Jill Sava
Jill Sava joins the Simon Family JCC as its new director of the children and family department, which includes directing Summer Camp, Kids Connection, the Before and After School Program, and the Babysitting department.
The sixth of seven children in a very close-knit family, Sava knows all about nurturing one another, and says she has a very strong Jewish identity.
Originally from the Princeton, N.J. area, she attended Rutgers University and received a Masters degree from the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles in Jewish Communal Service. Following graduate school, Sava was the day camp director and the assistant director for the overnights camp and retreats at Brandeis Bardin Institute. As the director, she focused on the arts, and children and family programming.
Moving back East, she served as the early childhood director at Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill, N.J. and as camp director, youth and family director, and Jewish educator in Allentown, Pa.
Sava hopes to impart the love she felt for her own JCC camp on others this summer. She says she wants to bring campers the traditional feel of JCC summer camp like the one she attended in New Jersey from the time she was a toddler through college, when she was a counselor. “I want to bring that Ruach, that passion into camp experiences this summer,” she says. She is excited to bring overnights to the camp this year for older campers, late stays for campers in first and second grades, and family nights to the outdoor waterpark for the littlest campers.
“The JCC should be an extended family,” she says, referring in particular to the summer she has in store for this year’s camp. “A feeling of belonging, like the one I had growing up.”