Pantry Boy

It wasn’t just that they couldn’t afford camp. “My parents were survivors. They didn’t even know what camp was. My father woke up three o’clock in the morning for his job as ‘kosher-macher,’ salting meat for the butcher.”

So summers, for young Meir, meant long days on the streets of Alphabet City (as the section of the Lower East Side where the streets feature single-letter names is known), hoping to get into a punch ball game or chance upon an open fire hydrant.

It wasn’t until after his bar mitzvah that a friend suggested he apply for work at Camp Agudah, up in the Catskill Mountains.

Even the job title was quaint: pantry boy, which is what they used to call kitchen workers.

He got the job — and fell in love. I expect him to rhapsodize about the songs, the spirit, the sports….nope. Meir Frischman actually loved the work at Camp Agudah.

“I was just that type of kid, I was capable and loved to be busy,” he says. “In yeshivah, at RJJ, I was always hanging around the office, helping out. My father used to jokingly wonder why he had to pay tuition for me. Camp was perfect for me, because there was always more to do, tasks that needed extra hands.”

After two years as kitchen worker, Meir drew the attention of the camp director, Rabbi Boruch Borchardt.

“He was a real mentor to me, trusting me with actual responsibilities. His dedication to the campers opened my eyes to what camp means, the potential these two months have to affect the rest of the year.”

Meir Frischman was made assistant director, with Rabbi Borchardt teaching him the ropes of running a camp.

Meanwhile, he continued at RJJ through beis medrash and then attended accounting classes at Brooklyn College. By the time he met Chanie, he had a clear sense of what he wanted to do.

“I went back the next summer, newly married.” He shrugs. “It was a mistake. Being married as staff can work, but not in shanah rishonah. A wife needs a job or children, something else to keep her busy besides wondering when her husband will come home.”

His wife quickly bounced back though, standing by his side for the next thirty-nine summers and becoming the beloved head-lifeguard at nearby Bnos.

Full-Time

It was a Camp Agudah connection that led Meir to his first “real” job. Rabbi Simcha Kaufman, the legendary Agudah head counselor, thought that the young camp director would be perfect for yeshivah administration, and he suggested him for the position in the newly-opened Yeshiva Torah Temima.

Meir Frischman spent the next seven years working at the yeshivah — and then an intriguing offer came his way.

Rabbi Borchardt worked for the Agudah full-time, and running the camp was just a small part of what he did. He was busy with the annual dinner through the spring, and a month after camp he was already immersed in preparations for the convention. But the camp was growing each year and it needed full-time care. And Meir Frischman, again recommended by Rabbi Kaufman, seemed an obvious choice.

At a meeting at Agudah headquarters, Rabbi Moshe Sherer issued a challenge. “It can be a three-month a year job, a four-month a year job, six months, nine months, twelve months, I don’t care. I just want you to give it as much time as it needs to be done right.”

Frischman conceded that it would take the full twelve months.

Rabbi Sherer had another problem though: Meir Frischman had proven himself adept at running the camp, but how could someone with no chinuch background or pedigree assume responsibility for what was, essentially, a chinuch endeavor?

Frischman waved away the question. “Just because someone isn’t an expert swimmer doesn’t mean he can’t hire the right lifeguard.”

Meir Frischman pledged to pass off chinuch to mechanchim while he would worry about logistics and details and facilities — and to know his own limitations. It’s a pledge he’s honored for four decades.

Rabbi Sherer appreciated the wise answer and Camp Agudah and its sister camp, Bnos, had their first full-time director.

Yet Reb Meir inherited a camp with a changing mandate. Mike Tress has established Camp Agudah back in 1957, sacrificing the last of his personal fortune — twenty five thousand dollars worth of stocks — to buy what is still the campsite in Ferndale, New York.

But that was a different time. In the early years, a large percentage of campers came from outside the New York area and this was their first exposure to vibrant Orthodox life. Mike and his staff saw camp as the first step in bringing these boys to yeshivah. There were several counselors who would travel the country during the weeks following camp meeting parents and recruiting the newly-inspired boys to come back to yeshivah in New York.

Tress succeeded, the yeshivah community exploded, and the role of camps changed. There were many other frum camps by the time the Frischman era began, and most of those campers were coming with yeshivah education. Parents, too, were in a position to pay, and suddenly the camps had waiting lists rather than unused bunkhouses.

