30-year-old Manhattan native Josh Ostrovsky, AKA The Fat Jew, is a thrice-kicked-out-of-college performance artist with 1.3 million followers on Instagram. He’s what your parents might call a meshuggeneh—but a very rich one. The 6-foot-2 humorist, known for his vertical ponytail and absurd public antics, gained mainstream notoriety last summer when a video of him leading a group of homeless people in a Citi Bike ‘Soul Cycle’ class went viral.

Only in America can The Fat Jew be everything that The Fat Jew is: over-indulgent and borderline-psychotic, but with an original, twisted wit that has companies like Virgin Mobile paying him big bucks to sit in a bath of ramen noodles. With an “anti-how-to” book in the works and scripted shows sold to both Comedy Central and Amazon, The Fat Jew is more than just an Instagram sensation—he’s the CEO of an ironic personality cult based on utter insanity.

We met at the DMV on 34^th st and 9^th ave, where Ostrovsky takes meetings and “gets things done” thanks to the roomy seating and arctic air-conditioning (and also because he can scream on the phone about anything). Post-interview, I got him to do some killer yoga poses outside Penn Station, where we breathed in the glorious fumes of passing buses and a halal cart.

What’s a day in the life of the Fat Jew?

I wake up, sometimes in my bed, sometimes face down in Queens. I don’t know how—sometimes I just end up in Queens. I’m like, where I am? Oh yeah, in fucking Queens. Cause like, how did you get to Queens? I can imagine how I got to Brooklyn, but how did I get to Queens? I basically avoid doing adult shit at all times.

What about when you have to pay your bills? Do you sit down and do that?

No, I have an intern. Chu Chu, my bisexual Filipino intern. He goes to the New School and gets college credit for this. I sign some paper and write him a performance review.

I spend most of the day just thinking of awesome shit to do. Now I have a book deal, so I’m doing that. It used to be that just Virgin Mobile would pay me to fill a Jacuzzi up with ramen and sit in it.

How did it get to the point where Virgin Mobile wanted to pay you to sit in a ramen Jacuzzi?

Because brands are just into crazy shit now, because the kids are into that. There’s so much shit on the Internet; nothing is ever crazy enough. At this point I have a loyal following of runaways, weirdos, and goths.

You’re like their god.

Totally. A brand will say: “You have a big following of gothic Hispanic millenials, which is a demographic we really would love to try to target,” and then they’ll just pay me to do some shit. At this point, they don’t even care; I can pretty much do whatever I want. If I want to fill a hot tub with gazpacho, that’s fine—if I want to rent a Ferrari and throw a cheetah in it for no reason, down—they don’t care.

Does that surprise you?

Yeah, it wasn’t always this way. Even five years ago they didn’t really get it, now they do.

Well, now you’ve built yourself up to the point where people besides freaks know you.

Totally. It’s not all just goth Dominican teens. Now there are moms and dads.

And you must have all the Jewish girls on your shit thinking you’ll be their big Jewish baby daddy.

Yes—I’ve got Rachels and Laurens for miles. I’m the Magellan of Rachels. I also have a lot of Liats and Yaels; got it all.

And now you have a book deal. Cha-ching.

Yeah, so now I’m getting paid to basically write, so I’m trying to develop my methods. I’ll light a bunch of scented candles and sit naked and work on my book.

It’s basically going to be the anti “how-to” book. I’ll tell you what you shouldn’t be doing; you shouldn’t use a Doritos bag as a condom with a rubber band—it’s not going to work to prevent pregnancy. I’m like the fuck-up older brother you wish you had who could have told you what not to do. If you wouldn’t have done it, your life would have been amazing. I’ve professionally made bad decisions; so learn from that.

Did the book people contact you?

A bunch of people reached out and said I should probably be writing some of this shit down. At this point there’s so much ridiculous shit, and the world needs to see this. I’m basically the new James Joyce.

You sound like Kanye right now.

Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. He’s like, ‘I’m the new Shakespeare meets Steve Jobs meets Hilary Clinton,’ which is a dope thing to say. Like, what? But me, I’m basically the new Shel Silverstein—who by the way, my mom fucked.

No way.

Swear to god. In like, 1970.

What’s the deal with your TV show?

I sold a show to Comedy Central. It’s basically about what you’re asking me about. When you take a piece of social media and the end result is me in a nacho cheese fountain with Tyrese—how did I get there?

