Queer camp counselor was told not to come back. So they opened their own camp.

Shira Berkowitz loved being a counselor at an overnight summer camp in Minnesota. In 2007, Berkowitz, then 22, was primed to become the program director for ninth-graders, but then a message arrived: Please don’t come back to camp. Staff at the camp, which Berkowitz requested not be named, “would say inappropriate things about my sexuality, and question whether it was right that I would be in the same cabin of same-sex kids,” said Berkowitz, who identifies as queer. Parents also voiced concern about Berkowitz’s gender identity and sexuality, and Berkowitz believes the controversy led the camp to ask them not to return the following summer. While the incident was profoundly upsetting, Berkowitz, having grown up attending and appreciating Jewish summer camps, decided to give camp another go. They went on to work at another Jewish overnight program in Rocky Mount, Mo. Berkowitz described the camp as “a very accepting place to be, but it was also very isolating to be one of the only queer people at camp.”