Berkshire Hills Eisenberg Camp, Copake, New York

Mornings belong to the cabin group: a selected mix of activities meant to build friendships and let campers take developmentally appropriate risks, with swim lessons taken together. Campers receive instructional swim lessons in the heated pool every day until they complete the eighth grade. Afternoons are elective — campers choose two activities almost every day, either repeating one to build a skill or trying something different. A typical day runs from a 7:30 wake-up through three morning activity periods, a rest period after lunch, two afternoon electives with a canteen break between them, dinner and an evening activity before bedtime.

Tuition covers the stay, kosher meals, activities and instruction. Second-session trips for the older units are charged separately and are listed among the extras.

Campers live in cabins in bunk groups, organised into units by age, with their counsellors. Units function like extended families, and older campers take on an older-sibling role towards the younger groups.

Children and staff eat family style in an air-conditioned dining room. The food is kosher, and campers who do not keep kosher eat the same meals. The menu is varied and includes a salad bar, with fresh fruit available all day and a mid-afternoon snack; pasta or soynut butter are available for anyone who wants an alternative to the main dish. The kitchen prepares special meals for gluten, dairy and other allergies, vegan options are available, and no nuts or nut-based products are served anywhere at camp. Friday evening brings a Shabbat dinner with blessings and singing.

Activities run in four areas. On the waterfront, campers swim in the heated pool, take boats out on the sixty-acre private lake and use an inflatable water course. Sports include floor hockey, basketball, soccer, softball, volleyball, tennis and fitness, with inter-camp tournaments for those who want to compete. The arts cover music, drama, ceramics, crafts, film-making, dance, painting and drawing, with guitar and ukulele lessons inside the music programme. Adventure and nature bring a quarter-mile zipline across the lake, an eleven-element ropes course, an archery range, a garden, animals and overnight camp-outs in a treehouse above the lake. Older units take multi-day trips to destinations such as Lake George, Boston, Cape Cod and Toronto; camp-wide events include a three-day Color War, an all-camp summer celebration with inflatables and a barbecue, and evenings of laser tag, concerts and outdoor films.

The camp occupies 640 acres including a sixty-acre private lake. Indoors there is a gym, a recreation building, a theatre, an art studio, a movie room, a dance studio, a music room, an air-conditioned dining room and a purpose-built cooking centre. Outdoors the waterfront has an inflatable course, boats and swim docks, and the grounds carry a quarter-mile zipline across the lake, an eleven-element ropes course, an outdoor basketball court, tennis courts, sports fields, an archery range, a garden and a treehouse used for cabin camp-outs. The health centre is staffed by doctors and nurses, with hospital relationships in place for anything they cannot treat on site.

Berkshire Hills is a non-profit community camp serving about three hundred campers at a time, small enough that the whole camp knows one another. It is a values-based Jewish camp: camp life is organised around eight core values — integrity, respect, joy, spirit, acts of loving kindness, repairing the world, nature and friendship — and the week is punctuated by a Shabbat dinner with singing, an all-camp skit reflecting on one of those values, Saturday community-service projects and Havdallah as the sun sets over the lake. Children and staff come from diverse backgrounds and campers do not need to be religiously observant. Parents keep in touch by letter, by an email service that lets children reply by hand, and through a phone call and a visiting day each session.