Hello, my name is Nick Munro Turner. I am non-American, non-Jewish member of staff and this summer I am working as a ropes specialist here at Camp Seneca Lake.
Now for me, applying to work at a summer camp is like spinning a roulette wheel; after I decide to play the game and apply through an agency, I am at the mercy of fate as to where I end up. Once my application is online, all I can do is wait until a camp sees my application and interviews me.
This year I had the good fortune of being found by CSL; a camp which was sold to me as a liberal Jewish camp with a strong emphasis on community and facilitating personal growth in the campers who come here. Coming from the middle of England, where I do not come into much contact with Jewish culture at all, I was very curious to join this community and so I happily accepted the job offer!
When I first arrived 2 weeks before the official start of camp in June, I got a quick tour of the site and was greeted by a whole host of fresh-faced youngsters playing basketball and kickball and inviting me to join and I thought "cool some of the campers have arrived early, I guess I'll throw myself in and get to know them"
I found out a little later that these fresh-faced youngsters were in fact the staff. It soon dawned on me that a huge proportion of the staff were former campers who then start working here after they became too old to be campers.
It then dawned on me how much of an outsider I was. So many of the staff had been at camp for over 10 years, some of the older staff had been here for over 17 years! There was only a handful of staff who weren't from Greater Rochester and even less who came from overseas like me.
And then came all the prayers after the meals and I felt even more foreign when I realised that I didn't even know the language as I struggled to mouth the words to the Hebrew prayers we were supposed to recite multiple times every day!
I normally revel in working abroad but this was a bigger culture shock than I was expecting. Suddenly I was the old foreign gentile in the midst of a tightly knit Jewish family.
But I was quickly inaugurated into this family from being asked to join in with the games on the field, to being told that the important thing about prayer isn't that you recite them word for word but that you understand why we say the prayers, and clap at the right time and enjoy myself. Quickly prayer time changed from a source of anxiety to a great source of pleasure; singing or clapping along and hi fiving as part of the Birkat.
I quickly learned that this was a place of raucous song and dance - a party to which everyone's invited whether you've been here for a lifetime or if you've just got off the plane like I have.
Looking ahead into the season, I'm looking forward to throwing myself headlong into things here at CSL and learning all the prayers and traditions and practices from Shabbat to color war. In future columns, I shall be writing about the challenges as well as the joys of integrating myself into the various strange and unique traditions of CSL as well as the more traditional elements taken from Jewish customs.
Nick Turner
Ropes Specialist
