Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps by Joseph Reimer (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps by Joseph Reimer
• Sivan Zakai (bio)

Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps. By Joseph Reimer. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2022. 248 pp.

How is Shabbat celebrated at American Jewish summer camps? And what types of learning occurs when campers and staff participate in the rituals of Shabbat at camp? These are the central questions illuminated by Joseph Reimer's Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps.

Reimer investigates three camps that, on the surface, would appear to have radically different approaches to celebrating Jewish life: URJ Camp Eisner in Massachusetts (Reform), Camp Ramah in Wisconsin (Conservative), and Camp Yavneh in New Hampshire ("an independent camp with a substantial Orthodox population") (19). Through his thick descriptions of Shabbat celebrations at these ostensibly different camps, Riemer demonstrates that they in fact have striking parallels: carefully planned programing, positive peer pressure, and a practice of "guided participation" that allows campers to learn, over time, how to participate in the rituals of Shabbat. Despite their differences, these camps all provide campers opportunities to learn about Shabbat by doing Shabbat. [End Page 699]

Making Shabbat is divided into three sections, each of which offers a distinct scholarly narrative. Part One, "Creating Shabbat at Camp," offers a sociological and historical overview of Shabbat celebrations at American Jewish summer camps. Reimer argues that "Shabbat at camp" was a deliberate invention of the leaders of Jewish camps established in the 1920s: Cejwin, Modin, and Achvah. These camps departed from earlier definitions of Jewish summer camps as merely institutions with large Jewish populations and steered toward a new vision of Jewish camps as places where young Jews could learn about Judaism. Leaders of these new camps, Reimer argues, framed Shabbat as "a conscious undertaking" designed to "create a special camp day that feels like a traditional Shabbat, allows for Shabbat observance, and yet does not feel overly restrictive" (32–33). They created a structure for celebrating Shabbat at camp that spread to other camps, including the three that are the focus of Reimer's work.

Part Two, "Celebrating Shabbat at Camp," offers detailed descriptions of the common rhythm that transcends Jewish camps with different denominational and educational ideologies. Reimer takes readers on a journey through the stages of Shabbat at camp, from preparations for Shabbat, to ushering in Shabbat on Friday evenings, through the Saturday rituals of Shabbat celebrations, and ending with Havdalah on Saturday night. In each chapter, Reimer outlines the common structure of camp Shabbat and the ways that it gets enacted differently in each of the camps he has studied. This section, which sits at the heart of Making Shabbat, shows off Reimer's great skill as an ethnographer. Readers who are intimately familiar with the rituals of Jewish summer camps will find that Reimer has succeeded in making the familiar strange by interrogating the "sacred order" at each camp to demonstrate how beloved camp rituals function and how they came to be (95). Yet readers who have limited experiences with the phenomenon of Shabbat at camp will likely find that Reimer can also make the strange familiar by providing detailed and vivid descriptions of the rituals at each camp—scenes from ecstatic Friday night dancing at Eisner, camper-led prayer services at Ramah in Wisconsin, a competitive quiz about the weekly Torah portion at Yavneh, and more.

This section, with all of its rich descriptions, also highlights the greatest limitation of Reimer's work: the limited voices of the campers. He bases his analysis of summer camps primarily on his experiences as a participant-observer and his discussions with camp staff past and present. Yet missing from his analysis is how the campers themselves think and feel about their Shabbat experiences. Reimer readily admits that this is a limitation of his research design, and yet it is nonetheless striking that despite asking important questions about what camp rituals mea [End Page 700] for campers, the campers themselves rarely weigh in on these questions. The few moments in the book where readers do get to hear the thoughts of campers—like a rare discussion with a congregational...