Camp Nah-Jee-Wah

Camp Nah-Jee-Wah is a Jewish sleep away camp for children entering 1st-6th grade, and strives to provide a nurturing, caring, supportive environment all campers need. It’s a part of Round Lake Camp and Cedar Lake Camp.

They offer a wide variety of age-appropriate activities that are supervised by highly qualified specialists and coaches. Their athletic program offers children individualized skill instruction as well as inter-camp tournament play.

The waterfront boasts both a full pool and lake program with fun water elements. Campers choose from a vast offering of water activities on the private 15 acre lake, including banana boat rides, three lake elements, and a variety of boating options. In addition, they can participate in canoe day trips on the Delaware River. Each of these ensures active participation and fun for every camper, while making certain that safety is the first priority.

Instructional and recreational swim are offered daily at the pool complex which also houses a beach volleyball court, the one-of-a-kind Tire Playground, and a Ga-Ga pit.

Their arts programs, in partnership with the 92nd St Y, offers campers general arts and crafts plus a variety of specialized options including wood shop, ceramics, and painting and drawing.

Take science out of the classroom and into the outdoors at the Dr. Lynne B Harrison Science Center’s STEM summer camp program. The Center’s varied program includes robotics, giving campers the opportunity to use intuitive programming software to command robots. All sciences are led by industry professional and are provided through various partnerships with both domestic and Israeli institutions.

Their ropes challenge courses include both low and high elements. Their Total Specialty Camps program offer a concentrated experience in one of 17 different programs in sports, arts, or sciences. In addition, they offer horseback riding lessons catered to both first time and more experienced riders.

A new and unusual (for now) feature of the camp is mental health therapy, led by Heather Klein, the mental-health coordinator for a network of sleep-away camps at at NJY Camps, a network of Jewish overnight camps in Pennsylvania. A familiar face at NJY, where she has served in various capacities for 15 years, she now focuses year-round on mental-health issues for the network, a position funded by the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

Ms. Klein did not love camp as a child. She remembers sitting, alone and miserable, on the porch of her bunk; if the staff sought her out to comfort her, she has forgotten it.

She persuaded her parents to bring her home early, but she felt, for years after that, that she had fallen short.

This is what she wants to prevent, she said. “I often tell parents whose kids are struggling, if they quit, they will feel like failures, and we don’t want them to feel that way,” she said.

She tries to convey to the children that sadness is transient, that it can exist alongside happiness, “that it’s OK to have two feelings at the same time.”