And sometimes the process leading up to that is not that hilarious—it’s kind of dark—it has a Louie element to it. Sometimes it’s fucking weird. Basically when you’re of the Internet and you don’t do one thing in particular—like, I’m not solely an actor or a writer—you can kind of do anything. Stella Artois just flew me to Cannes to pour rosé on myself and stand around.

So everyone was just super rich and doing crazy shit?

It was just so ridiculous. These Saudi dudes found me and were just like ‘we want to be around him!’ and inducted me into their entourage. I ended up on a yacht party with them, and they told me to come to the back room. So I assumed it was going to be a room full of gold bullion and missiles, and whatever they do in Saudi Arabia, and there was just a live ostrich, and they said, ‘look at it.’ You couldn’t even touch it; they just wanted people to look at it.

Did you always think you’d be famous for just being you?

Yes, sort of. I felt like it would come around. This is still relatively a new thing. Even 10 years ago, to be famous, you had to be on a reality TV show.

Instagram has really skyrocketed your fame.

Initially I thought Instagram was the wrong medium for me, because it has so many rules. I got kicked off three times, and the last time I protested outside their offices and chained myself up. And then I was like, maybe this isn’t right for me—I can’t put up my crazy photos. But then I realized that toning it down a little bit was opening me up to a more mainstream audience. I just can’t put up photos of birthday candles jammed into somebody’s dick hole, lit. That’s won’t fly, but I can still put up kinda crazy shit. Crazy enough for most people.

When you put up tweets from certain celebrities—are they real?

A lot of the tweets are fake. I had some 16-year-old build a program that generates super-authentic looking tweets. Some of the celebrities who I’ve made fake tweets for have come up to me and said they were ridiculously awesome. Like Snoop. He said, “Yo, I’ve seen some of your fake tweets, and I wish I was tweeting that stuff.” There were a couple he wasn’t feeling, but he was much more up on it than I thought.

Now that I’m writing a book, everything is just for inspiration. I’ll put up on Twitter, “If you’re under 20, and Puerto Rican and want to go boogie boarding today, meet me at the beach.” And 12 kids will show up, and we’ll just chill. And that could be inspiration for a chapter. I also do some serious stuff; I run a soup kitchen in Brooklyn.

Are you serious?

No I’m just kidding. Come on; stop. I mean someone should do that, but not me. Also, my dog has a popular Instagram. I’m running a full-scale business of insanity. A sex toy company in Belgium recently hit me up and asked me to be the face of their company; they said I could have a custom toy. Last year we released 1,000 shirts to homeless guys with my face on it. My mom, in her old Jewish woman accent said, “I think I just saw a homeless man in a shirt with your face on it.”

Were your parents really chill growing up?

No, they were uptight doctors. Then they retired and moved to Santa Fe and got so weird. They’re all leather bracelet, bolo ties, denim, and cowboy boots.

I think they’re swingers. They’ll smoke a quarter of a joint, walk the dog for two hours; they’re very Santa Fe. There’s a lot of Jews there. It’s kind of like pre-Boca. My parents retired when they were 50. You go to Santa Fe to tide you over for 20 years. Ten years ago my dad was wearing sensible Rockports and doctors gadgets.

Do you think that has to do with you being so openly insane?

I think it helps. But he’s fucking Russian, like for real. The idea for him, that what I do can be something someone does for a living—for him it was literally like, ‘I don’t even know what you’re saying, what are you trying to do?’

And then one day—I used to be in a rap group called Team Facelift, and we laid a lot of groundwork for shit that people do now, like Riff Raff and Odd Future, we rapped with transvestites, we were on MTV a whole bunch of times. We did all these spots for The Hills, and after that, a check came to my house. I was out all night at a rave, and he opened the check, and it was a Fed Ex thing for $15,000. And I think at that moment he realized I wasn’t just a psycho.

I’m sort of being taken seriously, and sort of not, and it’s so fucking weird, everyday. And that’s all I ever wanted. I wanted everyday to be different. And every day is massively different—except that bowl of cereal in the morning.

You have to have some daily rituals.

I smoke cigarettes a lot. So that happens everyday. The writing is going to be a bit more foreign. They’re going to give me an advance check, and I’m renting an office building in Detroit. Fifteen stories, completely abandoned, but with all the shit in it—dazzling—for $8,000 a month. I’m going to do it for three months. One floor to write my book, and others to do whatever I want. I’m going to turn it into a factory of fucking insanity. I’m going to have a whole floor of garbage, sand, kiddie pools, nectarines… It’s sort of a twist on people renting a cottage in Montauk to write their book; I’m getting an office building in Detroit, because why the fuck not?

