Nearly 1,000 Israeli summer camp staff are stuck in Israel after the country’s airspace was closed following the Israel Defense Forces’ strikes on nuclear and military facilities in Iran earlier this month, sending the North American Jewish camps where they were meant to work into a last-minute frenzy to find temporary replacements. 

“Jewish camps need our help!” reads one widely shared social post from the Foundation for Jewish Camp, calling for people to sign up to work at a camp. “With 1,000 Israeli staff members unsure when they will be able to make it to camp this summer, many camps are facing an urgent staffing challenge.”

Yet Yehuda Setton, CEO of the Jewish Agency, which sends the vast majority of Israeli emissaries, or shlichim, to Jewish summer camps, told eJewishPhilanthropy that while there is an immediate need for camp staff, the situation is not necessarily as extreme as it sounds, more of a temporary challenge than a permanent issue. 

“I’ll give you numbers. We have 2,065 Israelis expected at American summer camps. Twelve hundred departed before the skies closed. Just this weekend, we were able to send another 93. They are already on their way,” Setton said on Sunday. “I believe that by the end of the week, we will have another 600 that will fly to North America,” he said, adding that he expected the remaining 172 to make it as well. 

“There is no reason that the summer camp shlichim will not arrive this summer. They may be delayed by a week, a week and a half, but they will be there,” Setton said, adding that the Jewish Agency had not been consulted in advance about the language of the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s dire recruitment message.

With travel programs to Israel put on hold this year by the Israel-Iran war and disrupted for the past two years by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, the involvement of Israeli staff in summer camps is seen as particularly critical this year, providing the person-to-person connection for American Jews that they otherwise would not get. 

The shortage is primarily an issue for camps in Canada and the Northeast, which are opening now, unlike other parts of the U.S. that opened earlier in the summer, whose staff had already arrived.

Setton noted that the Jewish Agency — the nongovernmental body tasked with overseeing all immigration to Israel — has been involved in international rescue operations to get Jews in enemy countries to safety.

“This is our mission,” he said. “If we can rescue Jews from Ukraine and Russia, we will be able to send shlichim out of Israel.” 

Separately, the Jewish Agency is also preparing to send some 750 Israeli teenagers to American summer camps as part of its Campers2Gether program. As they are scheduled to travel next month, the organization has not yet had to find alternate routes to the U.S. 

According to Setton, sending summer camp shlichim is a top priority for the organization, seeing it as a central way of creating and strengthening ties between American Jews and Israelis at a critical time in Jewish history.

“The personal connection between Israel and the Jewish People will continue. So the shlichut doesn’t stop,” he said. “Shlichut is a national Jewish priority.” 

Jamie Simon, the acting CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Camp, which has been spearheading the search for replacement staff, told eJP that the Jewish summer camp movement is “cautiously optimistic” that the Israeli staff would soon arrive. 

“We talked to the Jewish Agency, who reassured us that they thought it was not a matter of if, but a matter of when,” Simon said on Monday. 

“So I’m optimistic that this is just a bump in the road and that the Jewish camp experience this summer is going to be vibrant and joyful and transformational as it has been for over 100 years,” she said.

And yet, Simon said, most of the summer camps waiting for Israel staff are either in the midst of their staff training weeks or are already opening now. “Camps need [counselors] now. They needed them yesterday,” she said.

So far, more than 1,000 people have signed up to work for camps filling in for the waylaid Israeli staff, she said. “We’ve received over 1,000 responses from Jewish community members saying, ‘I want to help. I can come for one week, two weeks, three weeks,’” Simon said. “Right now we’re making shidduchs, matches, between where they live and how many weeks they can come and what denomination — Do they want to be at a Ramah camp or a [Union for Reform Judaism] camp or a JCC camp? — so we’re making matches. It’s actually been really inspiring to see people raise their hand and say, ‘I love Jewish camp and I want to help.’”

In some cases, people have been hired on a weekly or biweekly basis — some of them for pay and some on a volunteer basis, she said.

Yet even with volunteers, the current situation will carry additional costs for both the Jewish Agency, which will have to pay more for travel, and for American summer camps, which will have to pay for additional staff. Simon noted that some camps that had organized trips to Israel for some campers have also had to change those plans, incurring further costs. 

“So we’re raising money to help offset the costs for the camps of having to hire additional staff or staff [at the] last minute,” Simon said. “There’s the other expense that they’re incurring because a lot of camps were going to send teens to Israel, so they’re rerouting those trips. And so we’re also raising money to say, we still want these teens to have a Jewish experience this summer… to allow the trips to happen at different locations across North America and in Europe.”

Setton said the Jewish Agency was prepared to pay for the additional travel costs now, with the hope that its funders would provide the money needed to cover them. 

“I’m pretty sure that our supporters will help us, but for me, it’s not a question,” he said. “In a time of war, you don’t ask, ‘Do I have the funding?’ You ask, ‘What is the right thing to do?’”