Clothes Hangers: A Quirky Mosaic of Jewish Womanhood at Summer Camp

“Does someone have a dress I can wear?!” I yell frantically as I run into my cabin. 

My bunkmates all turn their heads toward the back of the room to a skinny wooden pole propped up between two rows of cubbies. Hanging from it is a chaotic collection of dresses, from floral prints to bright solids. There’s an unspoken rule that the dresses we packed at the beginning of the summer weren’t meant to be worn, exactly, but to serve as currency: a ticket into the cabin closet, which felt more like our own collective mall. 

I make a beeline for the communal rack and begin flipping through hanger after hanger. No two hangers are the same; some are warped wire, others sleek and velvet-covered, and some are cheap plastic in loud neon colors. They’ve all been passed down, left behind, or shared in moments of desperation. Some were likely forgotten by girls from summers ago, and others were intentionally donated to the communal pile. One from California and another from New York, uniting in a rundown cabin in Indiana.

Eventually, I find it: a white dress with tiny pink flowers. I check the inside tag and spot a name written in Sharpie. After tossing the hanger back onto the rack, I rush into the bathroom, dodging girls curling their hair and applying lip gloss. An older camper helps me with eyeliner for the first time. I feel older, excited, and ready. In retrospect, I know that these were the moments that fostered Jewish feminism; the continuity of tradition through small moments of connection. I made it back to my bunk just in time for photos and then headed out with everyone to celebrate Shabbat. 

The hours that followed are a blur of singing, dancing, and eating. We returned to our bunks sweaty and tired. I slipped out of the dress, grabbed the nearest hanger in sight, a blue plastic one, and hung the dress back up, placing it gently on the rack, like I’m returning something sacred to its rightful home.

Summer camp is where I first learned what it meant to be a Jewish woman and what it meant to support other Jewish women. That seamless coexistence, the way we moved through the chaos together, was something I carried with me beyond the confines of our bunk. The sense of community didn’t just show up during Shabbat; it existed during family-style dinners, in whispered conversations after lights out, and in wet shoulders from homesick tears. That support shaped the culture I look for now and hope to create with the inspiration of Jewish female connection. 

Still, the bubble couldn’t last forever. After a month of constant togetherness, it always came time to take down the family photos taped to our walls, pack up our trunks, and fold our dresses, sometimes forgetting which ones even belonged to us.

And the hangers. We somehow always forgot the hangers.

Even if I did manage to bring one home, it was never actually mine. It might’ve belonged to Zoe Berkowitz from Iowa or Lila Schneider from Kentucky. They stuck out in my home closet, a neon plastic eyesore among my sleek black suede ones, but that’s what I loved most about them. They reminded me of girls from all different backgrounds, cities, and traditions coming together in ways that felt sacred because of their distinctly feminist connection. 

But it wasn’t just our cabin that had a hanger problem. Every summer brought a new group of girls with our same level of forgetfulness. By the end of the session, the dress rack would be filled with a mismatched, colorful array of forgotten or donated hangers, a different mosaic after each summer. Sometimes someone from a different unit would stop by, point to a hanger and say, “Wait, that’s mine!”

Eventually, I aged out of camp. I moved on to high school, leaving my cabin’s communal dress rack behind. I didn't feel that unconditional support from the women around me anymore. But I found myself coming back to the image of those hangers; how they passed hands, traveled across state lines, and held dresses for girls who just wanted to feel beautiful with the help of their friends.

To me, those abandoned hangers came to symbolize Jewish feminism. Each one holds a disparate perspective, identity, or voice that comes together to hold up Jewish women as a whole. It’s not about fostering one type of Jewish person but rather making room on the rack for something new and different.  Even if the hangers may clash with each other, making room for different perspectives is the first step to building a Jewish community for those who don’t feel like they have a space. These hangers remind me that my power is not only through taking up space but also through sharing what I have to uplift others. The dresses will change, and the hangers will too, but the legacy of community and sisterhood is what will hold up. 

Now, camp is a distant memory for me, but I can still create that same sense of connection for others. This year, I am the music specialist at my synagogue, and each Sunday as I teach a new batch of bright-eyed girls camp song after camp song, I hope they, too, will take a risk and spend a month with fifteen strangers. And maybe a few years down the line, they will come home after a hectic summer with the wrong hanger and smile at the mix-up because of the deep-rooted friendships that the bent piece of plastic represents.