Camp Modin Established 1922 request brochure download enrollment form contact us heritage programs facilities modinites parents staff alumni HIstory and Heritage Established in 1922 and situated in the pristine wilderness of Maine's beautiful Belgrade Lakes region, Camp Modin is the oldest Jewish camp in New England.
In Pursuit of an Ideal Regard for the Individual Dedicated Staff Learning to Live Together History of Modin Our Founders The Experiment Continues Our Jewish Heritage Beauty of Maine Our Founders. In 1921, educators Albert and Bertha Singer Schoolman proposed to colleagues Alexander and Julia Dushkin, that they join them in establishing a private, self-paying Jewish summer camp for the middle-upper-class families, which were then struggling with the education of their children. The two couples joined with Isaac and Libbie Berkson, themselves educators, and the following year, in 1922, established Camp Modin as The Camp with a Jewish Idea. That first summer, the group gathered 45 boy campers on the banks of spring-fed Lake George in Central Maine, about one hour west of Bangor. The following season, Modin was swamped with 110 boys; in a building across the lake, three girl campers represented the start of what in 1925 would become Camp Modin for Girls. The experiment succeeded in creating a haven where children could develop their identities as members of a Jewish community, forge lifelong friendships, and escape the threat of polio in the aftermath of World War I. Wrote Alexander Dushkin, one of Modin's founders, in his memoirs Living Bridges We followed the usual curriculum of activities in summer camping–sports, games, swimming, boating and canoeing, art-crafts, horseback riding, gardening, dramatics, camp fires, overnight camp trips, and the like. We stressed nature study, the arts, and of course Jewish cultural activity. In the setting of America's lakes and mountains, we reconstructed the traditional synagogue rituals and folkways 'nearer to our heart's desire,' and added copiously from the nascent vigorous culture of the old-new Eretz Israel, in story, song, drama and dance. The short daily morning prayers, the joyous Sabbaths, the Tisha b'Av fast day, the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs–all became occasions for teaching [and] community living.