What’s the best thing about being Jewish?

Jewish summer camp. There are basically no Jews who don’t go to camp. I learned every single thing I know at Jew camp. I haven’t learned one thing since the day Jew camp ended. How to unhook a bra with your teeth, how to do a roundhouse, how to jerk off on your top bunk so silently and with so little motion that they guy doesn’t wake up on the bottom. I was so Jew camp scene; I went to Eisner Camp.

And your name was inspired from a counselor at camp, right?

Yes, him and this famous pornographer, NYC legend, Al Goldstein. Him and that dude were my inspiration. They were just fat, loud Jews who gave no fucks. Like ‘most people are gonna hate me, but I’m going to do whatever I want.’

What’s the worst part about being a Jew?

Having a dick that looks like a rock shrimp. Also being an old Jew. If you’re an old Christian dude, you can get old, get a motorcycle, and still do killer shit. But the older you get as a Jew, the more you’re just in bad shape. All you talk about is the humidity and how expensive New York is. You just can’t help yourself. As much as I know that I don’t want to be like that, it’s in the genes. Can’t escape it. My parents are always taking about the weather. So not looking forward to that.

I think being an older Jewish woman is cooler. But I’m not down with the chunky-funky necklace Jewish mom jewelry scene. My mom will wear a chunky necklace that looks like it’s made out of found garbage, and it’s like $8,000 from some Dutch artist. It literally looks like trash. So Santa Fe.

What would be your pre-electric chair meal?

I’d want an oil drum full of chopped liver, and cigarettes. If I could chain smoke and be eating chopped liver—kill me; take me now. If I had one more option, I’d probably have a Chilean seabass in a wasabi reduction with a saffron risotto. And a nice vintage Shiraz with hints of leather, oak, and fruit. I’m super tasteful.

http://youtu.be/24jiCZpdNZI

(Images by the author)

The post Spotlight On: The Fat Jew, AKA Josh Ostrovsky appeared first on Jewcy.

In a new commercial for HelloFlo—a service that sends you monthly packages filled with tampons and pads and candy (oh my!)—a sassy girl at camp is the first to get her period. She proceeds to take on the role of Camp Gyno, teaching the other girls about their periods as each receives her “red badge of courage.”

Our protagonist is quite bossy (“I’m like a counselor now,” she explains), and, more importantly, refreshing. Rather than most tampon commercials, which feature long-legged women wading happily in tranquil ocean waters, with no mention of what’s really going down, this ad is serious. Camp Gyno scoffs at weakness. Cramps getting you down? “Suck it up and deal with it,” she demands.

But her dictatorial position is toppled when the girls discover HelloFlo, and her services are soon replaced by the company’s monthly care packages timed to individual cycles.

Clearly, HelloFlo founder and CEO Naama Bloom went to summer camp. In a March interview with The Verge, Bloom described her path to founding HelloFlo:

“Basically, every woman I spoke to was like, ‘oh my God, that’s fucking brilliant,'” Bloom said. “No one actually enjoys the experience of buying tampons.”

Alas, if you like your sanitary napkins generic, this is not for you. HelloFlo packages provide Tampax Pearl and Always products. For $14 to $18 dollars a month, though, you can sit back, eat candy, and enjoy your brand-name period swag in style.

The post ‘Camp Gyno’ is the Most Popular Girl at Camp, Obviously appeared first on Jewcy.

I met Ari Brand, the star of the off-Broadway play, My Name is Asher Lev (based on the Chaim Potok novel), at the Westway Diner in the Theater District for lunch at 12:30 p.m. on a Wednesday. He had a short lunch break before his 2 p.m. pm show, and wanted to make it back to the theater to warm up by 1 p.m. (His pre-show ritual usually involves standing on stage and stretching, doing some vocal warm ups and chatting with the actors who play his parents, Mark Nelson and Ilana Levine.)

For lunch he ordered an egg and cheese sandwich and raspberry zinger tea to soothe his overactive vocals. Brand grew up downtown Manhattan, and now lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn with his girlfriend, a sociology PH.D candidate at NYU.

Are you exhausted right now? It must be hard to do two shows a day and still meet for lunch.

It’s totally exhausting. And I’ve never done a run of a show for this long and played a part this big. I don’t leave the stage for 95 minutes. So I’m really, really tired, but if the show feels good and it’s energizing then I’m relaxed and it’s great. If the show feels like a struggle, which it does sometimes, then it’s so much more exhausting. If there’s a week of those types of shows, I’m dead, I’ll go hibernate on my day off. Recently I’ve been going to the gym—gotta stay in show shape.