“That,” says Reb Meir, “is where the Agudah imprint on our name became important. Baruch Hashem, the camp has turned a profit over the years, but we never let it become a business. We still give out $300,000 a year in scholarships. We never lost sight of the goal.”

Calling the Shots

Meir Frischman might not have had a chinuch background, but he would end up changing the standard not just in his camp, but in all the frum camps.

Aside from the introduction of a dedicated Masmidim program, Reb Meir introduced another innovation, says Rabbi Nosson Scherman, well-known educator and general editor of ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications. “For years, the learning groups were given by counselors. They were prepared, they weren’t prepared — it was all very informal. Reb Meir, following the request of his learning director, Rabbi Naftali Basch, introduced the concept using professional rebbeim who were able to keep things relaxed and pleasant, but still deliver actual shiurim. The following summer, all the other camps did the same thing.”

And he treated them like professionals — even the ones who came to camp from nearby bungalow colonies to teach. A friend remembers how Meir was standing in line at Shop-Rite when he noticed the wife of one of these rebbeim buying paper goods. “You’re part of us, of our family. Please don’t buy those. We’ll take care of it.” An hour later, the Camp Agudah driver pulled up at the family’s off-site bungalow and stocked it with paper goods to last the entire summer.

It was a gesture, and it was signature Meir Frischman — his way of ensuring that there would be chinuch within the fun.

In time, campers caught on to his back-room influence. He didn’t often appear behind the microphone or on stage at major events, but they knew who called the shots. And one year when it was decided to shorten camp from nine weeks to eight, the campers weren’t going to let him off the hook so fast. The color war alma mater was a plea, to the tune of Abie Rotenberg’s classic, “Neshome’le”:

“Ruach Country, NO!

We don’t want to go!

We have grown to love each other, and will miss each other so!

To Reb Meir we implore, Camp Agudah we adore

when we come back next year, can we have one week more?

In time, Meir Frischman would form an official group, Association of Jewish Camp Operators, which he’s been chairing for decades. “It was a chance to take what we learned and share it with Klal Yisrael, to help others camps figure out how to be effective.”

Rabbi Pinny Munk shares how his father, Rabbi Eli Munk, was building a new dining room in Camp Munk and he showed a visiting Meir Frischman the site where it was meant to stand. “Eli, this is the most beautiful spot in camp, with a view for miles in either direction. Why ruin it with a building?”

Rabbi Munk explained that the building inspector had insisted that it was the only suitable location. “Let me try to speak to him,” said Meir Frischman. By the next summer, the new dining room stood elsewhere, the beautiful spot at the hill left unhampered. The would-be site became a fenced-in flower patch, a small sign alongside it bearing its name: Frischman Gardens.

What did he tell the inspector? Frischman fans away the question like one of the black flies. “Nothing. It’s about relationships, I’ve been working with these people for so many years, they know that we’re mentshlich, and they return the favor.”

Each summer, for example, Reb Meir takes up a collection between the approximately twenty-five frum camps around Liberty. “Many of the camps — including ours — don’t pay taxes, as they belong to mosdos. So it’s really just a gesture — we put together some money, about two thousand dollars from each camp, and we donate it to the town. They appreciate it. It’s the extra funding they need. You’d never believe that it’s a bunch of frum camps sponsoring the annual Fourth of July fireworks, right?”

During the year, Frischman often comes up to participate in town elections and meetings and he’s well-known in town hall, but he’s a welcome figure around Liberty for another reason too. “Many of the camps bring in plumbers or electricians from New York, but Meir always tries to use local labor,” says a veteran head counselor, “and they appreciate that.”

AJCO isn’t just an association helping frum camp operators find the best prices on propane, or identify the best rafting sites. It’s an informal chevrah, and Reb Meir is it’s dean. His camp is viewed as the mother of frum camps, and his job comes with that responsibility.

“He’s someone who doesn’t consider himself a people’s person, preferring the back office to the stage,” remarks Rabbi Scherman, “yet he’s so adored by so many people. He’s helped everyone in the business at some point.”

