Camp Boiberik was a

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

cultural

summer camp A summer camp, also known as a sleepaway camp or residential camp, is a supervised overnight program for children conducted during the summer vacation from school in many countries. Children and adolescents who attend summer residential camps ...

founded by Leibush Lehrer in 1913. In 1923 the camp purchased property in

Rhinebeck, New York Rhinebeck is a village (New York), village in the Rhinebeck (town), New York, town of Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 2,657 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Kiryas Joel–Poughkeepsie–Newburgh metr ...

, where it would remain until closing in 1979. It was the first Yiddish secular summer camp in America at the time. Affiliated with the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute, named after

Sholom Aleichem Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich (; May 13, 1916), better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish and , also spelled in Soviet Yiddish, ; Russian and ), was a Yiddish author and playwright who lived in the Russian Empire and in the Unit ...

, Boiberik was a secular, apolitical institution which emphasized

Yiddishkeit Yiddishkeit, also spelled Yiddishkayt (, i.e. "a Jewish way of life"), is a term that can refer broadly to Judaism or specifically to forms of Orthodox Judaism when used particularly by religious and Orthodox Ashkenazi. In a more general sense, it ...

or Yiddishkayt, or Eastern European

Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

Jewish folk culture, including

songs A song is a musical composition performed by the human voice. The voice often carries the melody (a series of distinct and fixed pitches) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs have a structure, such as the common ABA form, and are usuall ...

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

food Food is any substance consumed by an organism for Nutrient, nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or Fungus, fungal origin and contains essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, protein (nutrient), proteins, vitamins, ...

in the tradition of the

Borscht belt The Borscht Belt, or Yiddish Alps, is a region which was noted for its summer resorts that catered to Jewish vacationers, especially residents of New York City. The resorts, now mostly defunct, were located in the southern foothills of the Catski ...

theater Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communi ...

, and

humor Humour ( Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids i ...

. Although non-religious, Boiberik observed

shabbos Shabbat (, , or ; , , ) or the Sabbath (), also called Shabbos (, ) by Ashkenazim, is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the week—i.e., Friday–Saturday. On this day, religious Jews remember the biblical stories describing the cre ...

and kept a kosher kitchen. Boiberik had interactions with and was somewhat similar to

Camp Kinder Ring Camp Kinder Ring is a nonprofit 501(c)(3), Jewish summer camp located in Hopewell Junction, New York, accredited by the American Camp Association. History Camp Kinder Ring was founded in 1927 by The Workers Circle (formerly known as The Workme ...

. The name 'Boiberik' appears as a town in which the ''

Tevye Tevye the Dairyman, also translated as Tevye the Milkman (, ''Tevye der milkhiker'' ) is the fictional narrator and protagonist of a series of short stories by Sholem Aleichem, and their various adaptations, the most famous being the musical '' ...

'' stories by Aleichem are set, as a fictionalization of the resort town

Boyarka Boiarka or Boyarka (, ) is a city in Fastiv Raion of Kyiv Oblast (region) of Ukraine, about 20 km SW from Kyiv. It hosts the administration of Boiarka urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. Population: The population in 2001 was 35 ...

. In 1982, the former campgrounds were purchased by the

Omega Institute Omega Institute for Holistic Studies is a non-profit educational Retreat (spiritual), retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York. Founded in 1977 by Elizabeth Lesser and Stephan Rechtschaffen, inspired by Sufi mystic, Pir Vilayat Inayat ...

which currently resides there. Omega hosted a reunion of former campers in 1998.

References

Bibliography

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External links

Camp Boiberik Home Page
hosted by

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

Mitchel Resnick Mitchel Resnick (born June 12, 1956) is an American computer scientist. He is the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, and is the founder of Scratch. , Resnick serves as head ...

About Omega: Camp Boiberik
Omega Institute {{DEFAULTSORT:Boiberik, Camp Defunct summer camps Jewish summer camps in New York (state) Secular Jewish culture in the United States Yiddish culture in New York (state) Borscht Belt