agudah camp

Reproduced from "They Called Him Mike"
by Yonasan Rosenblum,
with special permission of ArtScroll / Mesorah
Publications, Ltd.
In honor of the 94th Annual Agudath Israel Dinner
Celebrating
75 Years of Agudah Camping
Chapter Thirteen
CAMP AGUDAH
EW PROJECTS WERE AS CLOSE TO MIKE’S HEART OR
had such a lasting impact on the shape of American
Orthodoxy as Camp Agudah. He had never forgotten the memory of his ten days in the country under
the auspices of the Toynbee Settlement House when
he was 8 years old, and felt sure that a similar experience
of two or three weeks in a bucolic natural setting could
transform a young boy’s life. Time would prove him
right.
It is perhaps symbolic of how dear Camp Agudah was
to Mike that his last $25,000 of stocks were pledged, and
ultimately lost, as collateral on a loan to buy the present campsite in Ferndale, New York.1
1. Interview with Mrs. Tress.
Chapter Thirteen: CAMP AGUDAH ■ 217
Main building at Camp Agudah, Ferndale, N.Y.
Rabbi Yisroel Belsky, long-time rav of Camp Agudah, remembers
coming to the Agudah offices in the mid-’50s as a 17-year-old boy and
telling Mike that more sefarim were needed for learning in camp. Mike
told him that funds would have to be raised to purchase them and
immediately made up a list of twenty people whom Belsky could contact. But before Belsky had left his office, Mike took the list back and
made all the calls himself. For Camp Agudah there was no later.2
THE JUNE 1942 ORTHODOX YOUTH EDITORIAL, “CAMP AGUDAH AT
Last,” announcing the opening of Camp Agudah, summarizes many of
the feelings that led Mike to create the camp:
Camp
Kiruv
Year after year, we viewed thousands of our Jewish youngsters going to supposedly “Jewish camps” only to find upon
their return that not only did they gain nothing in the way of
Jewish learning, they even lost the benefit of a whole year’s training in yeshivos, Talmud Torahs, and in our own Pirchei groups.3
The despair at Jewish children going to non-religious camps
remained with Mike the rest of his life. In Williamsburg, the Tress
2. Interview with Rabbi Yisroel Belsky.
3. Orthodox Youth, June 1942, p. 2.
218 ■ THEY CALLED HIM MIKE
Rabbi Moshe Sherer and Mike (at left) and Robert Wagner (center) with campers at Camp Agudah,
Highmount N.Y.
family lived just across the street from the departure point for buses taking boys and girls to coed camps sponsored by the Jewish Federation.
“It used to eat him up,” a daughter recalls, “to see Jewish children going
to these camps rather than to Camp Agudah or Camp Bnos.”4
In the early years of Camp Agudah, a very large percentage of the
campers came from outside the New York metropolitan area and from
non-yeshiva backgrounds.5 Camp was often the first step in bringing
these boys to yeshiva.6 From the beginning this goal was central to Mike’s
purpose in opening the camp. He used to emphasize to the counselors the
tremendous potential for kiruv work afforded by the camp. In a letter to
Abish Mendlowitz, the first head counselor, written in the middle of the
first camp season, Mike instructed him to “begin a strong campaign to
induce boys who do not go to yeshivos to register for the new term.”7
4. Interview with Henie Meisels.
5. Interview with Rabbi Sysche Heschel, another of the early head counselors and son of the
Kopyczinitzer Rebbe. Sidney Greenwald estimates that some years half the boys came from
non-religious homes.
6. In a letter dated May 7, 1942, little more than a month before camp opened its doors for the
first time, Moshe Sherer wrote Mike, “This Camp, at all costs, must become reality — it is the best
medium to ‘save’ scores of out-of-town boys.” Sherer to Tress, May 7, 1942.
7. Mike Tress to Abish Mendlowitz, July 23, 1942.
In the same letter, Mike revealed another of his purposes in starting the camp: he saw it as a
means of winning new recruits for the Agudah movement in America. He stressed:
… It is indeed very, very vital that a full Agudah spirit and training be given to each and
every camper, individually and collectively….
