by Greg Marks from Corpus Chrsti, TX
At 50 years old, I drove through the gates of GFC for the first time – with eight middle schoolers and my fellow advisor, Dave, in tow. Over the years, I have been to lots of camps and more NFTY events and Kallot than I can remember, but I never had the privilege of visiting GFC. So, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect as I walked up to the registration table and announced, “Corpus has arrived!” Well, Jen Luskey, an Assistant Director of Year Round Programs, looked up, smiled her big, friendly smile and said, “Hi, you must be Greg!” As Jen welcomed all of us with hugs, laughter and smiles, I knew that we belonged; that we were home.
Home. That is probably the most often used word to describe our URJ camps. Close runners up are, “Family” or “it’s where I belong” or “It’s where I can be myself.” Read the blogs from GFC, Coleman, Kutz, or any of our other camps, and you will find the word “Home” or “Family” used in almost all of them, and that is what makes GFC so important to our children’s Jewish future. Why? Because Camp is where our children can experience the joy of being Jewish on a broad scale, with lots and lots of kids their own age. It is where lifelong friendships are made. It is where our teens find out that Shabbat can be fun. (Have you ever been in a sanctuary filled with 400 Jewish teens praying on a Friday night? It is magical!) It is where our children can be themselves without reservation in a safe, nurturing and loving environment. Because let’s face it, no matter how assimilated and accepted we feel, we are still different. We are still Jews.
Big cities have lots of temples and JCC’s and many large, active youth groups. Kids have Jewish options. Adults have Jewish options, and being Jewish is no big deal. For the past 15 years, I lived in Parkland, Florida. South Florida – oy vey, there are a lot of Jews in South Florida! There were six Reform congregations within a twenty minute drive of my house! Not to mention a plethora of Conservative, Orthodox, and Chabad shuls. The public schools even closed for the High Holy Days. This is the environment in which I raised my two boys. They loved it, and so did I. The problem is that in a big city environment, it is easy to forget that we are a minority. It is easy to forget that there are places that only have two or three B’nai Mitzvahs a year instead of hundreds. Then last year, I moved back to my hometown of Corpus Christi, TX.
Corpus is a great town. We have a warm, welcoming temple with a Rabbi from England whose British accent somehow melds nicely with our South Texas drawl. But we are a small community. We have enough kids for a small religious school, but not enough, not nearly enough, for the kind of immersive Jewish experience that kids from the big Texas cities have at their fingertips. Half of the kids I brought to Fall Fest had never been to GFC before and had probably never even been in a room with more than a dozen Jewish kids their own age. This is where GFC comes into the picture. GFC provides the setting that draws our kids together. To put it in nuclear terms, it is where our kids reach critical mass, and you know what happens then! Our kids have such a fun and immersive experience that they know, on an instinctual level, that they are part of a people – the Jewish People.
My wish is for every temple in Texas and Oklahoma with at least one Jewish middle schooler to send at least one Jewish middle schooler to Spring Fest this coming February. My promise is that they will have the time of their life!