“He, together with Rabbi Kaufman, developed an incredible and timeless model for frum camping,” reflects Rabbi Dovid Becker, director of Lakewood’s Camp Yachad. “We, the Agudah alumni — not just me, but several of us who have become camp directors — feel like we’re carrying a torch forward and our camps are very recognizable as following the Agudah way. In Yachad, for example, we may announce, on occasion, “Three minutes remain to lineup for Minchah!”  even though there’s no lineup and we don’t even daven Minchah in camp [it’s a day camp and gets out at 3:00]! It’s a nod to our mesorah — the Ruach Country way. We’ll get comments from parents, former Agudah campers themselves, who are so excited to send their children to a camp that makes them feel like they’re right back home on Upper Ferndale Road.”

Change Catches On

As we walk around the grounds of what’s known in camp colloquial as “Ruach Country,” Meir is all tour guide, pointing out different features and innovations. The backboards on the basketball court covered in wood, for example. “Hunters were coming into camp during the winter to shoot deer. But they also discovered the joys of shooting out the glass, so we had to do this.”

He is more skeptical about the need for beach sand on the volleyball court. “The campers like to play barefoot, but they can’t play on good old Catskills dirt, so we bring in this fancy sand from Long Island.” He’s trying to sound gruff, but you can see he’s excited for the kids to get out there.

Another Frischman novelty are the gazebos that line the grassy lawn. today so much a part of any camp. “We were the first. The kids were learning at picnic tables, and you can imagine what that was like, knees banging, drinks spilling. But we didn’t want them cooped up in formal classrooms either, so we designed gazebos, which are open to the outdoors but still spacious enough for the kids to sit normally and try to learn.”

The very impressive main shul also comes with a story, rooted not in innovation, but timeless Jewish generosity.

“There is a fellow who stays in a nearby bungalow colony and he sometimes davens by us. He comes over to me one day and says, ‘Listen, how can the kids daven like this, sitting on benches and holding siddurim on their laps?’ I told him that there was no room for anything else, and he suggested extending the shul and adding proper tables. I laughed and told him that he was talking about a hundred thousand dollar project, something we had no budget for. He took out his checkbook and wrote me out a check for the full amount.” Meir shakes his head, as if in disbelief. “Later, we needed another fifty to complete the job and he came through with that too.”

In many ways, camp has remained the same: the simple pleasures of a spirited baseball game, a surprise night swim, refreshing watermelon on a hot Shabbos afternoon. Yet under the surface, rules have been rewritten. Nine year old campers are wary of improper touch, every single staff member educated as to proper boundaries.

“Look,” Meir stops walking, “abuse is a real problem and we’ve addressed it.”

He recalls a candid meeting between a group of summer camp operators at which Rabbi Nosson Scherman spoke. “Rabbi Scherman said, ‘If you think it’s not happening in your camp it’s because you haven’t caught them yet.’ We took it seriously. We take it seriously. We have staff members circulating between the bunks all night long. I think that the awareness has been a positive thing. I’m confident that it’s not happening anymore.”

We walk in silence for a few moments when Meir stops suddenly in front of a bunk-house. “Leszek,” he calls to a maintenance worker, “we need a two-by-eight here. This has to be replaced.”

“What?” I look closely, curious what he sees that I don’t. “You won’t notice it,” he grins, “it takes practice. The steps look steady to you, but I see a group of kids running up here and it’s gonna crack. It’s not going to hold.”

Room for Everyone

We stand at the top of a sprawling green carpet, dotted with huts and bunkhouses, sloping gently down toward a glistening lake. A seemingly ancient, unused pool sits placidly adjacent to the lake, a throwback to the golden era of borscht-belt hotels. The soaring backstops of the baseball field stand sentry.

Which spot in this little paradise means the most to him?

Frischman doesn’t hesitate. He leads the way to a new building at the top of the hill: the Masmidim beis medrash is magnificent, spacious, and airy.

“We built this,” he says almost reverently, looking a bit like he’s on the verge of tears. At first I’m flustered, not quite getting the cue to this unexpected display of emotion. “Rabbi Belsky loved this place…”

The beautiful beis medrash was envisioned and designed by Reb Meir and his friend Avrohom Chaim Young, and became the perfect venue for Rabbi Yisroel Belsky z”l to disseminate Torah to his campers in his own unforgettable way. Camp hasn’t started yet, but the loss is searing, painful. “This was his home, surrounded by his beloved masmidim, learning, schmoozing — he was never happier….”

Rabbi Belsky, who ran the separate Masmidim program with his legendary innovative methods of bringing Torah and halachah alive — including shechitah demonstrations and star-gazing walks for lessons in astronomy — was a fixture in camp for years, but he was in good company.

