Camp Stone, a Bnei Akiva Moshava overnight camp in western Pennsylvania renowned for its creative approach to Jewish education, prides itself on being a place “Where nothing is impossible,” as its tagline proclaims.
But with camp canceled because of COVID-19, this motto morphed into a rallying cry for camp directors Yakov and Estee Fleischmann as they set out to accomplish the impossible: Bringing an authentic Camp Stone experience to more than 1,000 campers and staff in 35 cities worldwide during a pandemic fraught with health, financial and emotional crises.
Thanks to dedicated staffers and generous donations, the Fleischmanns oversaw an innovative program called Indoor World, a free two-week program that ran from June 28 to July 12, where Zoom boxes and physical boxes full of camp surprises helped create an out-of-the-box camp experience that saved summer for hundreds of camp families.
Indoor World was born after months of uncertainty about whether camp would open. After starting to plan camp back in November, the Fleischmanns watched with increasing concern as COVID-19 spread. When camp was just weeks away, after consulting medical professionals and reviewing ever-changing guidelines, they concluded that they could not open. On May 22, they sent a letter breaking the news to families and promising full refunds which, though financially debilitating, they felt were warranted in light of COVID’s crippling impact.
Even families that had steeled themselves for the cancellation were bereft after months of lockdowns. Tamar Poupko Smith of Cleveland, Ohio, mother of four former and current campers lamented, “Our children were devastated when we learned that Camp Stone wouldn’t open this summer. Our son was more upset about camp not taking place than he was about having to revise his bar mitzvah plans!”
Yet even before camp was canceled, the Fleischmanns started to envision something different: A program that could give kids a taste of Stone at a time when they needed it most.
THE FLEISCHMANNS turned to their young staff, spearheaded by three “Rosh Mosh” (head counselors): Shalhevet Schwartz, 22, Aryeh Klein, 24, and Elisha Kelman, 23, to set goals for a fledgling program.
“After a lot of brainstorming, we settled on three major goals,” said Klein. The first “was to have campers connect with each other and with camp,” the second “to try to give kids an understanding and ability to process what’s going on, how to respond to crisis and change” and the third “to educate toward the values-driven community that we normally try to create in camp.”
The program needed to be more than just camp over Zoom.
“The phrase ‘virtual camp’ actually didn’t cross our lips. We wanted to acknowledge that this was never going to be camp. We had no intention to be something we weren’t,” says Schwartz.
They named the program “Indoor World” after a multi-purpose structure at camp with the same name, an apt title for a program bringing Stone into campers’ homes.
“Everybody thought it was impossible,” says Yakov Fleischmann. “They said, ‘You will never pull it off. If you are not in camp, you might as well cut your losses and move on.’ We said we weren’t going to do that. We wanted to create something that is both authentic and immersive.”
For authenticity, they decided to bring as many staff members as they could safely to their 500-acre campus in Sugar Grove, PA to collaborate with their at-home staff members.
The Fleischmanns, who made aliyah five years ago to Efrat, had to get their family of seven to America in early June at a time when Israel had flattened the curve but America had not.
“There were some really tough moments, but for us, the idea of flying to America with our whole family and trying to make a go of this when it could just get turned around, especially in the first few days, was terrifying. What if someone got sick, and everything we put all this effort into got upended,” reflected Fleischmann.
“But then we reminded ourselves that real leadership involves making decisions in the best interests of the organization. We said, ‘How do we bring camp to all of these people who are so desperately missing it? How do we engage all these young staff members?’ We had to think about how important training people this summer was in terms of staff continuity for next summer.”
AS A Canadian, Kelman encountered difficulties getting a visa and when he finally did, with the land border closed to cars, he had the surreal experience of walking across the border via the Peace Bridge from Fort Erie, Ontario to Buffalo, NY.
“It was a funny experience because you go through a turnstile on the Canadian side, you go down a sidewalk path on the bridge and you get to a door with a buzzer, literally the door to America, and this guard sticks his masked face through a crack in the door and asks, ‘What do you want?“ Kelman was relieved when he finally made it through. All in all, about 45 young staff members made their way to Sugar Grove.
But getting to camp was only one hurdle the staff faced; they also had to create executable, meaningful and fun programming.