I can only report that the boys who have returned home from the first trip have re-
Chapter Thirteen: CAMP AGUDAH ■ 219
Boys from communities outside New York City already learning in
yeshiva concentrated on getting younger boys from their hometowns
to Camp Agudah as the first step in bringing them to yeshiva.8 On
a trip to Boston to raise money for Torah Vodaath in 1947, Sidney
Greenwald spent Shabbos with a melamed in Chelsea, Massachusetts
named Irving Kaufman. After listening to Greenwald’s descriptions of
Camp Agudah, Kaufman told him that there were a number of boys in
the local Talmud Torah who would benefit from camp. Many of these
boys followed Greenwald to camp that summer and subsequently
enrolled in yeshivos. That was the beginning of a long relationship
between Irving Kaufman and Camp Agudah. One year, he sent 35
boys to camp, many of whom had only the most rudimentary Jewish
background.
When camp was over, Mike would dispatch the various counselors
to different cities to try to convince campers to register for yeshiva.9 As
late as 1956, it was still normal for counselors to spend two weeks after
camp recruiting for the yeshivos.10 These efforts bore fruit. Over 100
campers were influenced to enter yeshiva for the first time during the
1943 camp season alone,11 and 200 in the first three years.12
CAMP AGUDAH OPENED ITS DOORS FOR THE FIRST TIME JUNE 30,
1942 in Liberty, New York with Abish Mendlowitz as head counselor
ceived a fine vacation but have heard very little about Agudah. … It is essential that this
Agudah spirit and training commence as soon as possible so that we lose no members,
and that we expend all energies on the basis of this policy.
In actual practice, however, it is not clear how much boys in the early years imbibed of
Agudah ideological issues. What the campers did take away was a warm feeling about their
Yiddishkeit, and this translated into both new and more committed Pirchei members.
There were other ways as well that Mike used Camp Agudah to build up the movement. In
the late ‘40s he was eager to build up a Pirchei group in Toronto. To that end, he had the Toronto
ZAI offer free scholarships to Camp Agudah.
8. Interview with Abish Mendlowitz.
9. The first year of camp, for instance, Mike sent Abish Mendlowitz and Teddy Silbermintz
at the end of the camp season to Baltimore to try to sign up boys who had been at camp for
yeshiva.
10. Interview with Rabbi Yisroel Belsky.
Rabbi Belsky notes that into the ‘50s there was still a great deal of emphasis on bringing
boys into yeshivos. Each yeshiva was a neighborhood yeshiva and felt a responsibility to the
neighborhood in which it was located. Thus Torah Vodaath, for instance, was no more likely to
reject a boy from Williamsburg than one of the Chassidic yeshivos was likely to turn away a boy
belonging to that particular Chassidic group.
11. “Among Ourselves,” Orthodox Tribune, October 1943, p. 9.
12. Semi-annual report of the executive director of Pirchei Agudath Israel for the period February
1945 through September 1945.
220 ■ THEY CALLED HIM MIKE
Camp Agudah, Highmount, N. Y.
and Shaye Kaufman and Eugene Lamm as co-directors. For the next
several years, the camp was at a variety of rented sites — Spring Glen in
Not by 1943, Drucker’s Hotel in Ellenville in 1944 — until
a camp was purchased in Highmount, New York
Bread Alone in 1946.13
In those early years, there was none of the superb organization and
preplanning for which the camp is known today. As late as May 28,
1942, Mrs. Tillie (Glassman) Katz was still surveying possible campsites
for Mike to determine where the camp would be, even though opening
day was a month away.14 On-site preparations for the camping season
commenced a couple of days before camp opened, not weeks earlier as
13. Ephraim (Freddy) Wolf was the head counselor in Spring Glen in 1943 and Eugene Lamm
and Emil Adler the directors. The next year, in Ellenville, Leon Machlis was the head counselor.
In 1945, there was no camp for lack of a proper site. The first head counselor in Highmount
was Meilach Silber; and Shaye Kaufman, just back from the army, returned to his 1942 position
as director. Sidney Greenwald was head counselor from 1947 through 1949. Dave Maryles was
the director in Highmount for one year before Charles Young assumed the position, which he
held until 1956. Rabbi Boruch B. Borchardt then took over the directorship, and remained in the
position for the next two decades. Greenwald interview.
14. Letter from Mrs. Tillie (Glassman) Katz to Mike Tress, May 28, 1942, describing the pros and
cons of two sites. Mrs. Katz, one of the early members of the Lower East Side Bnos, was charged
with this task because she and her husband lived all year round in nearby Mountaindale.
