My Time at a Hasidic Boys’ Camp
The boys and their counselors gather in front of “770” for a memorial service called Gimmel Tammuz: As the Chabad-Lubavitch website puts it: “The anniversary of passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of righteous memory.
For the better part of July, my wife and I and our two youngest children were at a Hasidic camp for boys. My wife was employed there for the month as a camp nurse, and our oldest boy, aged nine, was there attending camp for the first time at a sleep-away camp. (I did some writing, working on my novel.) It was a good trial to see if he would like it. Actually, we weren’t far from him, but he was still in a bunk with other boys his own age. We were curious and slightly nervous how well he would fit in with the other boys, who were outwardly more religiously observant than our family was.
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