The previous Novominsker Rebbe, Rav Nochum Mordechai Perlow, was staying in a bungalow right next to the camp, and Agudah campers would bring over meals and generally try to find ways to be helpful. Before returning to the city, the Rebbe agreed to be driven through the camp so that he could bid the boys farewell, a way of thanking them.

“Yanky Borchardt pulled in, with the Rebbe in the front seat,” Frischman remembers. “There were boys lining the long road, and the Rebbe seemed to look at each one, a bittersweet expression on his face. The atmosphere was so elevated; the kids felt it too.”

Then, the car pulled out of camp and turned onto the main road. Two weeks later, the Novominsker Rebbe left This World.

“And I know the boys never forgot that moment. I certainly didn’t.”

Determined to give them such opportunities, Meir jumped when the chance presented itself the next year. Rav Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman, the Baltimore rosh yeshivah, had lost his wife and his talmidim thought he could benefit from a change of scenery.

The camp didn’t yet have suitable “gadol” accommodations and Rebbetzin Teitelbaum — the wife of the camp’s rav — graciously gave up her own for the visiting rosh yeshivah.

For two weeks, campers reveled in the presence of the Rosh Yeshivah, watching him as he contentedly walked the attractive grounds, the more capable ones speaking with him in learning. The Rosh Yeshivah was as invigorated by the sight of Yiddishe kinderlach enjoying themselves as by the fresh mountain air.

By the following summer, proper accommodations were in place — a brand new guestroom especially constructed for the purpose of hosting gedolim. Rav Ruderman accepted an invitation to return. But Rav Mordechai Gifter also accepted an invitation to spend some time in camp, and he was slated to arrive a few days after Rav Ruderman would leave.

On the Friday before Rav Ruderman was to return home, he received a distinguished visitor — his cousin, Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky. Reb Meir recalls a frantic messenger hurrying toward him: Rav Yaakov wanted to speak with him.

He laughs. “My biggest concern was where I was going to find my hat and jacket in middle of the day, but I figured it out and ran over to the small house.”

“Ich halt,” Rav Yaakov told the director, “az di Baltimorer rosh yeshivah darf bleiben.. I think that the Rosh Yeshivah should stay here for another two weeks.”

“Even as I was nodding, saying sure, my mind was racing. Rav Gifter was scheduled to come soon and there was no room for both gedolim.”

Rav Yaakov noticed that Meir appeared anxious, and he probed. Reb Meir explained the problem, and Rav Yaakov smiled and indicated the small sitting room adjoining the bedroom. “It’s no problem,” he said, “there are two rooms.”

With barely two days to make the renovations, Reb Meir and his staff got to work. “The Capitol Hotel in Lakewood was getting rid of small kitchenettes, so we got a unit and had it brought up. We made a separate entrance for the second room and put in beds — and it was ready when Rav Gifter and his rebbetzin arrived.

Images of the two roshei yeshivah walking about the camp grounds with arms linked became an indelible part of the Camp Agudah brand, creating a new tradition for a part of each summer at the camp.

“The trick isn’t the meals or accommodations— that’s the easy part — and it’s not the golf cart to drive them to shul. It’s letting the gedolim relax. We have real security, tens of bochurim learning near the guestrooms, making sure that no one bothers them, that the roshei yeshivah don’t become tourist attractions. We try to make sure that when they’re here, they can just be.”

Five Days

Constructing new gedolim facilities in two days was tough, but it was a happy challenge. Ten years ago, Meir faced a much more daunting test, and it called for every ounce of resilience. It was, according to Agudah staffers, Reb Meir’s finest hour.

That summer, I drove up to the camp for an interview with Meir, the incident so fresh that you could still smell smoke. Now, a decade later, we stand against the backdrop of the new buildings and facilities that sprung up in its wake, but I have the sense that Meir still smells the smoke.

The huge fire ripped through the grounds of the camp just days before the 2006 season was to begin, destroying the kitchen, dining hall, main building, Masmidim beis medrash and office, and causing damage to the old shul. With Hashem’s help, there was just a single injury (to a staff member who jumped from the burning building and had a long road to recovery) but it was clear to most people that camp would have to be cancelled for the season. Or at least delayed.

But Meir Frischman never got such a memo.

He was too busy transporting trailers to house the families whose homes had been burned down, setting up new electrical transformers to power the camp, reinstalling the plumbing, ensuring that there would be propane and electricity for the make-shift dining room. It was a job that should have taken months.

