Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps by Jonathan B. Krasner, Sarah Bunin Benor, and Sharon Avni (review)

"First we'll meet in the chadar ochel [cafeteria] for a peulah [activity], and then in the tsrif [bunk] for a little nikayon [clean-up]." This fabricated summer camp announcement might seem strange to those who never attended a "Hebrew-rich" Jewish summer camp in the United States. But in the new book Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps, authors Sarah Bunin Benor, Jonathan Krasner, and Sharon Avni trace the origins of and contemporary engagements with this exact kind of language, demonstrating how "camp staff members incorporate elements of Hebrew into the primarily English-speaking environment." Describing how camps both past and present foster what they term "Hebrew infusion," the authors also illuminate a linguistic phenomenon they call "Camp Hebraized English" (CHE), a "register of Jewish American English" that includes "Jewish life words" and "camp words," most (but not all) of which are nouns. (1)

The book's greatest strengths lay in its multidisciplinary perspective, afforded by the backgrounds of its authors: with the expertise of Jewish education historian Krasner, the first section of the book offers a deep dive into the history of Hebrew education in camps, while the second section highlights both Bunin Benor and Avni's backgrounds as linguists, expertly explaining CHE as a sociolinguistic phenomenon. The first chapter traces how Jewish culture camps of the past came to adopt Hebrew-infusion practices, using the Reform movement as a case study. Chapter 2 centers on the "rise and fall" of HaNoar HaIvri's Hebrew-immersive Camp Massad, while chapter 3 focuses on the Ramah summer camp's "outsized role" in setting Hebrew trends in Jewish camping. Contrasting the history of Mas-sad's Hebrew immersion with Ramah's transition from immersion towards infusion illustrates one of the book's key arguments, that "Hebrew infusion … ultimately responded better to the historical and cultural context, not to mention the enculturation goals" of camps than full immersion (14), and that Hebrew infusion reflected the belief that "American Jews should love Hebrew, feel personally attached to it, and use fragments of it in their English-speaking communities." (249)

Based on observations at 36 camps conducted between 2012 and 2015, interviews with campers and staff, as well as a circulated survey of 103 Jewish camps in North America, the next 5 chapters address Hebrew at camps today. Chapter 4 takes readers through a "day in the life" of Hebrew-infused practices at camps representing three different ideologies, while the fifth chapter goes deep into camps' language infusion practices, grounding their "Hebrew-English hybridity in theories of translanguaging" and showing how camps "socialize campers" to become "part of a metalinguistic community of Jews who value Hebrew." Chapter 6 tackles camps' visual displays of Hebrew, while chapter 7 examines the connections camps make between Hebrew and Israel in large part through their uses of "schlichim (Israeli emissaries) who are often tasked with 'bringing Israel to camp.'" The eighth chapter explains "conflicting stances surrounding Hebrew infusion" among educators and stakeholders, including questions regarding "how much Hebrew to use and whether to translate." These questions, the authors explain, are simultaneously "ideological and practical, as camps deal with their existential need to fill beds." (15)

For readers who attended a "Hebrew-rich" Jewish summer camp anytime in the last few decades, examples of CHE in action will provide knowing smiles and few surprises. And yet even the most familiar reader stands to learn from the authors' analyses of how camps have both changed and not changed over time, and from how the lens of sociolinguistics sheds light on the matter. Utilizing the theory of "translanguaging," for instance, which defines what "some see as mixing two languages" as "simply speaking," the authors usefully subvert "concepts that have underpinned language education for years...