Another Season with the Elaine & Michael Serling Israeli Camper Program Comes to a Close
There’s a particular kind of quiet that settles over camp on the last day of a session — duffel bags zipped, bunks stripped, kids hugging goodbye like they might not survive the distance. For the 127 Israeli teens who spent this summer at Tamarack Camps through the Elaine & Michael Serling Israeli Camper Program (ICP), there was more to that last day than packing up and saying goodbye. They weren’t just leaving camp. They were about to get on a plane and go home, except many of them will tell you they didn’t feel like the same person who’d landed here a few weeks earlier.
ICP is a partnership between Federation, Tamarack Camps and Michigan’s Partnership2Gether region, and every summer it brings a new group of Israeli teens into the Tamarack camp experience.
“This summer I learned so many new things about myself,” Israeli camper Shilat Cohen said simply. It’s a small sentence that captures something bigger: for many ICP campers, this summer wasn’t just fun. It was formative.
Camper Yali Raanan felt that shift deeply. “The program was so much more than just an experience for me, it truly changed me. It gave me a place to grow, meet incredible people and feel like I belonged to something meaningful and much bigger than myself. I went through challenging moments, but also some of the most exciting and unforgettable ones, and I learned so much about myself along the way. This is an experience that will stay with me for a long time.”
For Bat-Chen Muller, the summer left something she’s still carrying with her back to Israel: “I left with lifelong friends, greater confidence and a sense of belonging that I will always be grateful for.”
That’s the strange, wonderful thing about ICP: 69 campers arrived for first session, 58 more for second, each stepping for a few weeks into a summer that gave them room to breathe, people to connect with and a different rhythm of daily life. For Israeli teens returning to a reality shaped by uncertainty and the weight of ongoing conflict, ICP offered something simple and rare: camp, friendship, Jewish American community and the chance to just be kids.
Before the airport and the long flight back to Israel, there’s one more stop in Metro Detroit. ICP campers spend one more weekend with host families across the community — one last Shabbat, one more chance to feel the warmth of Jewish Detroit before heading home.
Twenty-four summers later, ICP still does what it has always done best: strengthening Jewish identity, building lasting Israeli-American friendships and sending campers home more confident, more connected and changed in ways they’ll carry long after the duffel bags are unpacked.
