Herzl Camp Can Make All the Difference
July 24, 2009 by Herzl Camp Admin, under Letters from Alumni.
By Jeff Usem
What does Herzl Camp mean to you? To me, it was everything Jewish.
Growing up in Red Wing, Minnesota, there weren’t too many things to make me (and my brothers and cousins) feel Jewish. Our parents had the wisdom to keep a kosher home, which certainly wasn’t an easy thing to do, not because it was what others were doing, but because it’s what they felt we needed to do in order to have a constant reminder of our Jewish identity. Other than that, the weekly Bar/Bat-Mitzvah tutoring (for those of that age) and annual pilgrimage to the Twin Cities for High Holiday services just wasn’t going to be enough. Until I got off that Lee Line bus in 1975 and walked nervously into a big orange building, not yet knowing how easy it would be for me to call it the Ulam, I had no idea what having Jewish friends would mean to me.
I vividly remember shaking on my bench, having absolutely no idea with whom I would be bunked, because unlike many others who were there with groups of friends, it didn’t make any difference to me. The difference to me was that everyone, and everything, was Jewish. Of course, it helped a little that there were a few other Usems up at camp to make me more comfortable (yes, even back then). When I heard someone say… Cabin 15: David Schlaifer, Scott Stein, Jeff Usem… who knew that I’d be living in Plymouth, Minnesota, 34 years later, sharing a suburb with David and being friends on Facebook reading updates on our families and lives?
Who could have imagined that the next summer, in 1976, when they read strange names again… Cabin 19: Ricky Bloomfield, Steve Gottlieb, Andy Fishman, Jeff Usem… that I’d be bunking for three weeks with my future college roommate and Best Man at our wedding, and with friends that are amongst my closest and most valuable friendships today? And again in 1977… Cabin 21: Ben Deutsch (who?), Jeff Usem… two strangers, both from small towns in Minnesota, who happened to have a common bond of playing the trombone and tennis (oh, and being Jewish), have the opportunity to develop a friendship that would bring them together again for college at UW-Madison and be strong enough to keep them flying across the country every year to play golf, attend Badger football games, and to make sure that their kids have a chance to be friends.
I could go on, and probably should, to mention many more names as fellow Ozrim in 1979, madrichim in 1980-81, and program directors (Kadimah) in 1982. The fact that some of these names continue to resurface as fellow volunteers on the Herzl board of directors shows the type of effect this place can have on people. As I look back through those years, and really think about the people I met, and the impact they’ve had on my life, it is truly remarkable, as I’m sure it is for many of you. Maybe I’m a little more nostalgic than usual, this being the 30th anniversary of my Ozo year, as we reach out to as many as possible to help rebuild this magical place on the shores of Devils Lake to ensure that it’s there for the next generation, and the one after that.
I still sing the Herzl song every time I drive down the winding road into camp. I can’t even tell you how comforting it is to know that both of our kids are up there, as I type, developing the friendships that I know will have an impact on them for the rest of their lives. I look forward to returning to camp again in a couple weeks Aug. 7-9 for Alumni Camp to rekindle some of those memories and to make new ones (and yes, there’s still room and time, so you could be there too!).
I never knew what being Jewish really was, or what it really meant, until I met Herzl Camp. I can’t thank my parents enough for putting me on those busses way back when – oh, what a difference it has made in my Jewish life, and continues to make in the lives of our children. Herzl l’tamid… Shabbat Shalom!