‘We regret to inform you’

For years, Adam Flam didn’t feel comfortable singing in public. It was at Jam Camp, an idyllic weeklong music camp nestled among redwoods in San Mateo County, that the Israeli guitar player finally felt safe enough to do so. 

“That environment… influenced me to explore and try new things with my music, and my art,” Flam told J. in September from Israel over WhatsApp.

Flam, 30, had close ties to Jam Camp. His aunt, Deborah Knapp, co-founded the camp in 2008 and was a co-producer of the program for more than 15 years. Flam came first as a camper, then as a counselor-in-training, and in 2019 as a paid counselor for one summer. His sisters attended, too.

“Adam was a great role model for the kids,” Living Jazz founder Stacey Hoffman wrote in an internal email with camp leadership on June 25, calling him “one of the best counselors we ever had.” Hoffman and Knapp helped create Jam Camp together.

This past summer, Flam was ready to return as a counselor after a five-year break, and in May he was told that he was hired. He purchased a plane ticket to the U.S. costing about $2,300, he said.

But about two weeks before his flight to the U.S., Flam received an email from Living Jazz executive director Lyz Luke, stating that Jam Camp would not be offering him employment after all. Living Jazz is the Oakland-based nonprofit that runs the camp.

“I am writing to inform you about an important update regarding your position as a counselor for Jam Camp West 2024,” the June 22 email said. “Given that our in-person orientation for camp counselors begins on Friday, July 12, 2024, there is insufficient time to complete your international background check, which can take several weeks to process.”

“We regret to inform you that we cannot have you as a counselor for Jam Camp West 2024,” Luke’s email said.

Living Jazz has said the decision not to bring Flam to camp was due to a flurry of administrative issues. But behind the scenes at the organization, a drama was unfolding — centered not on Flam’s paperwork, but on his service in the Israeli military, according to six current and former Jam Camp employees who spoke with J., as well as internal emails sent between camp leaders.

The series of events surrounding Flam have strained, and in some cases destroyed, personal and professional relationships built over decades.

Whether Flam’s absence from Jam Camp this summer was due solely to his service in the Israel Defense Forces, a purely administrative decision or something in between, the controversy it sparked became another example of what people interviewed for this story called the immense “heat” surrounding Israel and Gaza — heat experienced by Jews and Jewish communities thousands of miles away.

Indeed, in the Bay Area and across the United States, the Israel-Hamas war continues to complicate lives, end friendships and open up fault lines in nonprofit organizations, schools and workplaces.

The spheres of culture and the arts have proven fraught ideological battlegrounds. In San Francisco, several anti-Zionist artists pulled their works from an exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in April after the museum would not meet their demands to disclose all funders and support BDS. In March, the Jewish CEO of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco quit after pro-Palestinian artists demanded that the center boycott Israel and remove Zionists from its board. “I no longer feel safe in our own space,” the CEO, Sara Fenske Bahat, wrote in her resignation letter.

Staffers raise concerns 

In the months and weeks leading up to camp this past summer, multiple staff members objected to Flam’s presence at camp, saying he would not be in the right state of mind to work with children. Meanwhile, a number of music instructors were posting anti-Israel content on social media in the months leading up to camp. Some expressed their support for Palestinians by wearing kaffiyehs at an event one month before camp was scheduled to begin.

Flam, a paratrooper, had been called up twice for reserve duty with the IDF since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel. He did not enter Gaza.

Staff members told the camp’s executive director they were thinking about not coming to Jam Camp if Flam were present, multiple people said.

“People found out that Adam was coming to camp as a counselor,” said Knapp, Flam’s aunt. “They started calling Lyz [Luke] and threatening that they would not come to camp if Adam was there,” Knapp said. “That he was a danger to the children because he was an Israeli, and had been in the Israeli military.”

Knapp, a retired attorney who practiced criminal defense and environmental law, told J. that in her view, the administrative problems with Flam’s application were “fabricated” by Living Jazz in order to protect the organization (Living Jazz firmly denies the claim). Knapp resigned her position and cut ties with Jam Camp after what she described as discrimination against her nephew. 

“I’ve put lots and lots of time and energy” into the camp, she said. “It is not living up to its mission.”

Adam Flam’s IDF service

Like almost everyone he knew, Flam entered mandatory military service not long after finishing high school. For him, service in the IDF represented a way to protect the things he most values. He became a paratrooper.

“As the Jewish people, we have a privilege today to have our own country where we can practice our beliefs, and feel open and safe about it,” he said, adding that the IDF is foundational to “having autonomy” for the Jewish people. Throughout his time in the military, he said he “never had to fire a gun outside of the shooting range.”

