by joe eskenazi
staff writer
A local group’s efforts to keep Camp Swig a Jewish institution appears to have run aground a day late — and $1 million short.
A band of concerned former Swig campers calling themselves HaMakom (in Hebrew, “the Place”) recently offered the Union of Reform Judaism $5 million for the Saratoga camp, which has sat dormant for the past four years. The bid came thanks to a generous donor who remains anonymous.
But the URJ subsequently received a $6 million offer on the 185-acre site from an undisclosed source that the URJ said is not a Jewish organization. As of j.’s Nov. 28 press time, HaMakom was desperately scrambling to make up the difference by the, Nov. 30 deadline imposed by the URJ.
“We’re actively trying to find a way to make it work,” said HaMakom’s Scott Guggenheim. “We have meetings with different folks.”
If the local group can’t raise the additional $1 million, the URJ said it will accept the higher offer from the non-Jewish organization.
Emily Grotta, a spokeswoman for the URJ in New York, said HaMakom — or any other Jewish organization — would not be receiving any preferential treatment.
“It’s a question of accepting an offer. What we have been saying all along is this is a cash deal. We’re not doing a second mortgage on the place. We need cash,” she said.
“Our fiduciary responsibility is to make sure we have a good price for the property. [HaMakom] will not be able to pay us less money.”
Rabbi Daniel Freelander, the URJ vice president overseeing all youth programs, camping and education matters, said he would prefer to sell to a Jewish group — but not at a financial loss.
Grotta said the money brought from a sale of Camp Swig would go back into the URJ’s camps program. Young Jews who would have attended Swig in years past now have the option of going to Santa Rosa’s Camp Newman or Seattle’s Camp Kalsman.
A number of factors, most notably a mounting need for repairs to the aging camp, led to Swig’s closure. Since the vast majority of the camp’s land sits atop the San Andreas Fault, it is unclear what other kind of development could be undertaken on the site.
The Jewish community’s possible loss of the camp was taken hard by HaMakom’s supporters.
Joel Swedlove, a 20-year-old resident of Fullerton, has been writing letters and making phone calls on behalf of the Jewish group.
“My parents met at Camp Swig, and now my kids won’t be able to go there.
“It’s not that Newman isn’t a great place because it is,” he continued. “But there are many things about Camp Swig that are intangible, and they won’t belong to the Jewish world anymore.”
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California