Great Barrington – Wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt, with the words “Day Camp at Eisner Camp” emblazoned on its front, Robbin Gossett is surrounded by a cluster of young kids, each one wearing a smaller version of the same T-shirt. They are looking up, contemplating a 80-foot-high climbing apparatus made of giant logs tethered together.
As they watch, one young girl, secured by a harness, has climbed up the steps and has reached a platform half-way up. She hesitates, unsure of how to transport herself from the steps to the narrow platform. She takes a deep breath, swings herself onto the shelf, whereupon she turns and she looks down at her fellow campers and smiles. Gossett waves to her, and gives her a congratulatory thumbs up. The kids on the ground cheer her on, too. Soon, it will be their turn to make the climb, as soon as Gossett and her crew of camp counselors strap them into the safety harnesses.
“The tower and our climbing wall are real confidence-builders for our youngest campers,” Gossett explains to a visitor who is accompanying her on a tour of Eisner Camp, the 57-year-old, 600-acre, Reform Jewish camp that hosts 500 kids over the summer. Most of them attend overnight sessions but among them is a sizeable contingent of day campers, aged three to eight, from the surrounding area who number around 40 each week.
For the past 25 years, Gossett has been the heart and soul of the Eisner day camp, a program she founded in 1990, having left a teaching position at the Solomon-Schecter school in Queens, New York to create the Eisner program.
But this summer is to be her last as director of the day camp. She’s retiring – or as she puts it “taking a break” – and the kids we see before us, climbing the tower, swinging on ropes, and looking to her for guidance and approval, constitute her final Eisner class. Her last day at Eisner is tomorrow, Saturday, August 15. Over the past 25 years, she estimates that she’s mentored close to 2,500 children.
“But I need to grow, and travel,” she reflects. “It’s time to move on.”
And then she continues: “The original camp was an overnight camp, but we wanted to give the same opportunity to our youngest children, to help them develop strength of character and a love of Judaism.”
She adds that she also encourages in her campers the Judaic precept of tikkun olam, the concept that holds human beings responsible for “healing the world,” making it a better place.
As another one of her camper “students” gets ready to ascend, she smiles with real affection and appreciation for her young charges.
“I’ve been a teacher for 37 years,” she said. “My mother was a camp counselor, too, and a teacher. I learned from her.” And one of the things I learned from her was how important it is to dedicate ourselves to the next generation, to help them feel good about who they are, and give them independence to grow up to be confident adults.”
We hop back into the electric cart that has brought us to the climbing tower, and head back down the hill to the camp’s central facilities, passing by its two swimming pools and aquatic sports facility, to the dining room where, since it is a Friday afternoon, there are trays of challah dough ready for baking in preparation for Shabbat.
Around the side of the building Gossett points out a garden where campers are growing broccoli, cucumbers and squash.
“We work a lot with nature,” Gossett says. “We don’t take things for granted, like the food we eat. It doesn’t come from a supermarket; it comes from the earth. That’s why we visit Berkshire Mountain Bakery, to show where bread is made, how it’s made.”
In that spirit she has made sure that there is also an active relationship between the campers and the Berkshires. Her day campers also take field trips to the Norman Rockwell Museum, SoCo, and she has had the camp adopt Charley’s Fund as the official cause of the day camp.
And she adds, speaking for herself but also for the ethic she has brought to her campers: “We wake up every day, and thank God for being alive.”
On an adjoining patio, we stop to have coffee. Camp Senior Director Louis Bordman joins us, as does Development Director Corey Cutler.
“No one does this job better,” Bordman observes. “Robin has a connection with children that is extraordinary. No one has had more influence than Robin on making Eisner the special place that it is for children. It’s her patience and commitment to their growth. And it shows in the return rate we see in campers. Ninety-five percent of the overnight campers return the next year, and it’s just as high a percentage for the day camp.”
Indeed, the camp has such a positive influence upon campers that some of them return to work there. Ziv Nelson-Shore, for instance, moved from Brooklyn to the Berkshires to work at Eisner as food service manager. As a 5-year-old in 1996, he attended Eisner.
“In many ways,” he says, “it’s exactly the same as when I was here.”
And another graduate, Wilson Baer, to Eisner 21 summers ago, earned a degree Brown University, began a career as a Latin teacher in high school, and is now an assistant director at Eisner.
“This will always be my family,” observes Gossett,” and it’s been a blessing I’ve had this opportunity to be in this family. But I never leave a family. Let’s just say I’m taking a little vacation.”