Tell me about your own personal connection with Judaism and how it affects your work.

I come from a family of half atheists, and the other half, my father, was raised Orthodox and then left that community. I was raised with Jewish traditions; I went to temple very minimally, I did have a bar-mitzvah. I went to Jewish camp for 12 years, and I’ve always identified as Jewish but didn’t always believe in God. And I don’t, now.

So you identify more as an atheist?

No I never call myself an atheist, but if somebody says do you believe in God I say no; but I’m Jewish because I’m culturally Jewish. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think that so many of the archaic Orthodox rules are so problematic.

What are some parallels or differences between you and your character, Asher Lev?

I’ve always been supported as an actor by my family; my mother was an actress, singer, and musician, my father was a concert pianist. My brother is a neuropsychologist, so that takes off some of the pressure. And my mother always told me I had to try to be an actor if that’s what I really wanted. So it’s a privilege that I’m increasingly grateful for, and in that way I am nothing like Asher Lev. My father had a strict Orthodox father and left the community because it was too restrictive on him, so he has a much closer tie to Asher. In many ways, I’m telling his story.

That’s so ironic.

Yeah. What’s crazy is that I didn’t realize it until about halfway through the first run of the show. Throughout the rehearsal process it didn’t even enter my mind, it was maybe a week or two into doing the show that I was like, ‘holy shit, this is much more my father’s story.’ And I think as an actor you struggle with how much you can relate to a character, because of course you want to be able to relate entirely.

Is there a particular emotion that you enjoy acting out the most in Asher Lev, or one that is most fulfilling?

I have the privilege of playing a six-year-old in the play. I think some of the most fun moments I have on stage are the ones that are filled with the awe and wonder and excitement that Asher gets from drawing, and showing his mother the drawings he made of her. She gets so excited about it too, and I think it’s the happiest moment of his life.

What were some of your most significant roles that led you to where you are now?

In sixth grade I did my first professional production, which was an off-off-Broadway performance of Macbeth. That was the first time I understood what being a professional actor/struggling actor truly meant. A lot of these people were waiters, barely getting paid anything, but they had so much integrity and gave so much of their free time to their craft. They were such lovely, fun, energetic people that showed me how wonderful actors are.

Also in college, The Long Christmas Dinner by Thornton Wilder was a play that stretched me to my limits of what I could do as an actor. It went very deep and I was in the midst of studying my craft and sort of a Russian mentality of acting which is very deep, intense, and experimental. So that’s when I applied all that I was learning, and it was really special.

I know you’re in ‘indie surf’ band called New Facility. How do you have time for that?

We’re on hiatus right now. I tried to make it work for a while but then realized it was too much. We just have fun playing.

How did you guys meet?

My band mate (guitarist/lyricist) was my camp counselor. He was the first guy I ever collaboratively played music with. We were Jew camp rock stars at 11! He was a serious influence on me musically, and also just an awesome role model. After college he was in Brooklyn and I was in Brooklyn, and we decided to get together and start a band. Another guy who was his camp counselor at Camp Eisner joined as well, and he was the drummer (now have a new drummer). It’s a fun side project for the three of us to do when we have the time. Nobody is that serious about it, we’re not trying to make it big. We play plenty of live shows and we network with our friends. But most importantly we just try and have fun. If people contact us to play that would be great, But we aren’t searching.

Who are some of your musical influences?

I was raised with The Beatles, folk music, lots of Bob Dylan, Phil Oakes, Joan Baez. And I was a massive Green Day fan in fourth grade, massive. My friends pretended to each be individual members of the band. I was Mike Dirnt, the bassist, because I thought he was the guy in the background that didn’t get enough credit, and I like that guy. Then I got into hip-hop in eighth and ninth grade. I was a big fan of the underground scene, like pre-famous Mos Def and Talib Kweli; also I love Kanye and Jay-Z. Oh, and there was a massive swing movement that came out for about two years with Squirrel Nut Zippers and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in 1996. It was part of the skater culture mixed with the zoot suit thing. I got full into that.

Do you know what you’re acting in next?

If something else presents itself then there are some decisions to be made but for now I’m just doing Asher Lev. It has an open-ended run so we don’t know when it’s going to end.

Yeah, and it’s doing so well.

