A Foot in Every Camp

Streamlined

Those camp color wars might be deep in the past for most adults, yet camp memories tend to hold a special place in their hearts.

“My kids know that even now, 25 years later, if we’re singing Shabbos zemiros and come to a tune that was used for an alma mater at Camp Ma Navu, I’ll still remember every word and sing along,” says CHAIM WEISS, creator of 24Six kosher streaming. He realized that by creating playlists of the beloved alma maters, he could offer adults a trip back to their camp days. Once he’d compiled the songs from Camp Ma-Na-Vu, Camp Agudah alumni joined the fun by collating their color war songs, soon to be followed by Camp Munk, Camp Rayim, Mogen Av, Camp Romimu, Camp Keser, and others. Everyone wanted their camp represented.

“Back then, camp was everything,” Weiss explains. “Everyone went to camp, and the two months spent there formed a big part of your identity. Each boy identified with his own camp, and the songs we sang there, especially those that the teams worked on for color war alma maters, meant so much to us.”

The camp chat groups and the camp websites helped the material come together. Camp videos from the 1970s are pretty rare, but from the late 1980s, camps began videoing their color war presentations. Weiss and his team were able to pull those videos into audio tracks, offering the camp playlists in time for this year’s color war week — traditionally the week after Tishah B’Av. As the camp season winds down, he’ll be adding this year’s songs, for campers returning home to share with their families.