Connect with us

RSS

How Jewish summer camp became a refuge for LGBTQ+ youth

(JTA) — These past few weeks, many parents in my circle have been counting pairs of socks, labeling them with their kids’ names and packing duffle bags as they prepare to send their kids to summer camp. It’s an exciting week for parents and kids alike. This year, it’s also potentially lifesaving.

Saving a life is of the highest import in Jewish law, and that value — pikuah nefesh — makes breaking many other laws possible, even necessary, for the purpose of saving a life. This year, it is American law and the fear-based climate igniting new local and national campaigns targeting LGBTQ+ people, and particularly transgender youth, that is posing a significant threat to the wellbeing and lives of some Jewish teens.

Camp has always offered a refuge to teens. The Jewish community’s investment in Jewish summer camp is also an investment in people who are at the cutting edge of creating transformative, affirmative, creative Jewish spaces. LGBTQ+ and ally staff are using their creativity and passion to ensure that their institutions are vehicles for hatzalah — for saving lives and for the thriving of teens of all gender and sexual identities, and those still in the very developmentally appropriate process of experimenting and figuring out who they are and might be.

Last Sunday, I spent two hours as part of a Zoom training for counselors and camp professionals from Jewish summer camps from all over the country. Each of them will be running Moving Traditions’ Tzelem teen groups as an elective to provide LGBTQ+ teens with a dedicated safe, sacred space to explore and celebrate the various ways that Judaism and Jewish community can honor them as who they are — human beings created in the image of God, B’tzelem Elohim.

Among the things we discussed was how staff will have to navigate the intricacies of new legislation while also staying true to their ethics and values. At some camps, division heads and counselors — like school teachers in Florida — will have to engage in Talmudic-like legal contortions to inform trans campers that they see them but cannot call them by their pronouns without informing their parents because of the new laws. Camp leaders will also have to decide how to talk to campers — and to their often politically diverse parent bodies in ways that are educational, compassionate and clear, not an easy task in such a divisive, fear-fueled national climate.

I’m glad to say that this is happening, thanks to the many brave and committed Jewish educators and camp leaders who are answering this call. Eight years ago, I spearheaded the creation of Tzelem by Moving Traditions through a collaboration with Keshet. Moving Traditions already had a long history of running Rosh Hodesh groups for girls and Shevet for boys: transformative, small, mentor-led affinity groups that support teens  to build resilience, a strong sense of self and the foundation of a life-long Jewish community. I believed that for some teens, a LGBTQ+ or specifically trans and non-binary affinity space and mentor would be the best way to ensure that the positive outcomes of Rosh Hodesh groups and Shevet were extending to LGBTQ+ teens as well.

The board and staff centered their educational work on the experience of listening and learning from non-binary, transgender and LGBQ+ youth. Doing this work takes moving beyond polarized positions and opening ourselves up to the possibility that God’s image (and God for that matter) is much more varied than we ever imagined.

Charles M. Blow wrote in the New York Times recently about the migration of LGBTQ kids and their families from states with discriminatory laws to states with protections — and the potential for more of these internal American political refugees. Jewish educators who work with Moving Traditions have been sharing their own painful decisions to move to protect their family members. As they move, they leave behind friends and family who can’t relocate and drain their communities of their talents and some of the amazing kids who used to be part of the tapestry of Jewish youth groups, Hebrew schools and friendship groups in the communities where they lived. Many Jews with their own ancestral trauma joke with one another about never setting down roots too strongly, that they keep one suitcase packed. But this isn’t a joke and it’s not the past — it’s real and it’s happening right now.

This is a moment of crisis to which the American Jewish community must respond with the same rigor and financial resources we would muster to help oppressed Jews anywhere else in the world. And we shouldn’t stop at helping Jews. Just as HIAS has for many years, we should extend our resources and expertise in resettlement beyond the oppressed of our own people. Did we ever imagine the refugees could be internally displaced Jewish families with transgender kids? I did not, but here we are.

One small way to start is to make sure that more Jewish summer camps can be temporary places of refuge. I’m deeply grateful that more camps are doing that this summer. But as trans and LGBTQ kids find freedom this summer, let’s work on ways to help them and their families protect their freedom throughout the year. Let’s work for the day when every state in the Union can be a safe haven for trans and nonbinary and all LGBTQ+ teens.

Jewish summer camps were created at a very different time in American Jewish history than the one we are living in now. They were an intervention often by Jews who had been in the United States longer and were more likely to have economic means — to give poorer, more recently immigrated Jews who lived in hot crowded city apartments an opportunity to send their kids to breathe fresh air, play on open fields and swim in lakes under the open sky. LGTBQ+ kids need not only fresh air to breathe, but the ability to be in communities where they can stop holding their breath, holding their fears quietly, where they can breathe easy knowing they belong and that they are recognized for who they are.

 


The post How Jewish summer camp became a refuge for LGBTQ+ youth appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

RSS

University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote

Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.

Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.

Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”

“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”

Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.

UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.

Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.

“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.

“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”

On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”

The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.

“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.

Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.

Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.

“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.

“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.

“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”

During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”

At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”

“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.

The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’

Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.

As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.

Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.

For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance. 

On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.

One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”

The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.

These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference. 

Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.

This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students. 

Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.

As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.

These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.

McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction. 

This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.

We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”

Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.

The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News