Chapter Thirteen: CAMP AGUDAH ■ 221
The dining room at Camp Agudah, Highmount, N. Y.
today.15 The first year there was only one bathroom for nearly 200 boys
and no doctor or nurse on the premises.16
From the very beginning the camp was a major financial drain on the
Youth Council coffers. Few boys could pay the full fee or even a major
part of it.17 In addition, a large percentage of the campers came from
15. Interview with Rabbi Boruch B. Borchardt.
16. Interview with Eugene Lamm. Lamm was co-director with Shaye Kaufman the first year in
Liberty and with Emil Adler the second year in Spring Glen.
17. Fundraising efforts for the camp focused on the fact that it was providing a positive summer
experience for poor boys, as opposed to the religious nature of the camp. Typical of this approach
is a July 15, 1942 letter from Louis Septimus, Chairman of the Administrative Committee, to
would-be supporters. “These critical days demand a strong youth. Our future depends upon
a healthy young generation who is loyal to our faith and country,” the letter began. Because
“many of our finest children do not have the necessary means to receive a summer vacation...,”
Septimus continued, “we have founded Camp Agudah to give those boys an opportunity to
gather strength and health for the whole year and fond memories for the rest of their lives.”
Similarly, the Children’s Rehabilitation Fund, which was created in the 1950s primarily to
raise scholarships for Camp Agudah, laid almost exclusive stress on helping poor boys and
recent immigrants become better Americans through a summer camping experience.
The consistent downplaying of Agudath Israel in these fundraising efforts demonstrates
how small the pool of financial donors sympathetic to Agudah aims was in the ‘40s and ‘50s,
and how much the Youth Council depended on emphasizing general, non-controversial goals
in those years.
222 ■ THEY CALLED HIM MIKE
Above: At Camp Agudah, Highmount, N.Y. L-R: Joshua Silbermintz, unknown, Charles Young,
Rabbi Moshe Sherer, Robert Wagner, Mike, Moshe Spiegel, Director of Camp
Below: Robert Wagner with four refugee children at Camp Agudah, Highmount, N.Y.
Chapter Thirteen: CAMP AGUDAH ■ 223
homes where religious observance was minimal, and only the offer of
scholarships enticed their parents into letting them come. For his part,
Mike could never bear to turn away any boy who he felt had the potential to grow spiritually in camp, even though this policy only increased
his financial burdens.
Even before Camp Agudah had opened its doors for the first time,
Mike complained in a letter to his cousin Moshe Sherer in Baltimore,
“Our deficit for the camp is mounting and the financial headache is
even greater than we thought.” Nevertheless, he wrote Rabbi Sherer,
“we can always find room for any worthwhile boy, regardless of his
ability to pay.” 18
The limited financial resources available were reflected in the level of
accommodations and especially in the food. In a spoof on camp life in
Darkeinu, the Pirchei monthly magazine, the camp dinner is described
as “the meal they don’t give you much of because we’re having fleishigs
for supper — tomorrow.”19 The boys joked about the zealousness with
which the rule at meals of only one plum per boy was enforced, and
speculated that the watermelon must have been sliced with a razor
blade. But there was good cause to be stingy. Camp Director Charlie
Young was often unable to pay off all the debts to local merchants until
the opening of the next camp season.20
But as is so often the case, the strained financial circumstances were
inversely related to the spirit of the camp. Rather than diminishing the
boys’ enjoyment, the spartan conditions only seemed to increase their
sense of camaraderie. Chicken may have appeared only on Shabbos
— each bird divided into 15 parts — recalls Rabbi Sysche Heschel, yet
“the summers at camp were among the happiest times of our lives.”
Those years were filled with excitement, growth, and commitment. On
Shabbos and at the Motzaei Shabbos campfires, the singing went on for
hours. Just as in Pirchei, the emphasis was on activities that gave each
boy a sense of being part of a group and a warm association with his
Yiddishkeit. Singing was something everyone could do, and the familiar
camp songs brought out the group identity.21
18. The only thing Mike requested from Rabbi Sherer was that an attempt be made to obtain
scholarships from the Baltimore Agudah chapter for boys who could not pay the camp fee. Mike
Tress to Morris Sherer, June 17, 1942.
