Camp Avoda at the Hehalutz farm in Creamridge, New Jersey, began as an experiment and ended as an established institution. High school-age boys and girls came to Creamridge to live and work with an established collective group. Although we were rather skeptical at the beginning, by the end of last summer, most of us were ready to admit that, within reasonable limits, it is possible to expose successfully young American Jews to collective agricultural life. To our surprise, we found that almost without any conscious guidance on our part, the campers, in the course of the summer, gradu- ally began to adopt the outlook and standards of intimate collective groups.
Fifteen boys and girls between the ages of fifteen and seventeen attended the camp. The group was a rather heterogeneous one; a number were students of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, where they received an edu cation along Reconstructionist lines, while several had almost no knowledge of Eretz Yisrael and Zionism, not to mention halutziut.
The life of the camp was, of course, built around work. The campers elected their own person to assign the work who, together with us, prepared the daily work schedule. The campers were given an opportunity to participate in the various branches-barn, chickens, garden, cannery, and so on. Working six or seven hours a day under the hot sun was a new experience for all of them and it was occasionally difficult to maintain good standards of work for the group. This was partly due to the assignment of routine jobs to the campers, such as picking tomatoes or cleaning chicken coops, rather than giving them an opportunity to do work which they would find more interesting and which would require a certain degree of skill.
The campers participated in both cultural and agricultural discussions. The agricultural discussions were conducted by members of the farm and were intended to give a general picture of the various branches of a farm economy. A good part of the discussions, of course, was in reference to our own farm economy. These discussions aroused considerable h1terest and proved very worthwhile.
One evening a week was devoted to a cultural discussion concerning aspects of modern Jewish life throughout the world with particular emphasis on Zionism. Because of the varying backgrounds of the campers, some difficulties were encountered in presenting these discussions, but the group as a whole was an alert one and there were many lively arguments and debates. Five or six times during the summer, the campers met to discuss and to decide about the problems that arose in the maintenance and the functioning of the camp. We naturally tried to have Camp Avoda run as democratically as possible, and except for a few elementary rules upon which we insisted, the campers were given a good deal of freedom of choice and decision. Despite the fact that the group was a small one and that camp life followed a rather simple pattern, there were innumerable small problems, questions, and suggestions brought up at these meetings. Several campers wanted a room in the house to be set aside as a recreation and letter-writing room; there was a discussion about whether boys have to work in the kitchen and clean house as well as girls; an argument ensued as to whether some campers may go to a movie on a day when the others are swimming or whether the whole group must have their recreation together; and so on.
Because this was our first experience with a camp of this type and because summertime is always a busy and difficult season at the farm, Camp Avoda in some ways fell short of what it might have been. As mentioned before, the work program was not organized in a manner that would have been most beneficial to the campers; the cultural work was too limited and lacking in intensity-for example, we did not have an adequate library of Zionist and other literature which campers could read at their leisure. During the first few weeks, there were also a good many technical shortcomings which should have been avoided.
Yet, we feel that we achieved the basic purposes of Camp Avoda. Purely on the basis of what they saw, heard, and felt, the campers gradually began to realize the advantages of collective living. Most of us thought it likely that they would ridicule, for instance, the idea of keeping clothes collectively, but it was just the opposite. They liked us and they liked the way we lived.
After a time, they began to adopt more and more of our methods. When at the beginning of the summer, we proposed a common ~und, we met with almost complete opposition; later the campers themselves again brougbt up the suggestion and it was accepted. As happens in every camp, parents sent boxes of candy and cookies. At first the candy was the private property of the particular tent in which the recipient lived, then it was shared among the campers, and finally it was decided that the boxes were to be shared equally among the campers and members of the farm alike.
A few weeks before the end of the season, they were asked to analyze collective living, to extol or criticize it, on the basis of their own experience. There was a good deal of disagreement about whether this type of life was possible on a large scale at the present time, but everyone who spoke assumed, as something that did not need further proof, that living collectively was better and preferable to any other way of life.
The campers went home with a very real appreciation of the farm and at least an acquaintance with halutziut. During the year, many of them came to visit us for weekends and holidays. Several are returning this summer to participate in a larger, better planned, and better organized Camp Avoda.
Al Weingrod, 1944