Today, many Jews may think of summer camp as a specifically Jewish phenomenon. In reality, Jewish educational camps developed as a branch of American organized camping. At the turn of the 20th century, camping was a major tenet of American Progressivism and the Fresh Air Movement, which sought to provide relief for poor immigrants in overcrowded cities during the summer while also assimilating them into American culture.
The first Jewish camps were Jewish because of their constituency or because they were run by Jewish communal organizations, not because of their mission. The next generation of Jewish camps in the 1920s had an explicitly Jewish ideological mission and were determined to reinforce Jewish identity by making Jewishness the norm of the camp experience. Camping has its own kind of magic— a unique sense of community generated through an isolated setting and a totally closed environment. Founders realized that they could harness this to make Jewish learning fun, natural, and seemingly effortless.
By the 1940s there was a major rise in camps associated with Jewish religious movements. In a post-World War II world, there was a camp for every kind of Jew: cultural, Zionist, Yiddishist, Hebraist, Socialist, Conservative, Reform, and Orthodox. Each type of Jewish camp tried to align its program with its educational purpose. Overall, post-war educational Jewish summer camps made it their mission to make Judaism, Jewish life, Jewish languages, and/or Zionism a “normal” and integrated part of American life for children beyond the summertime.