19. Darkeinu, November 1944.
20. Interview with Mr. Young’s widow, Mrs. Belle Young.
21. Interview with Abish Mendlowitz, the first head counselor.
224 ■ THEY CALLED HIM MIKE
The counselors were possessed with a sense of mission. They received
neither a salary nor tips, and yet every year the number of applicants
exceeded the number of positions for counselors.22 The counselors carried their youthful idealism with them as they grew older, and many
went on to be leaders within Agudah and in other klal activities. In
camp, they learned to be leaders both in their dealings with their campers and with the campers’ parents.23
For those boys too old to be campers and not yet old enough to
be counselors, positions were created. One year there were fourteen
cooks in the camp. When there were more cooks than pots, previously
unheard-of positions, like silverware polisher, were added. From a business point of view, the policy was disastrous, but Mike realized how
few positive activities were open to teenage boys in the summer. In his
view, making sure that they did not backslide from their yeshiva studies
during the summer was just one more of the camp’s purposes, and he
was able to maintain this policy over the protests of some of the camp’s
leading supporters.
THE TYPICAL “RELIGIOUS” CAMP, CIRCA 1942, WAS LIKELY TO PER-
mit boys to play ball on Shabbos within the eruv, and even to swim
The Chiddush of on hot Shabbos days. Bentsching after meals
was often limited to the first blessing, and
Camp Agudah davening to Shabbos. As remarkable as it
may seem today, the three-time-a-day davening in Camp Agudah and
the way the whole camp sang the entire bentsching aloud were both
innovations in their time, as was the rigorous adherence to proper halachic standards of kashrus and Shabbos observance. Perhaps the biggest innovation of all was the twice daily learning sessions. Though
often no more than a half an hour each, these learning sessions were
for many of the boys the first real exposure to any form of learning.
Camp Agudah tried to impart to them the basic knowledge of Jewish
belief and practice they were lacking. One of the goals of the learning,
for instance, was that the boys know all the categories of forbidden
activities on Shabbos.24
Another of Camp Agudah’s major contributions to Orthodox camping was exposing boys to major Torah figures throughout the summer.
22. Interviews with Rabbi Sysche Heschel and Mrs. Belle Young.
23. Greenwald interview.
24. Ibid.
Chapter Thirteen: CAMP AGUDAH ■ 225
Gedolim visiting Camp Agudah. L-R: Rabbi Aharon Kotler, the Chuster Rav, R’ Efraim Nussbaum
(Toronto), Rabbi Thumim, Rabbi Yonasan Steif, the Kopyczinitzer Rebbe
The camp rav, Rabbi Yaakov Teitelbaum, had himself been one of the
leaders of the Vienna Agudah and was a talmid chacham of note. In
addition to him, the Telzer Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch,
the Novominsker Rebbe, Rabbi Gedaliah Schorr, and Rabbi Yitzchok
Schmidman all began to spend several weeks each summer at Camp
Agudah.25
Above all, the camp strove to imbue the boys — many of whom
thought of themselves as Americans first and Jews second — with a
feeling that being frum and being American were not contradictions
— that one could be frum and perfectly normal. For several summers,
in the late ‘40s, the Camp Agudah staff had the best softball team in the
Catskills. They used to play teams from other camps and from nearby
hotels. One year, they discovered to their dismay that they had scheduled a game on the fast day of Shivah Asar B’Tammuz.
Unsure of what to do, the players consulted with the camp rav,
Rabbi Yaakov Teitelbaum. He told them to play — that watching their
unshaven, parched and famished counselors playing with their tzitzis
flying would be a positive experience for the campers. And indeed,
there are those who were campers then who still remember how the
Camp Agudah All-Stars prevailed on Sidney Greenwald’s home run in
the bottom of the sixteenth inning.26
25. Ibid.
26. Greenwald interview.
Among the team’s stars were Mickey Weinberger and Aaron Schwebel. In the late ‘40s, there
was still a military draft, and many older yeshiva students received divinity student exemptions.
226 ■ THEY CALLED HIM MIKE
Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch speaking at Camp Agudah. Mike is on the left. Sitting at the table
is Julius Klogmann, a prominent a\skan and close friend of Mike.
That incident neatly captures the contrast between that era and today.
In the late ‘40s, the task was to create a self-confident Orthodox youth,
This, however, made it risky for them to spend the summer as camp counselors because it might
be used as evidence that they were not full-time students. Nevertheless, when Sidney Greenwald
approached Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz and told him that he was having difficulty getting
the quality of counselors he needed for Camp Agudah, Reb Feivel asked him whom he wanted
from the Torah Vodaath beis medrash. Reb Feivel felt that the work of Camp Agudah was so
important that it outweighed the danger of potential problems with the draft board. Weinberger
and Schwebel were the first counselors Greenwald selected.
