Figure 1.--Here we see what looks like a summer day camp activity in Mandate Palestine. All we know for sure is that the photograph was taken in 1945. There is Hebrew writing on the back which one of our readers translates as, "Henya [unclear last name] at the camp in the year 1945." Click on the image to see the back text.

Israel has a very active summer camp program, as any internet search will show. We have not, however, been able to find much information about the history of summer camping in Israel. There are some strong influences. Germany had a very strong youth movement and summer camping. This was not especually the case of Jews, but they oparticipated in the overall movemnent, often in separate youth groups and camps. The same was true of the United States, again often with seoparate groups and camps. Neither of these countries provide major numbers of immigrants to British mandate Palestine. This changed in Germany with the rise of the NAZIs, but British policy limited immigration. After indeopebdence, Holocaust srvivoirs could immigrate freely, buy the number of German Jews were not large. Few Americam immigrated to Israel, but American finalcial support from the American Jewish community was vital in the early days of Israel and there were American cultural influences. An important influence here is the youth group movements like Scouting which was important in Mandate Palestine even without many Germans and Americans. And youth groups often promote summer camping. Another factor was Israel's econmomic success. Except with countries that have mandated youth movements (Communists and Fascist), there are strong summer camp movements only in prosperous countries where parents can aford to send their kids to camp or have charitable efforts for low-income kids. We suspect that summer camping developed in Israel mostly after indeoendence, but our information is still very limited.

Created: 12:21 PM 10/2/2018
Last updated: 12:21 PM 10/2/2018