Word of mouth is really, really strong, which is so impressive. It’s a universal story. There were two middle aged African-American ladies who came backstage after the show and said how much they loved it. We said, ‘we just have to know what made you come see the show,’ and they said their choir leader told them they must see it.

That’s great.

If you hear it’s about Hasidic Jews you expect a certain thing, but I think people have been surprised with how much they can connect with the play. Many people, especially in New York, have parents or communities that don’t approve of what they’re doing. I think doing the play in New York is very interesting because it seems to be the city of refugees. It’s a city where people come to find themselves and to escape. This play speaks to those people.

In the Spotlight: Haim: Three Jewish Sisters Who Rock
Alex Karpovsky: Actor, Writer, Director, and Producer

The post Spotlight on Ari Brand: Actor, Musician, Summer Camp Alum appeared first on Jewcy.

Did you go to sleepaway camp? If you did (or even if your friends did), this hilarious video will seem all too familiar. In it, Tyler Gildin, the comedian behind viral gems like The Real Housekeepers of Long Island and Nassau (County) State of Mind, stops people on the street in Manhattan’s Murray Hill and asks them about their memories of summer camp.

Alums from Indian Head Camp, Trails End Camp, and Brant Lake Camp instantly summon team cheers, raid stories, and hookup memories, to the delight of Gildin, a proud former camper at Tyler Hill (where we first met).

For every ex-AIM user who updated their “profiles” with camp quotes and alma mater lyrics, this one’s for you. BUNK 19 ’04 FOREVER!

Previously: ‘Real Housewives’ Parody Features the Real Housekeepers of Long Island
Tribal Humor Goes Viral

The post A Video Ode to Sleepaway Camp Raids, Color War, and Summer Hookups appeared first on Jewcy.

That’s right, Matisyahu is heading to Cedar Lake Camp in Milford, PA, on July 13 for a free concert. Lucky campers at Jewish camps nearby will also be in attendance, and the whole thing will be posted online. According to the press release, “Matisyahu is a big supporter of Jewish camps and plans to send his kids to one when they reach the right age, as he believes attending camp can be a pivotal part of the Jewish journey.”

See? He’s totally Jewish.

The post Matisyahu Gets Back to his Jewish Roots With Free Summer Camp Concert appeared first on Jewcy.

From its beginnings more than a century ago (the Oxford English Dictionary traces the term’s first use to 1909), camp has formed an important part of gay culture and, from the 1960s onwards, has helped to make gay culture more accepted by mainstream society. It is both a celebration of the frivolous, and, in its fashion, a subversive attack on the seriousness of the high modernism that it originally grew out of.

Sontag defined “the ultimate Camp statement” as “it’s good because it’s awful”—camp takes pride in failure, particularly in the garish or melodramatic. It’s a deeply visual sensibility, one that privileges extravagance and strives for the extraordinary.

Camp is sentimental, open, and “generous.” As a way of life, it represents “the theatricalization of experience.”

Since this is Camp Week at Jewcy, I thought I’d take a look at the campiness of camp. The two words aren’t just homonyms. In fact, there’s a great deal about Jewish summer camp that is camp. (To distinguish between the two, I’ll use the acronym JSC to refer to Jewish summer camp.)

One might even argue that camp is the defining aesthetic of JSC, at least at the liberal, reform Southern California JSC where I spent a few formative summers.

Life at my JSC was defined by skits, chants, cheesy songs, drama, pageantry, homoerotic humor, cabin cheers filled with elaborate innuendo—all things that are indelibly camp. Moreover, as your goyische friends may jealously testify to, JSC is a place of sexual curiosity, self-questioning, experimentation, even cross-dressing (often for the purposes of a skit or theatrical production).

During this period, it can seem like one’s sexual and gender attitudes are in a continual flux, and indeed, many campers are themselves androgynous, unformed; in Sontag’s view, “the androgyne is certainly one of the great images of Camp sensibility.”

JSC is suffused with an air of constant performance that is unmistakably camp. We cheer loudly for the smallest successes, we over-gel our hair and strut demonstratively for our camp crushes, we write and perform in knowingly silly skits and belt out parodies of the season’s hit pop songs. We invoke film quotes to show our pop culture savvy (The Big Lebowski was the sacred text during my stint at JSC), and we code sexual references and flirtations into our everyday speech.

We are always on, always performing. Sontag wrote that camp “is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.” JSC, then, may be seen as one vast proscenium, where the inherent drama of adolescence is amplified to the nth degree, making dandies of us all.

