<HTML>Dear Rabbi Berger:
Thanks for a wonderful list. I'd like to throw a new question (or series
of questions) out at this august group.
While those of us in day school education struggle to provide our students
with an inspiring, challenging, well-disciplined, and warm atmosphere
eight hours (or more) a day and ten months a year, we are limited because
that is all we can do. In other words, a major potential component of
chinuch that has not really been addressed on this list is that of Jewish
summer camping.
The potential for growth and reinforcement that camps can provide is
tremendous; unfortunately, if a student does not attend a camp consistent
with the messages of his or her school, the opposite is true. How can I,
for example, attempt to encourage an eight-grader to daven with kavana, if
they leave their tefillin home for the summer and eat out at McDonald's
(not in Mevasseret) with their camp?
Are there any schools out there who prohibit their students from attending
such camps? Or, more positively, how do we encourage those students in
orthodox schools, whose homes may not be (yet) as orthodox as their
school, attend the "right" camps?
What are the "right" camps?
I could go on and on, but this may well get the ball rolling.
Thanks.
Jeff Kobrin</HTML>
