the resources and support that come with being part of a camping movement, like help with fundraising, marketing, camp accreditation and so on.
Sababa’s campers represent a wide range of Jewish affiliation, from those who wrap tefillin and observe the summer’s fast days to those for whom “this is their Jewish connection,” Lancaster said. (There are also a few non-Jewish campers, drawn by the prospect of daily surfing.)
“I think as a camp and as a community, we are doing incredibly important work, as these kids are getting to know each other, they’re learning from each other’s Judaism,” she added.
Campers surfing at Sababa Beachaway. (Courtesy of Sababa)
Campers also come from a variety of socioeconomic and national backgrounds, with kids coming “from Park Avenue to the park bench,” Lancaster said. And this summer, Sababa welcomed campers from as far away as Israel and Uruguay, as well as a staff member from Mexico City.
One camper, who has spent four summers at Sababa, said that he has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and is on the autism spectrum. “What I love about this camp is they can accommodate for all that, and they support you,” he said.
With its campus next door to Norfolk, home to NATO and the world’s largest naval base, Sababa also tries to tap into the local military community by offering scholarships for military children through the Jewish Board of Chaplains.
Lancaster said she appreciates being able to offer such an opportunity, especially for a community that is not often prioritized in Jewish spaces.
“If there are [military] service people that want to have those Jewish values that they’re not getting, it’s an interesting market we’re trying to tap into,” Lastres added.
At its inception, Sababa only offered surfing, before expanding to add its three other specialty areas. The camp brings in local companies for the sport instruction, which both directors hailed as central to the program’s success.
“One of the things that’s also helpful when you’re dealing with nature as such a big part of your program is having locals help run it because they know —” Mishkin began to explain, before Lancaster jumped in, finishing her colleague’s thought: “they know the beach, they know the tides, they know weather. Danny and I can read that in New York with perfect ease, but this is their world,” she said.
While most of the instructors aren’t Jewish, Lancaster and Mishkin said they are fully bought-in to Sababa’s focus on spirituality.
“I think the ocean and the water, the wonder, transcends a particular denomination,” said Lancaster.
“When they see us do our morning ritual at the beach,” Mishkin added, “the head surf instructor said, ‘When I heard you say that, I knew I was part of something special. I just knew that this was a different type of program.’”
The campers spend Monday through Friday mornings at their specialties, which run for a week at a time and are split into groups based on skill level. In the afternoons, it’s back to campus for more traditional camp programming — activities like art, soccer, photography and drama. “It’s a lot like running two camps,” Lancaster said.
Evenings feature Jewish programming, hikes, bonfires and other nature-forward experiences. Then on Shabbat, the camp has egalitarian services on Friday night — a portion of the service has music, while the main ma’ariv section does not — plus four service options on Saturdays, ranging from traditional prayer to options centered around meditation, nature and drama.
Caleb Weiss, 14, said he comes to Sababa for his friends and to spend every day at the beach. “I think it connects what I love and my religion, which is really neat,” he said.
Jill Weinstein, a therapist from Atlanta who has worked at Sababa for three summers, said she has witnessed firsthand how the camp has enhanced kids’ emotional intelligence — especially in the context of water sports, where they have no choice but to get back up when a wave knocks them down.
“It teaches a lot of these kids resiliency and grit,” she said. “It’s pretty amazing to see where they start at the beginning of the week and where they end, and just the accomplishment and just the smile on their face when they accomplish something.”
The idea that campers will take home the lessons they learn at Sababa is a key component of the camp’s mission. Mishkin explained that they often do check-ins with campers where they share their “Sababa level,” a 1-10 scale of how present one feels in that moment. Mishkin said he has heard multiple stories from parents whose kids have used that same language at home and at school.
Eight years after starting the day camp in Queens, Lancaster said she “never had any idea this could become a full-time gig.”
But looking out at the water, where her campers were fully engaged in their surf lessons, with counselors standing by to help and offer words of encouragement, not to mention Mishkin waist deep in the ocean offering help to a struggling surfer, Lancaster echoed the sense of wonder the camp aims to imbue in its participants.
“How do you not recognize that you’re part of something bigger than yourself when you’re out here?” she asked, not expecting an answer. “And to do that in a Jewish context is very, very powerful.”
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The post For this Jewish surf camp in Virginia, the beach is their sanctuary appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Vast Majority of US Jews Reject Jewish Voice for Peace, Other Anti-Zionist Groups, Polling Data Shows

Pro-Hamas protesters led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) demonstrate outside the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo: Derek French via Reuters Connect
A new poll released on Wednesday underscores how far removed Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other anti-Zionist organizations that claim to represent Jews are from mainstream Jewish views on Israel, Zionism, and the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.
Commissioned by The Jewish Majority, a nonprofit founded by a researcher whose aim is to monitor and accurately report Jewish opinion on the most consequential issues affecting the community, the poll found that the vast majority of American Jews believe that anti-Zionist movements and anti-Israel university protests are antisemitic.
