When I first attended Jewish camp at age 11, I was an awkward kid from Pittsford. I travelled over a thousand miles away from the tiny world I had grown up in. It was a totally new environment. I was surrounded by people I knew nothing about besides for the stereotypes I had heard about where they lived or where they went to school.
Those stereotypes went away. By the time I left camp two weeks later, I had stopped seeing people in that way and started appreciating them as individuals. Tey were now independent from my labels that I could possibly place on ten from where tey lived or any of those other characteristics that were suddenly meaningless to me.
Nine years later, that mentality has stayed with me. Every year, when I return to camp, I smile at the face that I have found te place where the streets have no name.
-Mike Pascutoi, C-5 Counselor
