User:AlexHorovitz/Camp Swig



The URJ Swig Camp Institute was the Reform Jewish Movement's summer camp serving the West: California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and New Mexico. The camp was established in 1951 as Camp Saratoga and run through the year 2008, Camp Swig provided a caring Jewish community that helped to shape young people. The camp program had a profound impact on many campers. It provided an opportunity to live as part of a close-knit community and develop new skills, assisted by a dynamic and enthusiastic staff, coupled with Jewish values and the development of one's Jewish identity resulting in what many classified as the experience of a lifetime.

The URJ Swig Camp Institute was one of 13 camps owned and operated by the Union for Reform Judaism, the organizing body for Reform Judaism in North America. Camp Swig was a non-profit camp, accredited by the American Camp Association. The camp was originally known as Camp Saratoga and built on the purchased estate of author Kathleen Norris which was purchased using funds contributed by members of the San Francisco Jewish community (with a large contribution from the Swig family). In the late 1960's the camp was renamed Camp Swig in honor of the instrumental role played by the Swig family in the original acquisition of the land.

Of special importance on the camp property is the Jo Naymark Holocaust Memorial completed in August of 1983. Designed by San Francisco Architect Shami Noily and Artist Helen Burke, the memorial is a recreation on the inside of a Polish Synagogue and on the outside of a traditional Santa Cruz mountain home. It hold special significance in so much as there were no Polish Synagogues that survived World War II.

Camp Swig in the 1970's
In 1967 Rabbi Joseph Glaser, then director of the Northern California and Pacific Northwest Councils of the UAHC and of Camp Swig, saw Artist Helen Burke's work at an exhibit honoring the 10th anniversary of the museum at San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El. Rabbi Glaser invited Burke to join Camp Swig's art faculty for a two-week art festival for high school students. Born in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and raised on a farm in Chico California, Burke, who was not Jewish, so fell in love with Camp Swig that she ended up staying 20 years, living at the rustic site as the camp's artist-in-residence.

The Jo Naymark Holocaust Memorial
A synagogue, the Jo Naymark Holocaust Memorial blends past and present, paying homage to the Polish Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust while at the same time incorporating the ambiance and image of a contemporary Santa Cruz mountain home.

The Memorial "doesn't depict the horror, but understands that the beauty of the community and the strength of the community is the continuation of the culture," said Shamy Noily, a San Francisco architect and former Swig staff member who collaborated with Burke on the memorial.

Over 15 years, some 1,500 campers contributed to the Holocaust memorial project, working either in mosaic or welded metal. Children learned the art of welding by designing small ritual objects they could take home.

They then welded reliefs that were attached to the memorial's centerpiece, an ark to which are attached artistic representations of Jewish holiday cycles, images of California redwoods and birds and pomegranates.

Burke then helped campers build two portable Torah arks. The first, a rotund metal ark adorned with symbols of Jewish holidays, was built to house a Torah rescued from the Holocaust. Burke called the second ark "The Little Ambassador," because of the traditional regal associations with the Torah.

"Her answer to the Holocaust was that the way to remember it is to rededicate ourselves to the values the Nazis tried to destroy," Noily said. "She really did that through her spirit and her teaching."

Directors of Camp Swig

 * Rabbi Wolli Kaelter - 1953 to
 * Rabbi Joseph Glaser -
 * Stephen Makoff -
 * Rabbi Martin Zinkow - 1985 to 1991
 * Rabbi Greg Wolf - 1992 to 1994
 * Ruben Arquilevich - 1995 to 2008