The findings also showed that Jews across the US overwhelmingly oppose the views and tactics of JVP, a prominent anti-Israel group which has helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza.
Founded in 1996 at the University of California, Berkeley, JVP describes itself as “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world.” It was infamously one of the first organizations to blame Israel following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.
“Israeli apartheid and occupation — and the United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence,” JVP said as Israelis were still counting their dead and missing.
American Jews who responded to The Jewish Majority’s poll overwhelmingly reject this line of thinking. Seventy percent said they believe that anti-Zionism of any stripe is antisemitic; 85 percent believe that Hamas, whom JVP described as “the oppressed,” is a genocidal group; and 79 percent support vocally pro-Israel groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization JVP has defamed as “not a credible source on antisemitism and racism.”
Additionally, JVP’s methods of protest are unpopular among American Jews, The Jewish Majority added, noting that 75 percent disapprove of “blocking traffic” and only 18 percent approve of protesters’ wearing masks to conceal their identities. Sixty percent also disagree with staging protests outside the homes of public officials, a common JVP tactic.
“Plain and simple, Jewish Voice for Peace is an extremist group that does not represent the views of the overwhelming majority of American Jews,” Jonathan Schulman, The Jewish Majority’s executive director, said in a statement accompanying the poll results. “American Jews share a strong and consistent stance against anti-Zionists as well as a deep concern over rising antisemitism and the tactics used by organizations like JVP.”
He continued, “It is high time people see through the charade: JVP is not representative of anyone but a marginal fringe, even if a few radical Jews are involved in their movement.”
The Jewish Majority’s poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies.
Jewish Voice for Peace’s inner workings, messaging, and political activities were recently documented in a groundbreaking report on the group published last month by StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group based in Los Angeles, California.
Titled, “A Shield for Hate, Not a Voice for Peace,” the report noted that JVP has promoted a distorted history of Zionism and Israel, accusing the movement for Jewish self-determination of everything from training US police officers to violate the rights of African Americans to abusing “Jewish history.” In doing so, it has allied with extremist groups such as WithinOurLifetime — whose founder has threatened to set Jews on fire and led a movement to harass Jews on New York City’s public transportation — and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and has proclaimed that “the Zionist entity has no right to exist.”
The report also stated that JVP has collaborated with anti-Israel entities such as Samidoun, which identifies itself as a “Palestinian prisoner solidarity network,” to hold rallies. Samidoun described Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities in Israel as “a brave and heroic operation.” The United States and Canada each imposed sanctions on Samidoun in October, labeling the organization a “sham charity” and accusing it of fundraising for designated terrorist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
JVP has also compared Zionism to Nazism.
“This is Holocaust inversion — an antisemitic tactic in which the genocide Jews faced in the past is used to promote baseless hatred against Jews today,” the StandWithUs report said. “The only group benefiting from JVP’s Holocaust inversion is Hamas — a truly genocidal terrorist group. JVP has helped shield them from accountability for launching the war, ruthlessly militarizing civilian areas across Gaza, stealing humanitarian aid, and rejecting nearly every proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal.”
In June 2024, the Anti-Defamation League filed a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing the political fundraising arm of JVP of transgressing federal election law by misrepresenting its spending and receiving unlawful donations from corporate entities, citing “discrepancies” in the organization’s income and expense reports.
The complaint lodged a slew of charges against Jewish Voice for Peace’s political action committee (JVP PAC), including spending almost no money on candidates running for office — a political action committee’s main purpose. From 2020-2023, JVP PAC reported spending $82,956, but just a small fraction of that sum — $1,775, just over 2 percent — was spent on candidates, according to the complaint. The money went elsewhere, being paid out in one case for “legal services” provided by a company which “doesn’t appear to practice law” and other expenses.
JVP continues to have the support of powerful friends in the world of progressive philanthropy, a formidable subset of the American elite, amid these scandals and controversies.
Since 2017 it has — according to a 2023 report by the National Association of Scholars — received $480,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a philanthropic foundation whose endowment is valued at $1.27 billion. Between 2014 and 2015 alone, JVP brought in over half a million dollars in grants from various foundations, including the Open Society Policy Center — founded by billionaire George Soros — the Kaphan Foundation, and others.
According to the recent StandWithUs report, JVP has received substantial financial assistance from organizations tied to Lebanon and Iran.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Vast Majority of US Jews Reject Jewish Voice for Peace, Other Anti-Zionist Groups, Polling Data Shows first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Turkey’s Erdogan Demands Israel Pay Reparations for Gaza, Says Palestinian State ‘Must Not Be Delayed’

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a joint statement to the media in Baghdad, Iraq, April 22, 2024. Photo: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/Pool via REUTERS
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday demanded Israel pay reparations “for the harm it inflicted through its aggressive actions in Gaza” and urged the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state.
During a press conference with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in West Java, as part of his Asian tour to Malaysia and Pakistan, Erdogan rejected US President Donald Trump’s plan to “take over” the Gaza Strip to rebuild the war-torn enclave while relocating Palestinians elsewhere during reconstruction efforts.