In “Notes on Camp,” Sontag claimed that “Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.” These two forces collide at JSC, where we pray daily and learn how to be custodians of Jewish history while also cajoling a friend to steal and try on a girl’s bra, because it seems strange and daring.

JSC is both Wet Hot American Summer (itself an example and document of camp) and “The Conversion of the Jews.” At Camp Hess Kramer, which I attended, this collision is emblematized by the camp’s six-foot tall Menorah—an object at once intrinsically holy and, because of its exaggerated size, unintentionally absurd. (Sontag would label it an example of “naive camp.”)

Sontag was never wholly in favor of camp. In her original essay, as well as later in her career, she worried that camp’s lack of aesthetic seriousness could also be accompanied by a lack of moral seriousness. Yet that is what makes this sensibility so well suited to JSC. For campers, it is a time to be unserious, free, to loose the shackling anxieties of adolescence, even—or especially—if that means risking embarrassment or failure.

“Camp discloses innocence,” Sontag tells us, “but also, when it can, corrupts it.” This can be interpreted as a comment on camp’s ethics, but I think it’s something less pointed—a description of a tendency, a habit of being. At Jewish summer camp, whether our parents know it or not, we come to shed our innocence, to be complicit in our own corruption and adolescent awakening. And we do it—whether we know it or not—by way of camp, the camp of camp.

The post Culture Kvetch: The Campiness of Summer Camp, A Summer-Long Pageant appeared first on Jewcy.

The summer before eighth grade, buzz had been building across camp after it was announced that Blue Fringe would be performing. At the time, the band represented an anomaly to the moribund American Jewish music scene. “Blue Fringe,” Tablet Magazine’s Liel Leibovitz wrote in 2005, “is bridging the gap between rock culture and religious faith.” Their sound was edgy enough for us kids to enjoy, and their lyrics were acceptable enough to pass the camp’s religious litmus test.

We loved Blue Fringe. Their songs echoed off of the wooded bunk walls every Friday when the camp cleaned before Shabbat. Nothing like this concert had happened before and people were excited.

The concert took place in the biggest building we had. The place resembled a big barn on the outside, with an A-frame roof, gray walls, and a stage inside. Wooden floors, stained a deep, scuffed brown, were worn from years of shuffling and shuckling during prayers.

It was those floors that gave the place its life: on Friday nights when we would all dance around the bimah, they bounced lightly up and down with the rhythm of our feet.

The night of the concert, the barn was filled with campers, guys and girls separated by a mechitza down the middle of the floor. When the band came on, the place exploded with pre-pubescent screams that I imagine are currently reserved for only the Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus.

As they struck their first rock chord, the guys in my section, we began to dance.

This was not the hora circle-dance of Friday night prayers, but rather something of a primordial mosh pit. I remember Blue Fringe’s sound filling the barn and willing myself to jump.

Everyone around me was doing the same. The floor undulated beneath our feet—up and down, up and down. As we surged toward the front, elbowing each other for a better view, our jumping became more electric.

Ever the neurotic, I glanced nervously at the bouncing floor, which seemed to roll a bit too quickly. It had withstood a lot until now, I reasoned to myself. So I continued to jump.

Then Blue Fringe played one of their more popular tunes, and the crowd really went crazy. We danced even harder, and this time the floor started bucking. As I felt the floor groaning beneath my feet, I was suddenly sure I was going to die.

With one last groan, the floor started sinking—it really started sinking—and I thought, this is it. I was going to die at Camp Moshava in Indian Orchard, Pennsylvania, right on the cusp of my high school years, and Blue Fringe’s Jewish rock and roll would be the last thing I would ever hear.

The floor sunk and sunk and sunk. That’s when the dancing finally began to ebb, and the adults intervened. They cut the sound and ordered a hasty retreat.

As we were ushered out, a big wave of relief spread over me. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the pockmark our dancing had created on the floor. A fifteen square foot dimple, perhaps two feet lower than the rest of the floor at its center point, where I was sure I had been standing just moments earlier.

It was obvious that I was never in any real danger. A few scrapes, maybe, but death? Probably not. And yet, every concert that I’ve been to since has been measured against that one. So far I’ve been unable to recapture that singular, energizing terror that can only be felt at the presumed onset of death by music. Thank you Camp Moshava. Thank you.

David Fine is editor emeritus of the Columbia Current. He tweets at @DavidFine.

The post Jamming with Blue Fringe at Camp Moshava appeared first on Jewcy.