Story of Impact: Camp Made Possible

In 2009, the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle gave $67,369.50 to 148 campers. Here is a letter from the mother of one of the 148 campers about the difference it has made.

“I will never forget the first year I applied for a scholarship and you called and told me you were going to pay the entire tuition even though I had asked for less. It blew me away. And it continues to every year. The Federation has made such a huge difference in Deborah’s* life by making camp possible for her. She is SO committed to Judaism and Israel because of her experiences at YJ.

Here on Bainbridge she is so aware of being a minority and one of the things she loves about camp is that everybody is Jewish. It's her only chance to experience that bond that I took for granted growing up in NY, and then going to Brandeis. She can't wait to go to Israel where EVERYBODY will be Jewish!

Yesterday she came home from school really upset because they had read Night and in the discussion afterward all the other kids were excusing the Germans by saying that they had to kill the Jews because otherwise their own family members would be killed. They didn't want to acknowledge that many (most?) Germans bought the propaganda that killing the Jews was the right thing to do. But what horrified her the most was that none of the other students took the Holocaust seriously and that they seemed to believe that "it wouldn't happen today" or "it won't happen again."

As Deborah said, Darfur? Congo? Yugoslavia? She was so ready to pack her bags and go to Eretz Yisrael!

So anyway, that's a long way of saying thank you. You have given her a sense of identity and home and "family" that she would not have had otherwise and we are both hugely, hugely grateful.

Be well.

Grateful Mom”

*The names have been changed to keep the scholarship recipient confidential, but otherwise, the letter has been unchanged.