Flam felt fortunate that he wasn’t called for reserve duty for about six years after completing his initial period of service in 2017. That changed after the Oct. 7 attack, which prompted a quick mobilization of roughly 360,000 reservists, one of the largest ever in Israel.

In December, Flam received the call and spent about a month in training. In April he was called up again and assigned to patrol the border between Israel and Gaza. “I’m not diminishing in any way the importance of guarding a border,” he said, but “I’m very, very thankful that is all I had to do.”

Questions were raised among Jam Camp leaders about whether Flam would be available to come to camp since he was still doing his reserve duty in the spring. Stacey Hoffman, the Living Jazz founder and camp director, “was really concerned he wasn’t going to get out,” Knapp said. “And then she would be without a counselor.”

But Flam completed his duty on June 10. With Jam Camp scheduled to begin on July 13, it seemed like everything was going to work out fine, Knapp said. “June 10, he was discharged. He bought a ticket.”

A ‘magical’ place

Each summer, Jam Camp West brings about 120 young people ages 9 to 16 to Loma Mar, an unincorporated town about an hour south of San Francisco, for a seven-day program. Students take classes in subjects like music theory and songwriting, live and eat together, and join ensembles playing blues, rock and jazz.

For Flam, coming to Jam Camp during the summer was a way to spend time with his family and unwind in an atmosphere with few distractions, little cell service and no internet. “You’re just in the forest with these kids. You’re all just present in the moment,” he said, calling the experience “magical.”

The pandemic complicated things at Jam Camp, which went online in 2020. Flam was not involved with the camp for the next four years. 

Flam lives in Herzliya, a small city north of Tel Aviv. He had been thinking for months about returning to camp, even before Oct. 7 of last year. “You know, to do it once again, be back with the community, get this experience with my family again,” he said. 

The spheres of culture and the arts have proven particularly fraught ideological battlegrounds.

But he started to feel reservations after the war broke out. On social media and in the news, he read about a rise in anti-Israel animosity in the U.S. He knew Berkeley and Oakland were centers of pro-Palestinian activism and anti-Israel feeling. He saw some extremely anti-Israel posts coming from people he used to attend Jam Camp with.

“I felt there was a lot of hate speech coming from the community out in California — against the Jewish community, the Israeli community, however you’d like to put it,” Flam said. “I was pretty much fed up with arguing and trying to justify my existence.”

Knapp helped convince her nephew to attend camp, suggesting it would be a welcome reprieve from his life in a country at war.

“My perspective was, ‘I’m just coming out to do music in the forest,’” Flam said. “I’m not into convincing anyone about my political situation, my political stance, or whatever. I’m just out there to do music with the kids.” 

Discord and tears

Over the past year, a number of Living Jazz staff expressed strong criticisms of Israel on social media, according to multiple people interviewed for this article. Some also sent direct messages to members of the Flam family. In one obtained by J., sent to Flam’s younger sister on Instagram, a longtime Jam Camp counselor wrote, “from a colonial perspective, I do NOT fuck with Israel, that is not your land.” The message said, “Jews historically do NOT give a fuck about Black peoples girl” and “#FreePalestine always.” 

Weeks before camp was scheduled to begin, intense feelings among staff members bubbled over in public.

Before Jam Camp, Living Jazz runs a weeklong program for adults called Jazz Camp. It also takes place over seven days in San Mateo County. Described as “7 days of magic in the redwoods,” Jazz Camp was held from June 8 to 14.

Discord about the war reached a tipping point during an event called Ohlone Bowl, a bonfire ceremony of music and dance in which participants acknowledge the campsite was once “sacred Ohlone land.”

In a speech during the ceremony, a longtime faculty member, who wore a kaffiyeh draped over his shoulders, said he wished to address “the elephant in the room.” He spoke about a “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” according to several people who were present.

The charge that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians is contested by those who support Israel. Some argue the claim defames both Israel and Jews.

As the staff member spoke, some in the audience cheered. Others started to grumble and boo, according to Jodi Friedman, a longtime Jam Camp parent who grew up in Berkeley, and whose daughter worked on staff this past summer. Someone hurled curse words. 

“It was a really fucked-up, tense moment at a music and dance camp that has been going on for 40 years,” Friedman said, adding that the camp had changed her daughters lives.

A young Israeli staff member broke into tears. It was Shelly Flam, Adam Flam’s sister. 

“She was crying in the woods,” said Mike Devine, another staff member who spoke with J. 

Also present was Karli Jo List, one of Friedman’s daughters. List described the moment as tense and highly unusual for an evening that was supposed to be unifying. “It just blew my mind,” she said.

