Shavua Bogrim is a week long specialty program for our Bogrim campers (entering 9th grade). We invite professionals who have unique skill sets to lead intensives that incorporate Jewish content into really cool experiences. This summer Bogrim campers built an innovative set of benches with Jacob Shapiro (Nivo ’98), cooked up an international storm of Jewish food with Tamar Cytryn, got fit with A.J. Rosenberg (Nivo ’03), became outdoorsmen/women with Josh Lake, created escape rooms for their friends with Brandi Cohen Argentar (Nivo ’93) and learned how to write observational prose with Deanna Neil (Nivo ’97). Below is an excerpt from an observation about the week by Lena, a Bogrim camper.
We met with Deanna Neil in the Seminar Center, which is near the guesthouse. She has written some children’s books so it was cool to learn with her. Throughout the week we met for about three hours a day and learned how to write a detailed and in depth observation of a familiar place in camp. From these observations we were able to see the area in a new way. We also learned about different narratives by taking a couple sentences about how we felt and changed it from first person narrative to either second or third person narrative. When we changed the narrative we were also encouraged to use our imagination and change the plot of the story. I really liked the dialogue game [using tableaux to invent conversation] because it taught us how to express things through dialogue. Creative writing was not my first choice for Shavua Bogrim, but after the first day I really enjoyed it and couldn’t wait to come back.
