Last week, the anniversary of my love's death hit pretty much as hard as it ever does. And all I wanted was to be back at OSRUI, taking refuge in the Tzofim Beit Teva or Tiferet's Ski Chalet. (Those who call it the Beit Am are being brainwashed by an attitude of Hebrew language supremacy at camp that I find detrimental, but that is perhaps for another post). I remembered one night in 1996. It was the first year of Tiferet workshop and the Ski Chalet did not yet exist. Tiferet used Metros and showered at Chalutzim. On this particular night, we had programming in the Art Center, not yet widely called by its Hebrew equivalent. The skies turned black all of a sudden and it started pouring. The lightning was very close, and we could not return to our cabins. We were preteens (that was the word before tweens for all you youngin's) not all scared but not too comfortable either. However, the songleader Josh Rabinowitz and the unit head Danny Maseng had their guitars and played us music until we fell asleep on the dance studio floor. And I found myself listening to my recording of Danny playing B'shem Hashem on loop not because his music is so amazing as to eliminate the pain of loss, but rather because at least I wouldn't be scared. His voice and that Carlebach tune combine in a way that still puts me at ease fifteen years later. And I missed camp, even its heteronormative aspects.
The most ironic element of missing camp wasn't its heteronormativity. It was that when I received the letter from my love's parents telling me of her death, the last place I wanted to be was OSRUI, where I had no access to modern conviences like the internet and the telephone. When I was in Chalutzim I spent half my camp summer cursing that I went to camp in the first place. Now when I have to deal with what happened, camp is the first place I think about, and I remembered writing my love a lengthy letter from Tiferet in 1996 describing what an amazing storm had rumbled through camp and how Danny and Josh had distracted us with wonderful music ranging from the chasidishe to James Taylor.
My Machon year at camp, I had a terrible time. I couldn't be out to staff or to campers, and I found myself much more aware of the institutional aspects of camp's homophobia and transphobia. I am told by those who have been there more recently that the situation is getting better, but I don't really believe them. The evidence is in the programming offered to campers, but that doesn't really help if counselors are still discouraged from coming out or discussing their own personal experiences of queerness as an identity. Obviously discussing personal sexual experiences with campers is bad, regardless of the genders of those involved. I resolved then not to go back until camp started moving rapidly in better directions of inclusiveness. My year on staff was my worst year at camp ever, mostly because the place I called home more than home for 10 years became a place that deliberately marginalized people like me.
But somehow, despite all this current animosity, OSRUI is still home for me. It's still the place where I first thought about becoming a rabbi. It's still the place where Judaism started making sense as a practice in addition to whatever religion was. It's the place I learned the power of music and art, not just from Ohad and Danny, but from the devastation my counselors experienced when Jerry Garcia died. (You may think I'm joking, but I'm not.) OSRUI is the place I learned about supporting my friends, and it's the place I learned how to give back massages. OSRUI is the place I learned that it's ok for a Jew to be an atheist, and it's also the place I learned to relate to God. OSRUI is the place I learned conflict resolution, but also the place I learned about solidarity. 70 Chalutzimniks chanting around the Migdal because there was no Israeli dancing our first Shabbat that summer may have been my first act of civil disobedience. OSRUI is the place I felt most alienated growing up with one Jewish parent (although there were lots of campers like me in that regard), but it is also the place where I first divulged my queerness to another person, a counselor whom I knew to be gay even though he never came out to me. My friends and even some former counselors and faculty from OSRUI populate half the contacts in my cell-phone, and I know that the bonds I have with old camp friends will last for longer than I can manage to keep in contact with those friends, although facebook has been a great help. But it pains me that I call a place that marginalizes me by omission home.
Of course, it's easier to talk about camp than loss. But what can I say about losing my love that I haven't said about a million times before?
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