Camp Massad (, ) was a Zionist Jewish summer camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, which closed in 1981. Massad's founder, Shlomo Shulsinger, emphasized Hebrew language as a key value in a multi-denominational Zionist Jewish environment. Massad was founded as a day camp in 1941 by the HaNoar Ha'Ivri with thirty campers, and eventually grew to three sleep-away camps in Pennsylvania, Massad Alef, Bet, and Gimmel, collectively known as the Massad Hebrew Camps in the United States () At its peak in the late 1960s, the Massad camps hosted over a thousand campers and staff each summer. In its forty years of existence, the camp strongly influenced both Jewish camping and Hebrew culture in North America. History Early years The HaNoar Ha’Ivri movement () was established in 1937 to build a Jewish life in the United States that promoted Zionism and the revival of the Hebrew language. In September 1940, the HaNoar Ha'Ivri conference reached a unanimous decision to establish an immersive Hebrew-speaking camp, an idea initiated by Shlomo Shulsinger, who came to the United States from Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. The camp's name, from the Hebrew word meaning "foundation", was inspired by a line from the poem by Hayim Nahman Bialik. In its first season in 1941, Massad operated as a day camp at Far Rockaway, Queens with Shulsinger as camp director. While deemed a success, members of HaNoar Ha’Ivri felt that Massad had failed to realize its potential due to interruptions from the campers’ everyday life, with the campers' English- and Yiddish-speaking families and the secular non-Jewish atmosphere of the city diluting the transformative effect of Massad's Hebrew culture. Lacking funds to purchase its own camp, in its second season Massad shared the facilities of Camp Machanaim, an Orthodox Jewish camp in Monticello in the Catskill Mountains, with an enrollment of forty-five campers and ten staff members. In the summer of 1943, Massad finally relocated to its own site in Tannersville, in the Pocono Mountains. Growth and development Massad's enrollment grew steadily during the 1940s as it attracted campers from various Jewish denominations. To meet the growing demand, Massad opened a second camp, Massad Bet, in Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania in 1948. Massad Gimmel opened in nearby Effort, Pennsylvania in 1966. In 1951, Massad launched its Machon Ma’ale () program for the preparation of Hebrew-speaking counselors, with Professor Hillel Bavli serving as its first director. In 1960,