An elite private school has yanked a beloved student camping trip because of its ties to Israel — sparking fury from parents.
Prospect Sierra School, a progressive K-8 in East Bay, cut its longtime relationship with Camp Tawonga, a 100-year-old Jewish summer camp, over its Israel connections.
The school ditched its annual middle-school retreat at the Yosemite-adjacent camp after a handful of students and parents complained about Tawonga’s “alignment” with the country, according to J Weekly.
The camp hosts shlichim—young Israeli emissaries who serve as counselors after completing their mandatory military service—and refused to cave to demands to issue a political statement on the war in Gaza.
Administrators at the $42,000-a-year Prospect Sierra sent a memo to 7th and 8th grade parents in January, claiming that visiting the site had a negative impact on students’ “identity safety.”
“We recognize that the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Israel and Gaza weigh heavily on many members of our community,” Nisa Frank, Prospect Sierra’s head of school, wrote in a message.
“While we have valued our partnership and values alignment with Camp Tawonga, and have shared many joyful moments there over the last three years, we believe it is vital to listen to and respect the lived experiences of our students,” the letter added.
The decision has left some families stunned, and reportedly fractured the tight-knit school community.
Jewish families in particular say the decision unfairly targets a Jewish institution and sends a troubling message to students.
The school has since tried to repair the damage by enlisting the help of the Jewish Community Relations Council to provide support for families and offer “Jewish cultural literacy” workshops to admin and board members.
“JCRC has since remained actively engaged with the Prospect Sierra community, elevating concerns from Jewish families who felt marginalized and urging school leadership to address the impact and reassess its policies around identity, inclusion, and antisemitism,” wrote JCRC in a LinkedIn post this week.
It wasn’t entirely successful.
“During the repair process, the same arguments conflating Tawonga and the Middle East war have been reintroduced: expressions of discomfort with Jewish-identified and Israeli-identified spaces and symbols, of concern about Tawonga’s relationship to Israel, and of Tawonga itself for not taking a public position on a ceasefire, though Prospect Sierra itself has no such policy,” one Jewish parent wrote to others.
What was once a simple camping trip in nature has now become the latest battleground in America’s culture wars, with kids stuck squarely in the middle.
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