Community leaders gather for annual Stakeholders Assembly

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This Shabbat, we were thrilled to welcome hundreds of visitors, alumni, and community leaders for our 9th annual Eisner and Crane Lake Camps Stakeholders Assembly. This weekend was an opportunity to honor the countless members of our camp communities without whom our camps and programs would not be possible.

After a beautiful Shabbat morning t’filah led by our Chaverim campers and staff, we joined together on the quad for a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Ava Gottlieb Health and Wellness Center. Ava was the daughter and granddaughter of Eisner alumni, and would’ve started as a camper herself this summer, but unfortunately she passed away in March after a four-year battle with cancer. A group of family friends and camp community members, known proudly as Ava’s Avengers, organized a fundraising effort to help honor Ava’s memory and cement her loving presence at Eisner for years to come. We will begin work on our new Mirp’a’ah soon!

After the ceremony, our stakeholders met in the Beit Am for an afternoon of celebration and gratitude. We were honored to have clergy and lay leaders from many of our member congregations, URJ Board members, and a few special guests, including the Vice President of Youth for the URJ, Miriam Chilton, and our keynote speaker, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and Eisner alumna, Jodi Kantor.

The afternoon began with opening remarks and a report from outgoing Eisner and Crane Lake Board Chair Mark Daniels. Mark shared the successes of our camps, improvements and renovations that are in the works, and thanked many important members of our community for their crucial leadership.

After lunch and a brief introduction from incoming Board Chair Liz Barnett, Miriam Chilton addressed the Assembly, emphasizing the importance of congregational partnerships in recruiting for and supporting our camps and youth programming. Miriam marveled at the beautiful song written by our campers this summer, Stand Up, and even broke into song herself. She concluded, “Together, with our congregations we will stand up, we will be courageous, (I won’t sing it this time), we will be strong, we will make it contagious, and we won’t stop because we got the fight,” she said. “On behalf of the URJ and the URJ Board, I want to wish you a Shabbat Shalom and to thank you.”

Next, Debby Shriber, Director of Crane Lake, announced this year’s congregational award winners. She honored the nearly 50 congregations that have sent ten or more campers to Eisner, Crane Lake, Sci Tech, Machon, and/or NFTY in Israel. Jeremy Wolfe, the East District Chair of the URJ North American Board then handed out two final awards, one to the temple with the most campers, and one to the two temples tied with the most new campers. Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, Massachusetts received both awards, an Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, New York co-received the latter.

After the awards presentation, Mark presented the Assembly planning committee with thank you gifts, and introduced the next speaker, our very own director, Louis Bordman.

Louis shared shared one of his favorite stories, the transformation of the infamous Olim “Prank Night” into what we now call Legacy Night. After a particularly bad Prank Night in the mid 1990s, Louis asked that year’s Olim a simple yet critical question: Is this really how you want to be remembered? The next session, Louis was incredibly pleasantly surprised to see that rather than wreak havoc upon camp, Olim had created a beautiful Olim garden: a giant O on Olim hill built with rocks, on which every camper and counselor had written what they wanted their legacy to be. To Louis, this represented a turning point in the culture and history of Eisner. Ask him about it!

Finally, New York Times reporter and former camper Jodi Kantor joined Liz Barnett on stage for a question-and-answer session. Jodi spoke about her experience growing up at Eisner and how it helped shape her and took questions from the Assembly about a wide range of topics.

Jodi began by reflecting on what Eisner means to her, especially why driving through the gates this summer felt different. “I felt as moved and sentimental as I always do,” she said. “But I felt something new this year, which is an appreciation for the fact that Eisner is the only thing in my life that doesn’t change. It’s changed in the sense that camp has only gotten to be a more and more incredible place in the years since I left. But especially after the events of the last year in the world, the feeling of driving through these gates and being in this sanctuary, this sacred place, and having a home in the world that is free of so many of the things that make life really, really, really hard, was just incredible.”

Jodi also spoke about how Eisner helped lead her to journalism. While no chug or activity inspired her directly to investigative journalism, the values instilled upon her were formative for her. “Eisner had a kind of level of social consciousness that I had never experienced in my life,” she said. “There was this set of programming devoted to really challenging the way you thought about the world that was incredibly sophisticated, you know, relative to what was out there for 11-year-olds.”

After the conclusion of the Assembly, we gathered outside the Beit Am for a memorial tree planting, honoring three members of our Eisner and Crane Lake family that we lost his past year: former Board member and chair Benjamin Mendel, former Vice Chair of the Board Susan Wiener, and Ava Gottlieb. Memorial trees for Benjamin and Susan will also be planted at Crane Lake.

We would like to thank all those who joined us for a special and spirited Shabbat this weekend, and everyone who helps make Eisner and Crane Lake the magical homes away from home they are for so many generations of campers and staff. Shabbat Shalom!