Camp Boiberik was a Yiddish cultural summer camp founded by Leibush Lehrer in 1913. In 1923 the camp purchased property in Rhinebeck, New York, where it would remain until closing in 1979. [1] It was the first Yiddish secular summer camp in America at the time. [2]
Affiliated with the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute, [3] named after Sholom Aleichem, Boiberik was a secular, apolitical institution which emphasized Yiddishkeit or Yiddishkayt, [4] or Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish folk culture, including songs, dance, food in the tradition of the Borscht belt, theater, and humor. Although non-religious, Boiberik observed shabbos and kept a kosher kitchen.
Boiberik had interactions with and was somewhat similar to Camp Kinder Ring.
The name 'Boiberik' appears as a town in which the Tevye stories by Aleichem are set, as a fictionalization of the resort town Boyarka.
In 1982, the former campgrounds were purchased by the Omega Institute which currently resides there. Omega hosted a reunion of former campers in 1998. [5]
Shtetl or shtetel is a Yiddish term for small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The term is used in the context of former East European Jewish societies as mandated islands within the surrounding non-Jewish populace, and thus bears certain connotations of discrimination. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas that constituted the 19th-century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, as well as in Congress Poland, Austrian Galicia, the Kingdom of Romania and the Kingdom of Hungary.
Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem, was a Yiddish author and playwright who lived in the Russian Empire and in the United States. The 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on Aleichem's stories about Tevye the Dairyman, was the first commercially successful English-language stage production about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
Yiddishism is a cultural and linguistic movement which began among Jews in Eastern Europe during the latter part of the 19th century. Some of the leading founders of this movement were Mendele Moykher-Sforim (1836–1917), I. L. Peretz (1852–1915), and Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916). The Yiddishist movement gained popularity alongside the growth of the Jewish Labor Bund and other Jewish political movements, particularly in the Russian Empire and United States. The movement also fluctuated throughout the 20th and 21st century because of the revival of the Hebrew language and the negative associations with the Yiddish language.
Zypora Spaisman was an actress and Yiddish theatre empresaria.
Camp Kinder Ring is a nonprofit 501(c)(3), Jewish summer camp located in Hopewell Junction, New York, accredited by the American Camp Association.
Camp Kinderland is a summer camp located in Tolland, Massachusetts for people aged eight through sixteen. The camp's motto is summer camp with a conscience since 1923. The main topics of the curriculum are: equality, peace, community, social justice, activism, civil rights, Yiddishkeit, and friendship. Campers may stay for four weeks in July, three weeks in August, or all seven of the offered weeks. There is also a two-week session available for first-time campers in the youngest group.
Surprise Lake Camp is a non-profit sleepaway camp located on over 400 acres (1.6 km2) in North Highlands, New York. It is the oldest Jewish summer camp in the United States.
Maurice Samuel was a Romanian-born British and American novelist, translator and lecturer of Jewish heritage.
Camp Massad was a Zionist Jewish summer camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, which closed in 1981. Massad's founder, Shlomo Shulsinger, emphasized Hebrew language as a key value in a multi-denominational Zionist Jewish environment.
Solomon Simon was a Jewish author and educator. He published over thirty books, in Yiddish and English, notably his children's books The Wandering Beggar,The Wise Men of Helm, and More Wise Men of Helm. He was also a leading figure of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute, a Jewish cultural organization that operated Yiddish secular schools for children.
Omega Institute for Holistic Studies is a non-profit educational retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York. Founded in 1977 by Elizabeth Lesser and Stephan Rechtschaffen, inspired by Sufi mystic, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan and his ecumenical spirituality, today it offers classes to over 25,000 people a year, at the 190-acre (0.77 km2) campus.
The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews is a three-volume work of pseudo-scholarship, published by the Nation of Islam. The first volume, which was released in 1991, asserts that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade. The Secret Relationship has been widely criticized for being antisemitic and for failing to provide an objective analysis of the role of Jews in the slave trade. The American Historical Association issued a statement condemning claims that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic slave trade, and other historians such as Wim Klooster and Seymour Drescher concluded that the role of Jews in the overall Atlantic slave trade was in fact minimal.
Leibush L. Lehrer (1887–1964) was a leading Yiddish pedagogue, writer, philosopher and lyricist. He authored several books on education, psychology, and literature. Born in Warsaw, he emigrated to the United States in 1909. From 1919 until his death, he lectured at the Jewish Teachers Seminary. Lehrer was also involved with the research efforts of YIVO as the Secretary for the Section on Psychology and Education. He was a proponent of the position that Judaism was an entire folk culture, not merely a religion.
Evelyn Torton Beck has been described as "a scholar, a teacher, a feminist, and an outspoken Jew and lesbian". Until her retirement in 2002 she specialized in women's studies, Jewish women's studies and lesbian studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Hana Wirth-Nesher is an American-Israeli literary scholar and university professor. She is Professor of English and American Studies at Tel Aviv University, where she is also the Samuel L. and Perry Haber Chair on the Study of the Jewish Experience in the United States, and director of the Goldreich Family Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture.
Sylvia Barack Fishman is an American feminist sociologist and author. She is the Joseph and Esther Foster Professor of Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, Co-Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and a board member of JOFA, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance. She writes about Jewish life in America.
Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America is a book by historian Kenyon Zimmer that covers the anarchist ideology practiced by Italian immigrants and Eastern European Jewish immigrants in New York City, San Francisco, and Paterson, New Jersey, at the turn of the 20th century. The book was published by University of Illinois Press in 2015.
Jews and the American Slave Trade is a 1998 book by American historian Saul S. Friedman published by the Transaction Publishers. It focuses on the Jewish involvement in the American slave trade and is a polemical rebuttal against the 1991 work The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. It has also been described as contributing to the contemporary debates related to African American–Jewish relations.
Kasrilevka or Kasrilevke is a fictional shtetl introduced by Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem. Located "exactly in the middle of that blessed Pale", it is an idealized town of "little Jews", who met their misfortunes with humor and the ultimate belief in justice. It has become an archetype shtetl. Other famous imaginary places of Sholem Aleichem are Yehupetz and Boiberik.
A Jewish summer camp is a summer camp dedicated to Jewish communities. In the United States these camps grew in popularity in the years after World War II and the Holocaust as an effort by American Jewish leaders to preserve and produce authentic Jewish culture. Outside the United States, similar camps are generally organized by various philanthropic organizations and local Jewish youth movements.