RSVP for The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America

media release: Jewish Social Services Levy Summer Series lecture,10:30 am, 8/6, Nakoma Country Club.

In the decades directly following the Holocaust, Jewish leaders anxiously debated how to preserve and produce what they considered authentic Jewish culture, fearful that upward mobility and suburbanization threatened the integrity of Jewish life in America. Many communal educators and rabbis contended that without intervention, Judaism as they understood it would disappear altogether. In their searches for solutions, postwar Jews came to see residential summer camps as panaceas to their communal ills, constructing their programs with an eye towards collective transformation.

(Note: Professor Sandra Fox will be joining us via Zoom for this talk)

Sandra Fox is the Rifkind Chair in American Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Professor Fox received her doctorate from New York University’s joint History and Hebrew Judaic Studies program in 2018. In addition to her research, Sandra is the founder and executive producer of the Yiddish-language podcast Vaybertaytsh: A Feminist Podcast in Yiddish, and is on the editorial board of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. She is director of the Archive of the American Jewish Left in the Digital Age. Her research interests include American Jewish history, the history of youth and childhood, Yiddish culture, and the history of sexuality. Sandra will be discussing her book, The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America (Stanford University Press: 2023).

$25 includes luncheon and talk. Scholarships are available. Deadline for registration is July 31.

Register by phone at 608-442-4081, or via mail / in-person at Jewish Social Services, 6300 Enterprise Lane, #309, Madison, WI 53719. You can print out the registration form here: Levy Registration Form