When I walked into that 500 square-foot cabin filled to the brim with bunk beds, trunks, photos, and 14 other ten-year-olds, everything felt so vast. Those 50 acres of Goldman Union Camp Institute would be mine to explore for four precious weeks freely. By the time I was fully unpacked, I was practically pushing my parents out of the door of Cabin 3. Everything felt so fresh and new: new friends, cool new counselors, new cereals my mom would never let me eat, the possibilities were endless.
There was something so freeing about finally being part of a Jewish majority.
I didn’t realize how much of a weight was being lifted off of me to be the “spokesperson of my people” until it was gone. This communal understanding of our culture showed up in the small and mundane, but made all the difference. In the middle of my first season, the camp started serving cheese sticks for snacks, something my sensitive Jewish stomach couldn’t digest. Instead of just forgoing snacks, like I would at school when they served dairy, I see out of the corner of my eye one of my friends yelling at the director for serving cheese to a bunch of lactose-intolerant Jews. That was the first and last time they served cheese sticks. I felt more a part of a community than ever before because of these small similarities we all held close to our souls.
I found my role model at camp: the songleader.
The song leaders were the cool adults who somehow made every service fun. When my cabin had a mouse infestation my first summer which inevitably caused half of my bunk mates to run out of their beds screaming every other night, one of my favorite song leaders would wake up to sing to us “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “The Babysitter Song” until my friend’s tears ceased. Being able to command a room like that through song was all I wanted to learn how to do.
I grew up, but camp could only grow so much with me.
As I aged, things about camp that dazzled my younger self slowly became lackluster. The bunk beds that were my chosen sanctuary for a month weren’t even long enough to fit my feet anymore. The sports field seemed cramped compared to the grand parks and cities I could now explore independently. Every year I left, the more freedom there was to leave behind. As my relationship with camp changed, my life simultaneously got fuller with different friends, ambitions, and goals. I remember that final Shabbat my Cabin and I led was when I realized camp had given me all that it could. We all crowded around each other with interlocked arms as we swayed to “Little Talks” mashed up with Hashkiveinu because we knew it was time to change from camp friends to old friends.
Camp is not just a place; it is wherever I am comfortable in my culture and faith.
I didn’t realize until after I left camp that my time as a camper was what allowed me to let go of GUCI once it was finally through. Being surrounded by Jews for a month every year slowly taught me how to be comfortable in my Jewish identity back at home. Years of subconsciously being told to hold pride in who I am rubbed off on me without even knowing it. I learned how to make a space for myself wherever I go. Even though I am not attending camp anymore, I carry it with me by finding comfort in my culture because a little group of kids and counselors in Zionsville, Indiana, showed me how to do so.
Now it is my turn to give back to my community.
After I left camp, I started teaching myself guitar. I had wanted to do it for years, but finally got the motivation to start. Slowly, I worked through song after song until I taught myself how to comfortably lead a service. I got to call myself a real song leader on my Israel trip, where I first led services, and next year I will be the music specialist at my synagogue. I am proud to know that, in a way, I have become my younger self’s role model, but I couldn’t become that person without leaving the ease of someone else making the musical for me. I had the luck of being inspired by music and the Jewish community it built for me, and now it’s my turn to keep the tradition going outside of the GUCI bubble.