But the local utility companies wanted to help Meir Frischman — he’d been a good neighbor to them for so long — and they cut through the red tape. Workers logged extraordinary hours, staff members forgot about meals and sleep, and a new season dawned.

Frischman stewarded the camp through that summer, creating permanent memories in temporary buildings, then oversaw the design and construction of brand new facilities for the summer of 2007.

Feel The Magic

The camp is still growing, still expanding, yet Meir Frischman is retiring after four decades at the helm.

Not because he feels burnt out, and he offers no clichés about “spending more time with the family.”

He’s going, he says, because he prefers to leave on a high, while he’s still productive. He’ll do this summer, then be there as a consultant next summer, G-d willing. After that? Who knows?

“Agudah has a great senior staff in place,” Frischman says. “Bnos has amazing people ready to step up. They’ll run things well, I’m sure of it, and I’m proud to be going this way.”

He stops talking and fills up a water bottle from the tap, a sample for the Department of Health, who will test it’s cleanliness before giving the green light for another season to start at Camp Agudah.

He climbs into his Honda Pilot, the license plate reading “MEIR”, and waves. There is no soundtrack, but there is a song playing in the soft rustle of leaves, the distant coos of ducks down at the lake.

Bittersweet emotions well up inside of me, weaving patterns traced with memories!

My heart cries out — oh! Please don’t go, just stay right here with me….

Feel the magic called Ruach Country!

Against All Odds

When the phone rang in my house at 5:05 am on Thursday, my father knew it couldn’t be good. It was Meir on the line. “There’s been a fire at camp,” Meir said, his voice conveying a sense of urgency.

“The main building is gone, and a staff member has been badly hurt leaping off a high ledge to safety. I’m heading up now. Can you rush to Westchester Hospital to be with him and direct his care until his family gets there?” Of course, Meir’s first thought was to make sure his cherished staff would be taken care of in the best possible way.

I finally made it up to Ferndale: the sight was heartbreaking. The iconic main building, the elegant structure that housed decades of magical memories, along with the dining room, kitchen, office, and staff housing were all reduced to rubble. And camp was to start in five days.

Meir arrived in camp, gave each member of his staff a hug, rolled up his sleeves and got to work. The scene was overwhelming and as the news spread to a shocked community of Camp Agudah families around the country, it was clear that summer itself was in jeopardy. It was simply impossible to even imagine that the camp would open. It would take months to clear the site and rebuild. To construct a commercial kitchen alone involves months of planning, ordering, and then the actual work. Installing electricity, gas lines, and getting necessary permits? Forget it. Stunned campers were devastated as they woke up to the news, dreams of a Ruach Country summer shattered. It would never happen, was the consensus. No one could even dream of a viable plan.

No one but Meir.

Not even stopping a moment to listen, our leader sprung into action: if there was anyone in the world who could pull off the impossible, it was the man facing possibly the greatest challenge any camp director has ever encountered. The next ten days defied belief.

Meir, his trademark warmth, efficiency and calm on full display, set the tone and immediately began making miracles. He walked around armed with boundless siyata d’Shmaya — a sense he conveyed to us. With help from dozens of contractors, public officials, and just about everyone who could possibly play a role, work began on the charred site. Within a day and a half, the rubble was cleared and the area freshly paved. Excavators worked at a frenetic pace, carting load after load of debris, filling a 20,000 square foot hole and paving it.

Meanwhile, a large tent, air conditioning units, ten mobile homes and an office trailer were dispatched, headed down Route 17 towards Ferndale. Trucks pulled up directly to the lake and unloaded hundreds — if not thousands — of pieces of commercial kitchen equipment for tvilas keilim, a process that took three full days. With enough acts of hashgacha pratis to fill a book, the impossible came to be and hundreds of ecstatic campers poured out of the buses and into Ruach Country a mere five days late.

The campers and staff members who were there that summer of 2006 will tell you there was something magical about that season, a summer they will never, ever forget. It represented the work of a director whose dedication and devotion to the campers and staff of the camp he loved knew no limits, a director whose vision, leadership, and determination will always be the real secret to the magic of Ruach Country. Truly, it was his finest hour.

–Rabbi Dovid Becker

Dovid Becker, LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Lakewood and a long-time Camp Agudah alumnus. He serves as Director of Camp YACHAD.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 710)