A Jewish day camp in Belmont was in dire straits recently.
The Peninsula Jewish Community Center’s summer camp was only a few weeks away from starting and the director was about a dozen counselors short of the 75 he needed.
“We were hysterical,” said Judy Garb, the center’s director of early childhood education. “The preschool director was calling everyone she knows.”
So camp director Todd Braman snapped into action, offering $50 bonuses to returning counselors who recruited one of their fellow teens or college students to be a counselor.
Braman’s plan worked. He filled his staff and avoided what is plaguing many Jewish camps across the country this summer — a shortage of counselors.
“It’s a national crisis,” said Dan Alter, the director at Ramah Day Camp of the Greater East Bay, a new Conservative camp in Berkeley.
“This has been the hardest year ever,” echoed Rabbi Ramie Arian, the executive director of the Foundation for Jewish Camping.
Most of the blame is being pinned on the robust economy.
Many would-be counselors “are taking internships and feeling pressured to move on with their lives,” said Steve Mintz of Herzl Camp, an independent Jewish camp in Wisconsin.
“The priority for a lot of kids in college is a reputation-based job, a job that will get them connections,” said Hillary Buff, executive director of Camp Solomon Schechter, a Conservative-affiliated camp in Washington state.
Alter, who wrote a master’s thesis in 1997 on Jewish summer camps, pointed to three factors in the current counselor shortage:
*A “bubble in the demographics,” meaning that there simply aren’t enough would-be counselors to match soaring enrollment rates.
*The “lucrative job market, in which teens can earn more than the stipend” counselors get paid. Typically, salaries for junior-level counselors at overnight camps start at about $1,000 for eight or nine weeks.
*The “steadily increasing pressure on young people to achieve more and earlier in terms of their financial future.”
Alter stressed “the third factor is equally important to the other two,” adding, “Kids today just feel like they have less spare time to do something that leans in the direction of community service.”
However, directors at the Bay Area’s three overnight Jewish camps are singing a different tune.
“A lot of our counselors are former campers, so we’re not really competing with other jobs on the open market,” said Ann Gonski, the associate director of Camp Tawonga near Yosemite.
“They know they can make more money elsewhere, but our counselors have a passion about camp. Doing this has been in their heart since they were 12 years old.”
Camp Tawonga reports all but one of its 50 counselor spots filled, although a few specialist positions are still vacant, and openings for cooks and drivers are proving difficult to fill.
Camp Swig in Saratoga and Camp Newman in Santa Rosa, run by the Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations, are reporting 95 percent of their 120 counselor positions filled.
Ruben Arquilevich, the executive director of Swig and Newman, said his counselors simply love being at camp. They thrive on working with children, being in a Jewish environment and hanging out with many of their former camping mates.
“Those are the motivating factors — not a $10,000 internship at some Internet start-up company,” he said.
Then again, said Sarah Hilbrich, an associate director who does most of the hiring for Tawonga, “There have been people who accepted positions with us, then called back to decline because they got high-tech or more industry-related opportunities.”
The shortage of workers is not unique to Jewish camps, which are earning growing recognition for their effectiveness in fostering Jewish commitment.
Traditional summer employers of teens and college students, such as amusement parks and fast-food chains, are also struggling to hire enough people.
One Reform camp in Mississippi was so desperate the director sent imploring letters to everyone who had ever attended the overnight camp. He also called people “over and over again” and offered $75 signing bonuses.
Another Reform camp, this one in Wisconsin, is offering counselors career planning sessions with a corporate recruiter and $1,000 scholarships to those returning for a third year of work.
Swig and Newman are offering small salary bonuses, such as $50 if counselors commit for a full eight-week session or $25 if they’ve been on an organized trip to Israel.
But, Arquilevich said, this is a longtime program, not a panic measure.
“It’s minor,” he said. “We’re talking about $100 or $200 over the summer, and our staff members certainly aren’t making their decisions based on that.”
Hilbrich said Tawonga offers some similar incentives: $50 for each year of college education, $50 for accreditation as a lifeguard, $150 for each year that someone has returned to be a counselor.
Both Hilbrich and Arquilevich said the incentives serve to maintain a pool of experienced counselors, rather than to offset a counselor shortage.
Typically, counselors are 18 and over with high school diplomas. Specialists, such as drama teachers or song leaders, are usually in their early to mid-20s and earn a higher salary, generally starting at around $1,500 for eight or nine weeks.
Local Jewish camps — most of which started either last week or this week — are operating with adequate numbers of counselors perhaps because they used what one director called “new strategies” to attract candidates this year.
Directors of Bay Area camps probably were sharper than their national counterparts in making a pre-emptive strike against a potential counselor shortage.
Deborah Sagan, the site director at Camp Newman, said when talking to youth groups and other teen groups this past year, “I constantly said, ‘What are you doing this summer?'”
The Internet was also an effective tool. Using e-mail, Sagan implored previous counselors and campers to pitch their friends, either by word-of-mouth or via e-mail.
Hilbrich used the Internet in another manner, making Tawonga’s pitch and finding prospective counselors at www.campstaff.com and www.jewishcampstaff.com.
Also, local camps are making concessions, such as allowing counselors to work for only part of the summer.
“In the past, we would only hire you if you were here for the full eight weeks,” Sagan said.
Many camps are turning to Israelis, as well. The Jewish Agency for Israel’s Shlichut program has placed some 900 counselors across the United States this summer, including 20 at Swig and Newman.
Arquilevich and Gonski feel that local camps will always have enough counselors as long as Bay Area kids continue to have positive, enriching camp experiences.
“The kids that want to come work as counselors at camp are not looking at this as a job amongst jobs,” Gonski said. “It has been a dream of theirs since they were campers.”