“Our initial starting point was how we were going to make this distinct and better than what the kids had been experiencing with Zoom so far with their schools,” said Kelman. “We really didn’t want to be having kids sitting at screens all day because at that point people were oversaturated and it didn’t seem like fun.”
The staff decided to make Indoor World a hybrid of on- and off-line Stone activities with a 2020 twist. Like camp, participants were divided into bunks to allow for smaller zoom interactions with friends and counselors. Extensive daily programming through the camp website included tefila, a radio show and 12 chugim that kids could select in areas like art, cooking and sports. The kids would film themselves performing activities off-line, whether house cleaning or making candy sushi, and submit them on the camp website to earn points.
About 150 kids joined in daily chavrutot to learn one-on-one with staff members, where they focused on how the Jewish people dealt with challenges historically and gleaned lessons in resilience they can draw upon today.
Indoor World also included camp hallmarks like the chutz (outdoors) element, which had kids camping in their backyards or living rooms. And since no Stone summer would be complete without Color War, participants were divided into two teams and earned points for dressing in team colors and competing in creative or athletic contests. The staff even managed to pull off an Apache relay race, with teams performing physical challenges in their homes on Zoom while counselors in camp narrated the action as they watched each team’s activities on side-by-side computers, all of which was broadcast over a YouTube channel so campers could watch the race unfold in real time, despite spotty camp Wi-Fi.
A lynchpin of the program’s success was the Indoor World package. Thanks to a generous donor, about 1,700 boxes were sent out to campers and staff.
“We brought them into our world by sending a piece of our world to them,” said Fleischmann. Each box contained seven individual packages with instructions on when to open them. When kids were on the chutz overnight in their yards, they opened the corresponding package, which contained items like marshmallows, flashlights and water balloons. Pre-Shabbat, each camper’s envelope contained not only song sheets for slow shira and havdalah but also a handwritten shabbat-o-gram from a former counselor, a personal touch that was no small feat.
The piece de resistance was a final wooden box crafted by some of the camp’s Amish neighbors with escape room-type ciphers and codes kids needed to earn throughout. Getting the final codes on the last day of camp, kids opened their box boxes to find a pair of virtual reality Google Cardboard viewers that took them on 360° tours and scavenger hunts of their beloved Sugar Grove campground.
“We started getting videos of campers with their VR goggles spinning around in their chairs, laughing and shrieking about how happy they were to be ‘in camp,’” shared Kelman. “It was a really hilarious and touching moment.”
THE STAFF faced a challenge scheduling live programming that could work across time zones. For families in Israel, it was even more difficult, because camp could not ship the boxes to campers in time. Sophie Miller, 11, from Efrat, who was a first-time camper last summer, tried to participate where she could.
“I liked that my bunk switched the time arrangements just so I could be there.”
Miller was happy the camp honored her bunk requests so she could connect with her old friends.
“When it was Color War, it was at one o’clock in the morning, but I still stayed up because, like, I love camp.”
Ultimately, many parents struggling to reinvent their summers were grateful for Indoor World. Serena Peiper, mother of Tess, 12 and Molly, nine, found the programming especially meaningful, as her family lives in New Rochelle, the New York town that early on found itself as ground zero of America’s COVID-19 outbreak leading to quarantines and a canceled bat mitzvah for Tess.
“My girls really enjoyed the programming and all of the challenges. Their involvement in all of the daily events and their competitive spirit earned them enough points to win second and third place among all of the campers.”
Tess echoed her mother’s sentiments.
“The challenges and chugim kept me busy. I wish it went on longer!”
Poupko Smith was also grateful for the opportunity Indoor World afforded her COVID-19-weary family.
“Indoor World was an incredible re-imagining of the camp experience. We were blown away by the hard work, creativity and perseverance of the camp directors and staff.” With all of the programming, “the magic and uniqueness of Stone was infused throughout. More than once, I found myself crying watching everything unfold.”
The staff at camp missed having campers there in person.
“At first, it was really hard to see camp so empty when it’s usually filled with joy and life. You would kind of see ghost children running around,” says Schwartz. But as the staff remained healthy and they felt the excitement from campers and parents, they were ecstatic. Kelman posits that beyond reaching their goals, “our biggest accomplishment was just creating bright spots in a time of darkness.”
With staffers back home and with lots of fundraising ahead of them, the Fleischmmans embarked on a family RV trip before they return home to Israel. Their break won’t last long: Camp registration for 2021 opens September 1.
