Affiliation with JCamp 180

JCamp 180 works with nonprofit Jewish Camps across North America.

JCamp 180 welcomes a diverse range of Jewish day and overnight camps from across North America to affiliate and partner with us.

JCamp 180 works with more than 100 overnight camps and 23 day camps from all of the major movements including the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), Ramah, JCCA, Habonim Dror, Young Judaea, Reconstructing Judaism, Bnei Akiva, and Shomria. We also work with Jewish camps that are fully independent and camps that have joined the Association of Independent Jewish Camps (AIJC).  Affiliated camp all share data with us through the annual field-wide census, administered by the Foundation for Jewish Camp. 

How do we define a Jewish camp?

In addition to their affiliation with major Jewish movements, or self-identification in the case of independent camps, we look at a number of factors:
 
  • First, we work solely with nonprofit camps.  
  • Second, we encourage JCamp 180 participating camps to include Jewish ideals and values in their mission statement and we work with them to develop these statements as part of our strategic planning work. 
  • Third, our camps must articulate their Jewish practices at camp, whether it is observance of Shabbat, kashrut practices, Israel programming, Jewish education, Hebrew at camp, living their Jewish values, or other such practices.  We welcome camps to define what it means for them to be Jewish and we work with camps across the religious spectrum, from reform, Zionist to modern-orthodox and orthodox.  
We do NOT work with: for-profit camps; camps that serve Jewish populations but do not self-identity as Jewish; camps that do not have a Jewish camping mission. 

Affiliation is by invitation-only. Please contact us if you are interested in affiliation in the future - we'd love to speak with you to learn more about your camp!