Chapter Thirteen: CAMP AGUDAH ■ 227
comfortable with their Yiddishkeit. To that end, watching the same
counselors who taught Chumash and Rashi playing baseball could be a
positive experience. Today’s campers are, by contrast, yeshiva students,
themselves children of those who learned in yeshivos. They do not have
to be convinced that being frum is normal; they have grown up in communities where being Orthodox is the norm. For them playing baseball
on a fast day would be as unthinkable as it would be unnecessary. But
different times require different responses.
ONE OF MIKE’S GREATEST CONTRIBUTIONS TO CAMP AGUDAH
WAS bringing Rabbi Yaakov Teitelbaum, leader of the prewar Zeirei in
Vienna, to Camp Agudah as the official rav of the camp. Not only did
Mike bring Rabbi Teitelbaum to the camp, he consistently defended
Rabbi Yaakov him against those on Camp Agudah’s Board of
Directors who objected to the pace at which he
Teitelbaum was instituting changes in the camp program.
From the first day he arrived in camp, Rabbi Teitelbaum pushed for
an increase in the time devoted to learning. He insisted, for instance, on
a half hour of learning after the nighttime activities and before Maariv.
Only after he repeatedly expressed his opinion in the most vociferous
terms did the counselors decide that it was more trouble than it was
worth to dispute the issue with him. Over the years, he consistently
competed with the night activities, dragooning older boys for a shiur at
night in place of the scheduled activities.
Whatever offended his sense of proper middos, he fought against, no
matter how deeply ingrained in camp practice. Thus Camp Agudah was
the only camp at which the boys did not wear shorts during davening
and learning, because Rabbi Teitelbaum felt they were not proper attire.
He did his best to extirpate the grammen and light-hearted teasing
that formed a large part of camp life. Any form of leitzanus (scoffing)
was anathema to him. One of his favorite stories to illustrate the evil
of leitzanus involved Rabbi Akiva Eiger. The best boy in Rabbi Akiva
Eiger’s yeshiva was engaged to his daughter. One morning at breakfast,
Rabbi Akiva Eiger asked “Vie is de eiye — Where is the egg?” The quickwitted young man answered immediately, “Ha’eiye mikedem,” a play
on the words of the verse in Bereishis (12:8), to indicate the location of
the egg. Rabbi Akiva Eiger immediately broke the shidduch. He refused
to let his daughter marry someone who could use the Torah to make a
joke.
228 ■ THEY CALLED HIM MIKE
Dining room at Camp Agudah, Ferndale, N.Y., 1964. Among those in the picture are:
Yussie Brick, Yossi Plotzker, Baruch Grossman, Yisroel Gelbwachs, Yehudah Frankel,
Shmuel Fishelis, Avraham Chaim Young, Avrohom Zweig, Asher Miller, Yitzchok Feuereisen,
Yossi Lieber, Yitzchok Wenger, Feivel Brody, Shimon Zweig.
From Rabbi Teitelbaum, the boys learned that America did not have
to be a land of compromises. Near the camp in Ferndale was a wellknown hotel catering to a religious clientele. Rabbi Teitelbaum happened to walk by once on Shivah Asar B’Tammuz and noticed that not
only was there swimming at a time of the year when it is forbidden, but
also that it was mixed. He immediately enlisted Mike’s help in stopping
the mixed swimming. Mike spoke to the owners of the hotel, but without success. Finally, a large protest meeting was held at Camp Agudah.
Leading rabbis, Rabbi Teitelbaum, and Mike all spoke on the need for
kedushah (holiness) in the Jewish world. The demonstration created such
a scandal that the owners of the hotel could not receive an aliyah in shul.
Though the hotel did not do away immediately with all mixed swimming — there was still a large clientele that insisted on it — the owners
did, at least, create periods for separate swimming every day.27
27. The material on Rabbi Yaakov Teitelbaum is all based on an interview with his successor as
rav of Camp Agudah, Rabbi Yisroel Belsky.
Chapter Thirteen: CAMP AGUDAH ■ 229
MIke relaxing in camp
Throughout his life, Mike was closely identified with Camp Agudah.
He loved to spend the weekends there, and his visits were always
treated as major occasions. One day he was walking around the camp
when he came to a bunk on which a “No Tresspassing” sign had been
placed. He enjoyed the joke.
Today Mike’s picture hangs in the lobby of Camp Agudah. He is
pointed to as an example to the boys that an American-born boy like
themselves can have an impact on the entire Jewish world. Camp
Agudah itself is only one aspect of that impact.
230 ■ THEY CALLED HIM MIKE