History

Our history is rooted in centering the margins for communities and taking bold (and sometimes controversial) steps toward innovation and equity. In 1998, Tawonga saw an opportunity to serve LGBTQ families who were struggling to connect with the Jewish community. Keshet was born: the first LGBTQ family camp in the field of Jewish camping provided a space where non-traditional families found a transformative sense of belonging and connection to Judaism. Growing from 15 families at its launch to 75 families (with waitlists) on Keshet’s 20th anniversary, this program continues to thrive.

Also in 1998 – on Israel’s 50th Anniversary – local Jewish leadership recognized the potential at Tawonga to deepen connections between Bay Area and Israeli youth. The foundational friendships created at Camp would form the basis for lifelong relationships between Americans and Israelis and strengthen the tie between our two nations. The Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund was among the first to provide support for bringing Israelis to Camp, starting with young adult shlichim. Then, beginning in 2003, this Fund enabled Israeli teenagers to come to Tawonga through our Noar l’Noar (Youth to Youth) program, which ran for 14 years.

Since 1983, our Adventure Quests, have brought Tawonga’s mission to nature-inspired, thrill-seeking road trips for teens. We now offer seven diverse Quest options with epic itineraries.

From 2003-2007, Camp Tawonga hosted Palestinian-Jewish Family Peacemakers Camp – Oseh Shalom – Sanea al-Salam, a microcosm of peaceful coexistence. Through living together, eating together, and laughing and crying together, participants in this Palestinian-Jewish dialogue-based program experienced a deeper connection to each other and their diverse experiences. Rather than using news reports to inform their interactions, participants shared their personal stories and opened up an authentic conversation. Check out this CBS story covering the program!

Answering a need to serve our older campers, Tawonga launched the Teen Leadership Institute (TLI) in the summer of 2017 – an immersive leadership training experience for rising 11th graders. This program precedes the Counselor and Specialist-In-Training teen program. During the three-week TLI experience, teens hone their outdoor and leadership skills and give back to Camp and the local community, in partnership with the Tuolumne River Trust.

Tawonga is known for championing B’tzelem Elohim (the idea that we are all created in the image of God) with pioneering programs like our LGBTQ Family Camp. We take this same approach to gender inclusion. At Tawonga, children and staff are encouraged to challenge gender stereotypes and express their true selves. Tawonga currently is a female-led agency. Experiences with gender-based challenges and viable solutions are firsthand and deeply personal. Empowering all individuals is in our DNA.

For decades, at the beginning of every Tawonga session, all campers attended gender-based campfires – one for boys and one for girls – to explore gender-related assumptions, pressures and expectations. During the summer of 2017, Tawonga launched a “beyond the binary” option to support campers who don’t identify as male or female. With each year, participation in this third campfire grow – a reflection of our evolving camper and staff community.

In 2019, for the first time, Tawonga offered an all-gender cabin option to non-binary children or to children who prefer to bunk with kids of a different gender. These campers had a fantastic experience, and The New York Times published a glowing full-length feature covering our pioneering inclusion work.

Many of our Bay Area families want to experience more Tawonga, more often – especially the growing number who see Tawonga as their primary Jewish affiliation. In the Bay Area, our “Down the Mountain” initiative makes the joy of Tawonga a year-round experience. From tot Shabbats to young adult programming and mulit-generational gatherings, each experience adds momentum to Tawonga’s inclusive, community-driven mission. Our annual Erev Rosh Hashanah Celebration is a cornerstone Down the Mountain program. Musical, soulful and kid-friendly, it drew 1,300 participants in 2019, up from just 15 when the program launched in 2009.

When unaffiliated families in the Bay Area’s Jewish community asked for innovative approaches to Jewish education and living, we got to work. Launched in 2016, and now with growing waitlists, the Tawonga B’nai Mitzvah program is well positioned to address the evolving needs of an increasingly diverse Bay Area Jewish community. Serving an East Bay and San Francisco cohort, this program infuses Tawonga’s resonant approach to community building and Jewish learning into the two-year B’nai Mitzvah journey.

Knowing that Tawonga teens crave deeper engagement with their Camp community throughout the year, we responded with new the Tawonga Teen Interns program in September 2018. This program offers Bay Area teens opportunities to learn leadership skills and gain paid work experience in youth service within the Jewish community while building powerful relationships with peers and mentors.

In 2016, Tawonga launched a Young Alumni Board, soon after renamed Tawonga Alumni Board, to more deeply engage our young adult cohort, build community and cultivate Jewish identity. Members of this Board contribute to marketing and outreach efforts, which have activated over 200 fellow Tawongans and friends to join activities sponsored by Camp. These young alums, mostly in their 20s and 30s, have enjoyed an Alumni Weekend at Camp, annual Social Justice Passover Seders at Wise Son’s Deli, a Tawonga@Home Shabbat spanning 10 cities and other social gatherings. As of 2023, the Tawonga Alumni Board is no longer operational, yet we acknowledge the dedication by the alumni board in fostering connection for many years.

Reforestation Efforts

In the spring of 2017 and 2018, young alumni joined together at Camp to replenish land scorched by the Rim Fire and replace trees lost to bark beetles and drought. They planted 50 pine trees in addition to dozens of fruit trees in the garden’s orchard. These efforts will continue as long as needed.

Tawongans Organizing for Racial Justice (TORJ)

In 2017 and 2018, leaders of this grassroots Tawonga alumni group helped facilitate our first two Social Justice Seders at Wise Sons Deli in San Francisco. In recent summers, TORJ leaders also led several racial bias trainings for our 200-member summer staff.

Our generous Tawonga donors are preserving and protecting our beautiful property for generations to come. Recent examples of site improvements include:

• Two new all-season, winterized residential cabins built in 2017 replaced staff cabins lost in the 2013 Rim Fire. These cabins provide much-needed housing suitable for families with young children, seniors, participants with disabilities and guests of Camp during the summer.
• A garden expansion is accommodating the growing needs for this increasingly popular program area. In 2017, we added a new welcoming gate and 20 fruit trees in the orchard. In 2018, we added a second cooking area and 12 new beds that doubled the garden’s food production space. Campers and staff tend heirloom tomatoes, basil, sweet peppers, fennel, cilantro and beets.
• A new central bathhouse constructed in 2018 is fully insulated with a versatile layout that provides a better experience for all campers and guests. The unique design has six different entrance doors, allowing us to modify the layout and the gender configurations from program to program. In addition, the new septic and grey water systems align with our environmental sustainability goals.
• An expanded Dining Hall completed in 2019 is accommodating our growing community. The square footage of the Dining Hall grew by 16%, all while maintaining the building’s classic rustic look and feel. Our renovated Dining Hall will enable us to keep pace with changes in the climate and sustain this central gathering space.
• Six new camper cabins constructed in 2019 offer an equitable camper experience across all age groups, including spacious porches for star-gazing and bunk bonding.

Tawonga is prioritizing full inclusion with a newly launched Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) initiative. Identifying and resolving blind spots related to gender and race is now mission critical. Launched in 2019, our JEDI work will guide us to be more inclusive in the way we market, communicate, program, recruit, train and hire staff and build our Board.

Our JEDI efforts helped inspire us to pilot Tawonga’s first-ever all-gender cabin in 2019. We are in a learning stage with this initiative and have much work to do, but are thrilled to be centering the margins and standing on the side of justice in all that we do.