Thanks to Devadeva Mirel for this guest post recounting her two and a half weeks surviving the mean girls and the dining hall food as a Jewish camper. Check out her blog and jam company Sabjimata Jam here.

My first time away from home (and in a setting without wall to wall carpet, mind you) was not one full of fond memories. It was the summer between fifth grade and puberty. My parents drove me into “The City” where I, along with the other suburban campers, rode the train from Grand Central Station to Albany. We then all climbed into a camp van which drove us even further away from home, to Young Judea’s “Tranquility Camp.”

My memories of camp are the stuff of ‘tween dramas: bodily insecurity, cruel cliques, and undergrad counselors with bandeaux tops, visible tan lines and a surprising disinterest in anything having to do with canoes or lanyards. For those two and a half weeks of my life, I felt the dull isolation of being disconnected from my friends, family and the soft cotton blankets at home.

Meal times were another source of displeasure. Comfort food for me had always meant onion bagels and Lay’s potato chips. Now comfort food basically meant anything that wasn’t beets from the dining hall. My camp had a policy where campers had to at least taste everything – a scary prospect for me. “Try it, you’ll like it” never sounded more cruel.

Following in the kibbutz tradition, the entire camp’s dinner depended partly on camper labor. In the morning we shucked corn, our socks cold and wet with dew as we breathed out our body’s warmth into the chilly mountain air. My arms were thin and weak. At home I was not even allowed to pour myself a glass of soda and here I was, with the rest of the skinny pre-pubescent girls in my bunk, trying to tear the husk away from countless ears of corn.

If it had really been a ‘tween drama, we girls would have banded together to overthrow our boy crazy, lanyard-adverse counselor. In the made-for-tv version of the drama, we girls would have thrown our arms around one another and felt some sense of Jewish unity, some feeling of pride in our work. We would have felt more kibbutz than gulag, which when I looked around at my fellow campers’ teary eyes and red, stinging hands, seemed to best describe our common experience. On the other hand, it was always clear that despite our labor we were the campers – we were there to be shown a good enough time that we’d want to come back the following year.

Then one evening, my bunk arrived at the meal hall early. We waited outside until it was time to move indoors, kicking stones and jumping down steps. Inside, the hired wait staff was eating their meal. They were not in any rush – just eating at a leisurely pace. There was no indication that they were about to start a work shift, or really any indication that they were “workers.” They just looked like regular, happy folks enjoying their beets.

The normal-ness of the scene appeared odd to my sheltered ‘tween mind. I asked my counselor to explain. Adjusting her bandeaux top, she told me that in Jewish tradition, it was customary for servers to eat first. With a full belly and their needs met, they could then work happily and without anxiety. They ate the same meal we did, she explained, just at a different time.

Looking back, I am curious about where the Jewish tradition of servers eating first stems from. (Anyone have any leads?) At the time, however, I did not question her explanation – it simply made sense. The wait staff would serve us without envy and we would eat, perhaps ironically (this was a Jewish summer camp after all) without guilt.