Hebrew camp moves to Potomac from Silver Spring

Program meets growing demand for language immersion

Raizen, who grew up in Israel, said it was important for her daughter, Ginger Burrows, 9, to converse in the language. While Burrows takes lessons at her school — the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville — Raizen said she wanted to strengthen her daughter’s conversational Hebrew.

Raizen discovered Sabra, a Hebrew immersion summer day camp, through recommendations from her friends. Activities at the camp — swimming, singing, dancing and sports — are conducted in Hebrew. ‘‘She just loved it so much she wanted to keep coming back,” Raizen said.

Her daughter’s attitude toward the language became more positive when she was able to use it in a fun environment, she said.

The camp, previously located in Silver Spring, is moving to Har Shalom in Potomac — in part because of increased demand from parents in the Potomac and Rockville areas, camp directors say.

‘‘There’s a very large population of people there who are from Israel, or who send their kids to Jewish day schools or synagogue schools,” said Chani Parness, a camp director.

Immersion is becoming a popular way for children learn the language, Parness said. ‘‘You’re living the language, you’re not just learning nouns and verbs,” Parness said.

Children ask for food, sing songs and learn sports commands in Hebrew. And because they are introduced to the language at an early age, campers are more likely to be successful, Parness said.

The camp began in 2004 as a spin-off of a master’s thesis written by Dorit Schwartz, a teacher and immigrant from Israel who was earning her masters degree in education at George Washington University.

When she turned in a thesis discussing the benefits of a Hebrew immersion summer day camp, Schwartz’s professor challenged her to turn the idea into reality.

It began with 29 campers, and grew fast. The camp hosted about 80 campers in the summer of 2007. Sabra outgrew its previous facility at Congregation Har Tzeon in Silver Spring.

The camp serves children in grades kindergarten through six, and older children can attend the camp as counselors-in-training. It also draws several of its counselors from Israel.

‘‘If you can’t take kids to Israel, the best way is to bring it to them,” said Schwartz, a camp director. Many children at the camp take Hebrew lessons during the school year; however, about 25 percent of the children who attend the camp have little or no familiarity with the language.

‘‘It takes a day or two to get used to,” Parness said. ‘‘They hear it first in Hebrew, and then if they don’t understand, someone will explain it, usually another child.”

Rockville resident Heinan Landa, who grew up in Israel and has family in the country, as well as Hebrew-speaking family in the area, said the camp was a good fit for his two children. ‘‘I was wondering how I could get my kids to speak Hebrew, and this really was an answer to many years of quandary that I had,” Landa said.

The camp was also a way for his children to forge a sense of community with other Jewish youth, Landa said.

‘‘We’re like a family,” Schwartz said. ‘‘We get to know each child extremely well ... there is a lot of love in this camp.”