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Special to WJW

For the past seven summers, Aliza Esenstad, 16, has looked forward to her Jewish sleep-away camp in the Catoctin Mountains of Pennsylvania. But this summer, she traveled much farther -- to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

As part of Capital Camps' four-week counselor-in-training (CIT) program, Esenstad, a rising high school senior from Rockville, and 17 other teens -- most from the Washington metro area -- traveled to the South American city earlier this month for an intensive week of community service and Jewish communal exchange.

"Every summer, I look forward to seeing my friends at camp, but going to Argentina was an extra, great experience," said Esenstad.

The CIT program is designed to prepare the teens for the change of perspective from camper to counselor. While at camp, they are placed individually with a bunk, assisting counselors with campers and camp activities. As a group, the CITs learn about child development milestones and hone their leadership skills. The community service trip to Argentina, however, is modeled after Hillel's alternative spring break program. The goal is to provide the teens with experiences that will aid in their transition to informal Jewish educators, said Capital Camps director Jon Shapiro, 34.

"The hands-on-experience, outside of our communities, is one of the tangible, purposeful pieces of the CIT training," said Shapiro. "We feel it's very important to also include opportunities for very different types of experiences for them."

In Argentina, the teens lived in a hostel, ate local cuisine and spent time with their Argentine peers at the Ami Jai, the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. The trip was also an opportunity for the teens to put into practice lessons they had learned about tikkun olam, healing the world.

"Helping as many people as possible, wherever they are, is bringing Jewish values," said Drew Squires, 17, of Washington, D.C. "It's important to really live by that."

The group traveled to a run-down part of the city to paint the walls of a classroom and a soup kitchen and filled holes in the building with cement.

"The physical labor was pretty strenuous, but the people really appreciated what we did. They thanked us profusely and took our picture," said Jonah Nagrotsky, 17, of Bethesda.

To show their gratitude to the teens, some of the local women also gave them homemade bread, baked in an outdoor brick oven, said Nagrotsky.

Another particularly meaningful component for the group was the Shabbat experience they shared with the local Jewish community.

"I really liked seeing the Jewish community of Buenos Aires. It was a lot more similar than I expected," said Esenstad. "At Shabbat services, the d'var Torah was given in Spanish, but the prayers were the same songs, the same tunes. It was really cool to see the similarities."

The teens also had the opportunity to use their counselor training and assist the Argentine counselors with camp activities back at the Ami Jai.

"Even in broken Spanish and broken English, we were able to communicate really well with the kids," said Nagrotsky. "They have the same sense of fun and the same cookie conflicts as American kids."

In the evenings, the teens also had time to see some of the local sites and explore Buenos Aires by scavenger hunt. They practiced their Spanish, sang Beatles' songs and played universal camp games with their Argentine peers.

"We really became friends with [the Argentine Jewish teens]. We've already been in touch through e-mail and Facebook," said Squires, 17.

"It was magical," said Capital Camps CIT coordinator Lisa Handelsman, 46. "Young Jewish leaders in our community were meeting the young Jewish leaders in their community, and they just connected."

And proving that camp connections are strong and lasting, the teens were unexpectedly joined one evening by two of their former counselors -- an Argentine native and an American college student studying abroad in Buenos Aires -- for a surprise camp reunion.

"This experience expanded their horizons and really bonded them as a group and to other Jews," said Handelsman. "These are amazing teens, and the future of camp is in good hands." 

 

 

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