Camp Massad (Poconos)

Camp Massad (Hebrew: מַחֲנֶה מַסָד, Maḥaneh Massad) was a Zionist Jewish summer camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, which closed in 1981. Massad's founder, Shlomo Shulsinger, emphasized Hebrew language as a key value in a multi-denominational Zionist Jewish environment.

Massad was founded as a day camp in 1941 by the HaNoar Ha'Ivri with thirty campers, and eventually grew to three sleep-away camps in Pennsylvania, Massad Alef, Bet, and Gimmel, collectively known as the Massad Hebrew Camps in the United States (Hebrew: מַחֲנוֹת מַסָד בְּאַרְצוֹת הַבְּרִית) At its peak in the late 1960s, the Massad camps hosted over a thousand campers and staff each summer. In its forty years of existence, the camp strongly influenced both Jewish camping and Hebrew culture in North America.

The HaNoar Ha’Ivri movement (Hebrew: הַהִסְתַדְרוּת הַנֹעַר הַעִבְרִי, lit. 'Union of Hebrew Youth') was established in 1937 to build a Jewish life in the United States that promoted Zionism and the revival of the Hebrew language. In September 1940, the HaNoar Ha'Ivri conference reached a unanimous decision to establish an immersive Hebrew-speaking camp, an idea initiated by Shlomo Shulsinger, who came to the United States from Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. The camp's name, from the Hebrew word meaning "foundation", was inspired by a line from the poem Birkat Am [he] by Hayim Nahman Bialik.

In its first season in 1941, Massad operated as a day camp at Far Rockaway, Queens with Shulsinger as camp director. While deemed a success, members of HaNoar Ha’Ivri felt that Massad had failed to realize its potential due to interruptions from the campers’ everyday life, with the campers' English- and Yiddish-speaking families and the secular non-Jewish atmosphere of the city diluting the transformative effect of Massad's Hebrew culture. Lacking funds to purchase its own camp, in its second season Massad shared the facilities of Camp Machanaim, an Orthodox Jewish camp in Monticello in the Catskill Mountains, with an enrollment of forty-five campers and ten staff members. In the summer of 1943, Massad finally relocated to its own site in Tannersville, in the Pocono Mountains.

Massad's enrollment grew steadily during the 1940s as it attracted campers from various Jewish denominations. To meet the growing demand, Massad opened a second camp, Massad Bet, in Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania in 1948. Massad Gimmel opened in nearby Effort, Pennsylvania in 1966. In 1951, Massad launched its Machon Ma’ale (Hebrew: מָכוֹן מַעֲלֶה) program for the preparation of Hebrew-speaking counselors, with Professor Hillel Bavli serving as its first director. In 1960, Massad opened up a new division called Prozdor (a preparatory program for the Machon) for 15-year-old campers.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Massad drew the majority of its campers from the Talmud Torahs and day schools in New York, admitting mainly campers with Hebrew educational backgrounds The bulk of the camp populations came from the centrist Orthodox community, especially from the students of the Ramaz School and Flatbush Yeshivot. The Massad camps had their largest camper enrolment in the 1966-68 summers, with 914 campers in 1966, 937 in 1967, and 925 in 1968. Among other prominent visitors to the camp, Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Goren visited Massad Alef in 1974.

By the 1970s there was a downward trend. In 1971, for the first time, campers who chose so were accepted for a one-month session. In 1974, facing rapidly declining registration, Massad Gimmel was sold. After the Shulsingers retired in 1977, their successors attempted to orient the camp toward stricter religious observance in effort to address the changing realities of Jewish life in the United States and attract more Orthodox campers. However, Massad's enrollment continued to decline. Massad Bet closed after the 1979 season, and Massad Alef followed suit in 1981. The Massad Alef property was bought by the nearby Camelback Mountain Resort, while the Massad Bet site was used as a camp by the Bobover Hasidic community until 1996.

A number of explanations have been given for the decline of the Massad movement, such as the rise and expansion of denominational camps like the Conservative-sponsored Camp Ramah, the Shulsingers' retirement, the availability of summer programs in Israel, the growing weakness of the American centrist Orthodox community, the suburbanization of American Jewry, and a waning birth rate. Moreover, Massad lost much of its camper base as it became increasingly perceived as both not traditional enough for Orthodox Jews, and too traditional for the growing number of secular, Reform, and Conservative Jews.