Like many other Middle Eastern leaders who rejected Trump’s proposal, Erdogan also advocated for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The creation of a sovereign, territorially united State of Palestine within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital cannot be delayed any further,” he said during the press conference, as aired by the Turkish TRT Haber TV channel.
“Any step, proposal, or project that undermines this matter is illegitimate in our view, and it means more conflicts, bloodshed, and instability,” he continued.
During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House last week, Trump called on Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war between Israel and Hamas.
“Until there is peace in Gaza, until the Palestinians achieve peace, peace in the region is impossible,” the Turkish president said.
With talks underway to extend the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Erdogan also demanded that Israel must pay reparations “for the harm it inflicted through its aggressive actions in Gaza.”
“The cost of Israel’s 15-month attacks in Gaza is about $100 billion,” he said. “The law dictates that the perpetrator must compensate for the damage.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one, Hamas agreed to release 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, in exchange for Israel freeing over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorism-related offenses.
So far, 16 of the 33 hostages have been released during the first phase, which is set to last six weeks.
During the press conference, Erdogan also announced that Turkey and Indonesia will join forces in the reconstruction of Gaza.
Last month, Erdogan met with Hamas leader Muhammad Ismail Darwish in Ankara.
Turkey has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel during the Gaza war, even threatening to invade the Jewish state and calling on the United Nations to use force if it cannot stop Israel’s military campaign against Hamas.
Last year, Ankara also ceased all exports and imports to and from Israel, citing the “humanitarian tragedy” in the Palestinian territories as the reason.
Erdogan has frequently defended Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” against what he described as an Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. He and other Turkish leaders have repeatedly compared Israel with Nazi Germany and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler.
The post Turkey’s Erdogan Demands Israel Pay Reparations for Gaza, Says Palestinian State ‘Must Not Be Delayed’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Boston University Rejects Proposal to Divest From Israel

College students in the Boston, Massachusetts area hold dueling demonstrations amid Israel’s war with Hamas in April 2024. Photo: Vincent Ricci via Reuters Connect
Boston University has rejected the group Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) call for its endowment to be divested of holdings in companies which sell armaments to the Israeli military, becoming the latest higher education institution to refuse this key tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
“The endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East,” university president Melissa Gilliam said on Tuesday in a statement which reported the will of the board of trustees. “Our traditions of free speech and academic freedom are critical to who we are as an institution, and so is our tradition of finding common ground to engage difficult topics while respecting the dignity of every individual.”
Gilliam’s announcement comes amid SJP’s push to hold a student government administered referendum on divestment, a policy goal the group has pursued since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Its hopes were dashed on Tuesday when what SJP described as “technical difficulties” caused the referendum to be postponed indefinitely. However, SJP hinted that the delay may have been caused by its failing to draw a “representative sample of BU’s undergraduate population” to the polls.
SJP’s relationship with the university is poor, according to The Daily Free Press, Boston University’s official campus newspaper. In November, the Student and Activities Office issued the group a “formal warning” following multiple violations of policies on peaceful assembly. SJP, the Free Press said, occupied an area of the Center for Computing and Data Sciences for two days and tacked anti-Zionist propaganda — which included accusations that Boston University profits from “death” — on school property inside the building despite being forewarned that doing so is verboten. Following the disciplinary action, SJP accused the university of being “discriminatory towards SJP and our events.”
American universities have largely rejected demands to divest from Israel and entities at all linked to the Jewish state, delivering a succession of blows to the pro-Hamas protest movement that students and faculty have pushed with dozens of illegal demonstrations aimed at coercing officials into enacting the policy.
Trinity College turned away BDS advocates in November, citing its “fiduciary responsibilities” and “primary objective of maintaining the endowment’s intergeneration equity.” It also noted that acceding to demands for divestment for the sake of “utilizing the endowment to exert political influence” would injure the college financially, stressing that doing so would “compromise our access to fund managers, in turn undermining the board’s ability to perform its fiduciary obligation.”
The University of Minnesota in August pointed to the same reason for spurning divestment while stressing the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes its campus community. It coupled its pronouncement with a new investment policy, a so-called “position of neutrality” which, it says, will be a guardrail protecting university business from the caprices of political opinion.
Colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel, according to a report published in September by JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report presented the potential financial impact of universities adopting the BDS movement, which is widely condemned for being antisemitic.
The losses estimated by JLens are catastrophic. Adopting BDS, it said, would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.
“This groundbreaking report approached the morally problematic BDS movement from an entirely new direction — its negative impact on portfolio returns,” New York University adjunct professor Michael Lustig said in a statement extolling the report. “JLens has done a great job in quantifying the financial effects of implementing the suggestions of this pernicious movement, and importantly, they ‘show their work’ by providing full transparency into their methodology, and properly caveat the points where assumptions must necessarily be made. This report will prove to be an important tool in helping to fight noxious BDS advocacy.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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