"Accommodations were luxurious: deluxe suites with down pillows, bathtubs with whirlpool jets and twice-daily maid service."
The NYT piece about Reboot makes it sound like a luxury weekend of pampering, describing Summit as “an annual conference for young, affluent Jews to discuss their ethnic and religious identity, in between spa treatments and walks among the ponderosa pines of the Wasatch Mountains.” I had a regular room, not a suite (not complaining - it was awesome) and I don’t remember the whirlpool jets - who had time for a bath? I was lucky to have time to shower. Wake up, throw on jeans/tshirt, grab your nametag and a notebook and best of luck finding two seconds to spare for the rest of the highly-programmed day. I went in 2007 (was part of Nicola’s class) and though the room had internet (obvs) I could snatch maybe a few emails over the course of a day. In 2008 I woke up two hours early and worked at night on this post and on that point I will say that it is awesome to sit and work in a king-size bed with tons of room to spread highlighted printouts around, with a few diet cokes that you snagged from the meeting rooms. But - spa treatments? I wish. Maybe they offered them at Stein Erickson but in my two summits (you only get two, alas) I didn’t hear anything about anyone having that kind of time. There was a pool and jacuzzi tho and in second year after the no-talent show we all went down and it was super fun. Dan, Nicola, Deb and Ben were very earnestly trying to learn a synchronized swimming routine and it was very ambitious.
Speaking of the no-talent show: It might be the reason I went to Reboot. I saw Ira Silverberg at a party after he’d come back from Summit, this is in 2006, and he told me about this Jewish weekend retreat with a fun talent show at the end and I was like, I WANT IN. (How I got in: Kate Lee introduced me to Roger Bennett, for which I will forever owe her big.) For my first Summit and every Reboot away-gathering thereafter (2 Summits, 3 camp weekends for all Rebooters not just 1st and 2nd years) I wrote and sang a song about the weekend at the end of the no-talent show. They were, in order, to American Pie (May ‘07), I’ve Never Been To Me (Feb ‘08), Galileo (May ‘08), If I Were A Boy (Feb ‘09), Party In The U.S.A. (Feb ‘10). The links are to the only videos I have, alas. (There’s a “Party In The Jew.S.A.” vid out there somewhere, but at the time I was being a suck because I was sick and sounded bad and had screwed up a few lyrics owing to some printout snafus. It may be gone now. My own fault.)
Anyway: Reboot was awesome and yes, Stein Erickson Lodge is great, and the beds were fluffy, and when you came in at night the bed was turned down and there was a flickering fireplace on the big-screen TV. And the food was amazing and there was lots of it, which is my favorite kind. But the suggestion that the weekend was some sort of luxury spa-treatment mud-bath massage-and-facial fest is a red herring, and detracts from the kind of weekend it was: One for dressing casually and thinking critically.
