An Ode to the Israeli Summer Camp Sexpot: Netflix's Wet Hot American Summer Shows of the Shiksas of Summer
I am not, as one may say, a camp person. I mean, obviously I went to summer camp—I was raised as a middle-class Jew in late 20th century America (and in that vein, you might as well question whether or not I breathe air or eat food, too). But I never exactly lived it as it seemed like so many of my bunkmates did.
Most year before sleepaway camp began, I’d pack my splintery wooden trunk without putting up too much of a fight, but I wasn’t exactly counting down the days until the first session began. Camp was fine and pretty much everyone there was perfectly nice, but the entire construct of it was inherently antithetical to my many childhood and adolescent peculiarities: my discomfort with having others in my private space; my hatred for structured activities; my deep ambivalence toward the things that the other inmates (a term my mother strongly suggested I stop using in my infrequent letters home) seemed not to question, like the bonding nature of group bathroom excursions, or the genius of the band Phish, or the ultimate morality of Zionist thought in a post-colonial world.