Staff Writer

They played kickball, fought color war, sang songs and danced Israeli dances on Sunday at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia.

But this was hardly a typical summer camp day in Fairfax. While there were plenty of youngsters on hand, the main focus of the day was a bunch of adults who hadn't been to summer camp in more than 25 years.

The estimated 125 attendees had come from throughout the Washington area, across the United States and even from Israel to take part in the first reunion of Camp Achva (brotherhood).

Former campers and staffers said the JCCNV camp, founded in 1969 with 70 campers ‹ and now serving 300 children from preschool through teenage years ‹ had not only an unforgettable spirit, but also played a key role in bringing together what was then a small and highly dispersed Jewish population in Washington's Virginia suburbs.

"As a Jew, Northern Virginia in the 1970s was isolated," recalled former camper David Sahr, 46, of the District. "There was not a lot of Jewish community. For young kids, this [camp] was it."

"It was the first time we had a community" in Northern Virginia, recalled camp co-founder Shirley Waxman. "The JCC [which opened in Northern Virginia in 1990] came out of this camp."

"It was a piece of glue that pulled this community together," said fellow camp co-founder and initial camp director Adele Greenspon, 75.

The camp originated because Greenspon wasn't happy with the summer camp to which she had been sending her son, Phil. Her husband told her, "I'm tired of hearing you complain ‹ here's $50, go start a camp."

Waxman also had an interest at the time in setting up a Jewish camp in Northern Viriginia, but the two women didn't know each other. They did have a mutual friend, though, who made a match.

"I was the shadchan," said Judy Frank, 64, now of Potomac. The three women, along with fourth co-founder Shirley Grossman, were honored Saturday evening at a dessert reception which also featured a video chronicling the history of the camp.

Frank said seeing the many happy faces at the reunion was "a validation of the efforts of grassroots people," adding: "They can ... start something that will fill a need at the moment" and it will survive.

Waxman ‹ also an artist and founder of Potomac-based ArtSites, the Guild for Judaic Art ‹ said she doubts that they could do it again these days.

"We'd have to have too much insurance [and] go through a board," said Waxman, who served as program director, Israeli dance teacher and nurse in the early days of the camp. "We didn't have a board or anything."

The camp's first summer was spent at Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, and in the ensuing years, it spent a couple years each at various other Northern Virginia shuls ‹ Congregation Olam Tikvah, Beth El Hebrew Congregation, Congregation Rodef Shalom ‹ before ending up meeting at the site that would eventually become the JCCNV in the 1980s.

The reunion brought back fond memories of friends and fun for many former campers.

A member of the first group of campers as a 5-year-old, Ellen Sargent Schneeweis, 43, came all the way from Englewood, Colo., for the weekend festivities. She saw old friends she hadn't seen in decades and reminisced about memories, like the way so many kids would spill grape juice on their white camp T-shirts as they celebrated Shabbat every Friday afternoon.

"I went to sleepaway camp, and the memories are not anything like the memories here," said Schneeweis, who also was a counselor-in-training at the camp. "It was a warm place to be as a child, a very loving place. It was just a place you could be yourself."

Schneeweis taught all four of her children the songs she learned at camp. In addition to typical Jewish camp songs like "Dovid Melech Yisrael," camp co-founder Grossman wrote a bunch of original songs, ditties such as "In a Ko-Ko-Kosher Home" and "Crazy Aleph Bet."

The most popular tune was "Jewish Is More Than a Bagel," which includes lyrics such as "Jewish is more than a matzah ball floating on top of your soup; Jewish is a civilization, a people, a culture, a group." And not only did the former campers get a chance to sing those songs after lunch on Sunday, but they were recorded on a CD that was on sale over the weekend.

Amnon Sheeloh came all the way from Israel for the reunion, and also led the group in some songs Sunday afternoon.

Sheeloh, 61, had first come to the camp in the early 1970s as part of a "JNF [Jewish National Fund] Caravan," a group of Israelis who traveled to U.S. Jewish camps to teach Israeli songs. And he quickly realized that Camp Achva was special.

"It was a Jewish camp for children, not ... a camp for Jewish children," he said, saying that the camp imparted more Jewish knowledge in a few weeks than most camps supplied in a few years.

And so the next two summers, he returned as a counselor and music specialist, as well as, he said, the "resident meshuganeh."

"It was a dream," said Sheeloh, now an attorney in the Jewish state, adding that his memories of those years were "great enough ... to fly back just for this."

Camp Achva touched three generations of the Hausfeld family, from Michael Hausfeld of Fairfax, who annually took a few weeks off from his law practice to be a counselor at the camp from 1971-81, to his two grandchildren who now attend the camp.

Hausfeld's daughter, Ari Jones of Fairfax, 35, said that it is great to "see your kids [wearing] the camp shirt you grew up in."

Hausfeld, 61, remembered how he used to compensate for what the camp didn't have by improvising ‹ borrowing some extra fire hydrants to act as bases for a game of stickball because they didn't have a ball field, or using water ballons in lieu of a volleyball.

"The camp had a great deal of energy," Hausfeld said.

And to be able to feel that energy again after so many years was an opportunity that Greenspon's son, Phil, now 47, won't forget.

"To relive that spirit, that ruach, [to get] a chance to have that back," he said, wiping away a tear. "It makes me a little farklempt."