Pinemere Camp

Coordinates: 41°00′03″N 75°19′31″W / 41.000889°N 75.325198°W / 41.000889; -75.325198

Pinemere Camp
Location	865 Bartonsville Woods Road, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania 18360
Opening date	1942 (72–73 years ago)
Management	Jewish Community Center[1]
Owner	Pinemere Camp Association[2]
Website	pinemere.com

Pinemere Camp is a Jewish overnight summer camp for children in grades 2–9. Its 300 campers are primarily drawn from the United States.^[3]

Pinemere is located in a mountain setting, with cabins and a lake.^{[2][4][5][6][7][8]} It is on Bartonsville Woods Road, Stroudsburg, on Stoney Run in the Pocono Mountains in Northeastern Pennsylvania.^[9][10][11] The camp is 2 miles (3.2 km) from the Camelback Mountain Resort, and about 45 miles (72 km) north of Allentown, Pennsylvania.^[2][8] The camp grounds are 180 acres (4,050 square meters).^[2]

Pinemere's name refers to the reflection of its pine trees upon its lake.^[10] The camp was officially established in 1942.

History

1930s–1957

Pinemere Camp

Pinemere Camp began operations in the 1930s.^[2][12] A lake for swimming and boating was built.^[10] Originally, it was a girls-only camp.^[10]

Mrs. Cohen then purchased the property from the McCluskey family and Joseph Nye.^[10] Shortly after the official establishment in 1939 of the North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY), the organized youth movement of Reform Judaism in North America, Rabbi Sam Cook organized what may have been the first regional Labor Day Conclave for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) Pennsylvania State Federation at Pinemere.^[13]

Subsequently, the Philadelphia Jewish Welfare Board purchased the camp.^[10][11] Pinemere Camp was officially established in 1942 by the Jewish Welfare Board (which subsequently became the Jewish Community Center Association (JCCA)) to provide a resident camp experience for Jewish children in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.^{[1][2][3][10][12]} It focused especially on providing a camp experience to children from smaller communities that did not have a synagogue.^[1] At that point, it became co-ed.^[10] In the late 1940s, John Bernheimer, a prominent Philadelphia attorney, served on its board of directors.^[14] American interior designer and former daytime television host Nate Berkus's grandparents met at the camp, where his grandfather was the water sports director.^[15]

1958–99

From 1958 to 1999, Robert H. Miner was Pinemere Camp's director, leading more than 15,000 campers and young counselors.^[16] In 1980, it formed the Pinemere Alumni Association.^[17] In 1988, it dedicated its new Pinemere Indoor Facility.^[18]

In 1991, Stephen H. Holden, a Cherry Hill, New Jersey, attorney, was elected president of the Pinemere Camp Association.^[19] In 1995, the camp had 205 campers.^[2] In the mid-1990s, in the winter its winterized buildings became a dorm-style ski pad for groups, including groups of other faiths.^[8]

2000–present

In 2000, Aaron Selkow became the camp's Executive Director; he held that position until 2008.^[20] In 2008, 18 campers who attended Pinemere did so with a grant from the Overnight Camp Incentive Program, a program designed to attract new campers to Jewish identity-building camps. It is a joint project of the Philadelphia-based Neubauer Family Foundation, the Foundation for Jewish Camp, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.^[4][21][22] The program provided grants for campers in amounts ranging from $750 to $1,250.^[4] The majority of the Pinemere campers who received grants chose to return the following summer.^[4]

That same summer, the camp began an environmental education program. It included activities such as gardening, making birdfeeders, turning old shoes into flowerpots to decorate the doorway of every cabin, and repurposing dumpster-bound purses as hanging containers.^[23]

In 2008, Toby Ayash became executive director; a position she held for five years.^[24] Pinemere began offering three-day sports clinics in basketball, tennis, baseball, softball, football, soccer, golf, horseback riding, lacrosse, field hockey, and wilderness survival. It brought in the full-time Athletic Director of the Pocono Mountain East High School so campers could work on sports drills.^{[25][26][26][27]} The clinics are taught by professional coaches; the golf clinic is taught by a PGA-certified coach, and the one-day basketball clinic known as the Sixers Summer Hoops Tour is run by the Philadelphia 76ers, with visits by 76ers legends.^[27]

In 2010, the camp began to offer an abbreviated option of a one-week mini-session, with 5 rising third-graders. By June 2012, 42 campers had signed up.^[28]

In the summer of 2012, two dozen Jewish teenagers from Germany attended Pinemere Camp in an arrangement with the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (the Central Council of Jews in Germany), the umbrella organization of Germany’s Jewish communities.^[29] The German teenagers were fully integrated into camp life. They were shocked at sharing living quarters with their counselors.^[29] In December 2012, two dozen American Pinemere campers joined their German counterparts in the ski village of Fürstenhof in Natz in the Italian Alps.^[29]

In 2013 the camp had 300 campers, about half from the Philadelphia area.^[24]

Today

Pinemere Camp has campers from the ages of 6 to 16.^[30] The camp attracts children who both do and do not attend Hebrew school or synagogue, and some campers who attend Hebrew day schools.^[1]

Pinemere offers boating, canoeing, pioneering, dramatics, arts and crafts, team sports, archery, and tennis.^[31] The camp offers sports clinics in basketball, baseball, softball, football, soccer, tennis, golf, horseback riding, lacrosse, and field hockey.^[25][26][26]

All meals at the camp are kosher, and the camp observes shabbat.^[8][12][31] The camp also offers gluten-free food for campers with celiac disease and other options for various dietary needs.^[32]

Pinemere offers campers the options of various sessions: either a one-, three-, four-, or seven-week session.^[3][33] It also offers a 3-day "SPARK weekend," so first-time campers can try it out.^[3][33][34]

The camp is owned by Pinemere Camp Association.^[2] It is affiliated with mid-Atlantic region Jewish centers.^[2]

Staff

The camp's Executive Director, is Mitch Morgan.^[35][36] Pinemere's Assistant Director is Gabe Miner.^[25][35]

Notable persons

Staff

• Rabbi James L. Apple, rabbi and navy chaplain^[37]

Campers

• Diane Ackerman, author, poet, and naturalist; her first summer at the camp was in 1961^[38]
• Stephen Fried, investigative journalist, non-fiction author, essayist, and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism^[39]
• Toby Lightman, singer-songwriter attended Pinemere in the 90's and was a CIT at Pinemere in 1995.

References

External links

• pinemere.com
• TimeOut entry
• Roxborough-Manayunk Patch entry