Families across the continent can sing, dance, and celebrate the magic of summer camp with JCC Camps of North America’s Flagpole, a community-wide rally of solidarity and song launched with funding from The Staenberg Family Foundation

The four-week series began on May 13 and 20, and continues on May 27 and June 3 at 8pm, and will stream via Facebook Live on the Jewish Community Centers of North America Facebook page.

Rick Recht, a renowned Jewish artist who has made many visits to Harrisburg, will host the interactive and music-filled Flagpole series that will prominently feature leaders, clergy, and JCC camp families from coast to coast. Guests will share inspiring stories and news from their own communities. The use of “Flagpole” in the series’ title comes from the Jewish summer camp ritual of gathering around the flagpole daily to sing, make announcements, and raise or lower the flags.  

“COVID-19 will make the summer camp season more complicated this year, but so much of the magic of Jewish summer camp is in the relationships between our kids, their staff, and camp’s amazing traditions. So, we’re finding ways to give life to those traditions in other ways,” said Doron Krakow, president and CEO of JCC Association of North America. 

Recht has 12-top selling Jewish albums, including his latest, Here I Am and is the national music spokesman for PJ Library and producer of PJ Library Radio.

“I’ve never experienced such an extreme level of interaction and engagement as I am seeing with Facebook Live community gatherings,” Recht said. “Not only are people attending in unprecedented numbers, but the sentiments they share during the shows about community, gratitude, and hope are absolutely profound and heartwarming.” 

Lori Rubin, the new director of the Harrisburg JCC Summer Camp, says that the camp team is excited to share this programming with the JCC family. “At this time of uncertainty, we can all use a blast of hope,” she said. “Every time I hear Rick Recht sing, he brings a sense of community, of compassion, and of a vision for the future.  That is what we need now - a shared hopeful vision of a wonderful future that lies ahead.”