{"id":247337,"date":"2014-05-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/balboa-park-resident-ed-samiljan-creates-jewish-continuity-through-summer-camp\/"},"modified":"2014-05-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T07:00:00","slug":"balboa-park-resident-ed-samiljan-creates-jewish-continuity-through-summer-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/balboa-park-resident-ed-samiljan-creates-jewish-continuity-through-summer-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"Balboa Park resident Ed Samiljan creates Jewish continuity through summer camp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monica Medina | KPBS<\/a><\/p>\n

Amidst the towering, aromatic pines of the San Bernardino National Forest is Camp Mountain Chai. Like most summer camps, it offers typical activities such as swimming, crafts and sing-alongs. It\u2019s an experience that draws hundreds of San Diego children each summer, and in the process, they\u2019re getting something else: a cultural identity.<\/p>\n

Now in its ninth year, Camp Mountain Chai continues to thrive thanks to the likes of Ed Samiljan \u2014 and the thousands of bagels his wife Rae provided Samiljan and his team while they raised funds and developed plans for the camp. It is because of his perseverance and passion that KPBS and Union Bank honor him this month as a 2014 Jewish American Heritage Month Local Hero.<\/p>\n

\"Children<\/a>
Children at Camp Mountain Chai (Courtesy KPBS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Samiljan, who spent over 30 years working in the photographic industry and before retiring, is motivated by a love of faith and tradition and a desire to ensure their continuity. Indeed, Jewish continuity is something he feels is sorely lacking today, as a result of societal changes.<\/p>\n

Rae and I have been always interested in finding mechanisms to keep kids engaged in basic Jewish values,\u201d Samiljan explained. \u201cIn the United States, kids grow up in a very accepting society, which challenges our continuity, and regardless of your heritage you have some desire to see it, and what you think are the basic core values you\u2019ve been exposed to, continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The need to establish Jewish continuity is a post-World War II phenomenon, initially stemming from families migrating in droves to the suburbs.<\/p>\n

Seton Hall University Professor of History, Edward S. Shapiro, asserted that \u201cthe diffusion of Jewish population into the suburbs \u2026 diluted Jewish identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another factor is the growing number of intermarriages \u2014 58 percent today as compared to 1970, when the rate was 17 percent. Neither of these were issues of concern in Samiljan\u2019s youth.<\/p>\n

\"Ed<\/a>
Ed Samiljan (Courtesy KPBS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI was raised in a ghetto of Boston by a single parent and my grandparents,\u201d he recalled. \u201cIt was a community of tenement houses with an overwhelmingly Jewish population. No one had high income, and frankly it would\u2019ve been considered frivolous to go to camp in that environment, but I didn\u2019t need Jewish continuity, because my grandparents made Jewish continuity. It was a very solid Jewish environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea for the Camp Mountain Chai grew from a conversation with a Jewish mom during a meeting at the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County. At the time, Samiljan was running a program, Pathways to Judaism, which was designed to provide support and educational opportunities to interfaith couples, but as Samiljan points out, the program was expensive to sustain and was only reaching 15 \u2013 20 families at a time.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne morning, a young woman was complaining that she wanted to send her kids to a Jewish camp, but she couldn\u2019t because they were all filled up,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWe never had a Jewish camp in San Diego, so I kind of had an epiphany \u2014 that camping might be a great way of mass marketing Jewish continuity. We would have a way of handling hundreds of kids at a time, putting them through the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Children<\/a>
Children canoe in the San Bernardino National Forest at Camp Mountain Chai. (Courtesy KPBS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It took a few years of dedicated team work, extensive research and plenty of bagels, to turn the idea into reality, but the results \u2014 125 children attending the first year \u2014 have been gratifying. As it approaches its 10th year, Camp Mountain Chai has a staff of 75, and handles about 500 children each summer. Its success lies in its ability to foster a Jewish life for its campers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe take youngsters from homes in which there\u2019s very little Jewish experience and in two weeks they pick up the prayers and the songs and they\u2019re singing, they\u2019re Israeli dancing, and they\u2019re participating in our Friday night Shabbat services,\u201d Samiljan said with pride. \u201cThey\u2019re enjoying the experience. They think this is a fun time. We\u2019ve made Jewish values highly palatable and absorbable through their pores. We\u2019re building continuity but we\u2019re also building San Diego community.\u201d<\/p>\n

When children register for Camp Mountain Chai, they\u2019re often getting something more, something that most youth don\u2019t experience until college.<\/p>\n

\u201cKids who live in Del Mar or Carlsbad don\u2019t know very much about kids who live in Chula Vista or San Diego proper, and this is a great opportunity to bring them together for a common experience,\u201d Samiljan observed. \u201cCamp gives them an opportunity to mingle, and experience kids from different places, including Israel, where many of our kids and counselors come from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Running a camp like Mountain Chai is expensive, and the tuition can be too. Samiljan works hard to raise funds for scholarships to ensure no child is turned away.<\/p>\n

\"Ed<\/a>
Ed Samiljan winning the San Diego Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Samiljan Foto (Courtesy KPBS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMany families have limited income and they don\u2019t have room in their budgets for the summer camp experience,\u201d he said. \u201cBut camp is for all kids, and I think it\u2019s fair to say, in the nine years we\u2019ve been operating, we\u2019ve never turned down a child because of financial need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samiljan and Rae, who both hail from Massachusetts, recently celebrated 61 years of marriage. They\u2019ve lived in San Diego since the late 1970s and have three daughters and six grandchildren. Samiljan refers to their youngest grandchild as Camp Mountain Chai\u2019s \u201cposter child\u201d because she has attended the camp both as a camper and a counselor.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a youngster from a mixed marriage,\u201d added Samiljan. \u201cHer father is Japanese American and we were very eager to expose her to our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samiljan considers himself lucky to have been able to develop Camp Mountain Chai and see it through to fruition.<\/p>\n

As Rae points out, \u201cThere were so many times he wanted to throw in the towel, but some of his major sponsors said, \u2018No, keep going,\u2019 and he was very persistent.\u201d<\/p>\n

In looking forward to celebrating the camp\u2019s first major milestone, its 10th anniversary, Samiljan\u2019s hopes for its future remain focused.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want our alumni to have great memories of what camping was like,\u201d he said. \u201cI want to see Camp Mountain Chai accomplish its goal of reinforcing Jewish continuity and helping to build a strong viable Jewish community in San Diego. That would be a great accomplishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information about Camp Mountain Chai, visit campmountainchai.com or call 858-499-1330.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monica Medina | KPBS Amidst the towering, aromatic pines of the San Bernardino National Forest is Camp Mountain Chai. Like most summer camps, it offers typical activities such as swimming, crafts and sing-alongs. It\u2019s an experience that draws hundreds of San Diego children each summer, and in the process, they\u2019re getting something else: a cultural […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":751,"featured_media":247338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Balboa Park resident Ed Samiljan creates Jewish continuity through summer camp","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/751"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}