Leave a comment below or email dmj@mindspring.com with corrections.
View this post on Instagram "I grew up in Brookline Massachusetts and I assumed that the whole world was Jewish. In my elementary school class I remember there were 100 kids and there were 3 non-Jews in the public school class. . . Maine was the ‘goyish’ area to go in the summertime . . . for vacations. It had an allure because it was so different than my 100% Jewish environment. My earliest recollection is Old Orchard. The rollercoaster was still going there and there were three Jewish hotels there, but we didn't come up to Maine for the Jewish stuff, we came up to Maine for The Pier at Old Orchard. The second allure for kids was summer camps. And I'm not talking about the Jewish camps. I think there was one kid I know who went to Camp Yavneh. Everybody else went to ‘goyishe’ camp. The goyish camp that I went to was run by the athletic coach from the high school. He bought a camp on China Lake. It was a wonderful camp to learn about fishing . . . when we went camping, you'd row out to an island, you'd have a sleeping bag . . .we all have our fathers’ puptents from World War II. . .(they didn't protect you from very much), and we'd set around the campfire and . . .got to love the environment. That was the function of the goyishe camps. And then some of us became junior counselors. We got our lifesaving certificates.. . . It was all that was good in Maine. We all knew we were Jews. We were coming from a place that was overwhelmingly Jewish. That part was already a given. This was an ‘exotic’ but very interesting exotic. What we would have called back in Brookline ‘goyim-naches.’” #jewishmaine #jewishstoryslam #unionstation #arrivingforcamp #goyimnaches #portlandpubliclibraryspecialcollections A post shared by Documenting Maine Jewry (@mainejewishhistory) on Mar 29, 2019 at 8:51am PDT
"I grew up in Brookline Massachusetts and I assumed that the whole world was Jewish. In my elementary school class I remember there were 100 kids and there were 3 non-Jews in the public school class. . . Maine was the ‘goyish’ area to go in the summertime . . . for vacations. It had an allure because it was so different than my 100% Jewish environment. My earliest recollection is Old Orchard. The rollercoaster was still going there and there were three Jewish hotels there, but we didn't come up to Maine for the Jewish stuff, we came up to Maine for The Pier at Old Orchard. The second allure for kids was summer camps. And I'm not talking about the Jewish camps. I think there was one kid I know who went to Camp Yavneh. Everybody else went to ‘goyishe’ camp. The goyish camp that I went to was run by the athletic coach from the high school. He bought a camp on China Lake. It was a wonderful camp to learn about fishing . . . when we went camping, you'd row out to an island, you'd have a sleeping bag . . .we all have our fathers’ puptents from World War II. . .(they didn't protect you from very much), and we'd set around the campfire and . . .got to love the environment. That was the function of the goyishe camps. And then some of us became junior counselors. We got our lifesaving certificates.. . . It was all that was good in Maine. We all knew we were Jews. We were coming from a place that was overwhelmingly Jewish. That part was already a given. This was an ‘exotic’ but very interesting exotic. What we would have called back in Brookline ‘goyim-naches.’” #jewishmaine #jewishstoryslam #unionstation #arrivingforcamp #goyimnaches #portlandpubliclibraryspecialcollections
A post shared by Documenting Maine Jewry (@mainejewishhistory) on Mar 29, 2019 at 8:51am PDT