“It was very high tension,” List said, and a “total disruption” of the event. “The following day, everyone was talking about it. There was no more not addressing ‘the elephant in the room.’”

Spotlight on Adam Flam

Meanwhile, in private conversations among staff, the topic was Adam Flam.

List, 27, said she was present for such a conversation in June, after Jazz Camp ended (kids were scheduled to arrive for Jam Camp about a month later). Typically a group of staff members spend a day or two together after the weeklong session, hanging out.

List has a personal connection to Flam. They dated in 2019. “We, like, fell in love at camp,” she said. She even traveled to Israel to visit him and his family, but after the pandemic hit, they couldn’t see each other for months, which would eventually turn into years, and they broke up.

List, a dancer and choreographer, said one morning while her friend was cooking breakfast in the kitchen, “this conversation starts to get brought up around Adam this, Adam that,” she said. “I’m like, oh boy. This is here now. OK. It’s inescapable.”

She said “people were walking by and just, kind of like, blasting out their opinion,” arguing that “he was fresh out of service, and anyone that is that close to a war zone should not be working with kids.” Most of the people in the conversation did not know Adam, List said.

“I was like, no one’s asked Adam how he’s feeling about it. At least ask him before you make all these assumptions,” she said. “Adam, of all people, is one of the people I would trust to be able to not bring this chaos of life into this space.”

Some staff members raised concerns about Flam to camp leadership directly. 

Friedman, List’s mom, said she learned about a groundswell of opposition to Flam’s presence at a musical performance at a private home in Berkeley on June 15. It was a “house show,” attended by Living Jazz musicians, administrators and staff.

About midway through the show, Friedman said, camp director and Living Jazz founder Hoffman came up to her with very surprising news, saying she had just been told that “three faculty members will not attend camp if Adam comes.” 

Hoffman was “horrified” and “couldn’t believe what she was hearing,” Friedman said, describing the three as “very, very established faculty members.”

“I stood there absolutely flabbergasted,” Friedman said.

Hoffman declined an interview request for this story, but responded to a written list of questions. She disputed certain details of Friedman’s account. As she remembered it, it was two people, not three, who told her “they were considering not coming to Jam Camp because they were uncomfortable with Adam’s participation in the war.”

Devine, an amateur guitar player who worked on loading equipment in and out of Jam Camp this summer, was also present at the house show. Friedman quickly told him what she heard, and Devine was outraged. “I ended pretty close friendships over this,” he told J. 

Devine, who supports Israel, described a tense atmosphere in the days leading up to the house show conversations. He said during one meal at Jazz Camp, “somebody started talking about Gaza.” He got up from the table and said, “I don’t want to have this conversation here,” he recalled. “They called me a white supremacist as I was walking away.”

When he learned that Flam’s employment offer had been rescinded, Devine raised the alarm. He said he contacted the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, the Anti-Defamation League and even the Oakland police, asking if they investigated civil rights violations. Flam did not wish to participate in any inquiry, Devine said, so it was impossible to pursue.

Devine, who said he “unfriended everybody” who was involved in protesting Flam, felt conflicted over speaking out about the controversy. “It’s a really tight community,” he said. “People have made music together and done this camp repeatedly for years and years and years.”

The camp’s response

Internal emails show camp leadership divided about what to do about Adam Flam.

“I never imagined I would be writing a letter like this to the Living Jazz Board of Directors,” Knapp wrote in one of the emails. “I would appreciate an opportunity to better understand what drove this action and explore how this could have been handled differently.” 

The president of the board of trustees responded to Knapp on July 1, listing four issues with Flam’s application: that Living Jazz did not have time to conduct an international background check; that it had not conducted an interview; that Flam had not been involved with camp for the previous five years; and that he had not returned his signed agreement.

Luke, who was promoted to executive director of Living Jazz in February 2023, agreed to a short phone interview with J. that she asked not be recorded. She said the organization could not legally conduct a background check until it had a signed employment agreement in hand. Flam hadn’t returned his contract because he was busy in the reserves.

One board member, who spoke with J. on the condition of anonymity, said the issue has proven extremely difficult to navigate within the organization. (Knapp said Hoffman, her friend of 24 years whom she met while dating Hoffman’s brother, has “blocked me from communicating with her.”)

“This issue has caused everyone considerable distress, and there are very different opinions about what has happened,” the board member said. “There’s so much heat around this issue it’s hard for people to see clear-eyed.”

For his part, Flam said he remembers Jam Camp as a place “free from judgment.” 

“Every year, you’ll be learning new things, discovering new things about your talents, about your music interests, your abilities,” he said. “You never know what to expect, if you come with an open mind and an open heart.”