Was it the expense? We were four children and my mother stayed at home to raise us, like most mothers did back then. My father, a highly regarded talmid chacham from Lithuania, struggled valiantly with the new language and with his rabbinic position in the small Orthodox shul, “Bnei Israel,” on the corner of Kedzie and Lawrence.
As I child, I never realized that we lived on a meager budget and that after basic living expenses and high tuition, there wasn’t much left for extras. Perhaps they didn’t send me to camp because they couldn’t understand why a young girl should leave the protection and comfort of her family and home to “have fun” for three weeks.
Of course, I didn’t argue. They had decided.
We spoke about camp only once, during Shabbos lunch, between bites of homemade gefilte fish and pungent, scarlet chrein. It was only the middle of May, but the Chicago heat was already stifling. The crimson-colored brocade drapes had retreated, listless, to their corners, and the wide, wooden-framed windows stood openmouthed, gasping for air, but no breeze arrived to relieve us before the momentous entrance of my mother’s steaming chicken cholent.
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