Oorah Findings: The Zone
I’m gonna be honest, when I decided to dust off that Kars4Kids article and turn it into a video essay, I was truly not at all expecting it to do so well. To break with the cliche, I’ll cop to having expectations for that David Sacks video that were way too high, and that those unrealistic highs caused me to drag my feet on the video. Anyway, this is partially to say thank you for all the support on the video and partially to segue into the actual article about how Oorah horribly mismanages its summer camp.
Oorah operates two facilities in the Catskills Mountains of New York, collectively referred to as ‘The Zone’. These are actually old ski resorts which were bought and converted into summer camps by Oorah. I said two facilities because they are not just gender segregated by cabins, but by geography, as the boys camp is located in Delaware County and the girls camp is located 8 miles down the road in Schoharie County. This puts it more than an hour away from the closest airport, and virtually inaccessible by any method other than a personal car or chartered bus. Unless you’re on vacation, there’s scarcely a reason to come. And there are plenty of reasons you wouldn’t want to come here. While the Catskills are no doubt beautiful, it is not these mountains which make The Zone notable. Instead, it is the scandals inside of The Zone that are justification for looking closer.
Where to even start? Probably with the safety hazards. See, there comes a certain set of upsides and downsides when you build a summer camp in an old ski resort. Upsides: more sophisticated housing, extensive facilities, potential to commune with a ghost that will help you with your tight five. Downsides: older buildings are more prone to issues, untrained counselors can mishandle equipment, that ghost is actually just the result of a gas leak caused by the aforementioned downsides.
In 2021, Oorah had to evacuate its Boy’s Zone camp because of a carbon monoxide leak in one of its dorm buildings. This wasn't a lapse in protocol that caused the state bureaucracy to seize on a long awaited opportunity. The gas leak was only reported because the entire dorm building spent one morning in various states of disorientation, including several campers passing out. By the time EMTs were able to respond, 53 campers and staff members had to be taken to the hospital after inhaling potentially lethal quantities of carbon monoxide. Schohaire County’s Director of Emergency Services, Michael Hartzel, said that the campers were still very lucky, as if the leak had happened in the middle of the night, there could have been a ‘worse outcome’
Even worse, this wasn’t the only nearly fatal incident experienced by campers in The Zone in the past fiveish years. In July of 2020, the Girl’s Zone had to be evacuated because a kitchen fire burned the dining hall to the ground. This was during the height of Covid-19 restrictions, when camps like The Zone were fighting tooth and nail to shirk any social distancing orders through technicalities. It was also not the first time that Oorah has faced criticism for not following fire safety codes. Back in 2014, its camps had their tax exempt status challenged by local government. All the way back in 2014, the city of Jefferson in Schoharie County filed a lawsuit against Oorah for it alleged were multiple fire and building code violations.
The loophole that was utilized by The Zone involved the reclassification of summer camps as ‘temporary residences’, where minors could travel with a parent or guardian. This practice was not limited to The Zone, but it seems like they’re the ones who have put the most children in danger because of it. According to a report by Schoharie County’s Public Health Director, Dr. Amy Gildemeister, busloads of unaccompanied children were being dropped off at The Zone.
Curiously, the director of communications for The Zone (who has the same role with Kars4Kids), Wendy Kirwan, defended the operation by stating that minor staff members went home at the end of the night and campers were accompanied by parents. This isn’t impossible, but if you remember how far away from any population center this place is, the story doesn’t add up. A drive from Gilboa to New York City, the closest major metropolitan area, would take around 3.5 hours. For these counselors to have worked at The Zone while following Covid-19 restrictions, many of them would have had to spend roughly 1/3 of their day shuttling to and from The Zone.
This is where Kars4Kids is sending your money, these are the titular ‘Kids’ that are being helped by car donations. It seems like the main way that children are being helped is by giving them the opportunity to spend their summer is buildings that are prone to accidents that threaten to kill any and all occupants. And this only scratches the surface of what is going on at The Zone. Crimes that go beyond fines and tax loopholes.
Humans aren’t the only ones suffering either. ‘The Zone’ is also home to a variety of different animals. The biggest draw seems to be the horses, which feature prominently in promotional material as a draw to the camp. Unfortunately, it seems that these horses are not treated all that well. According to a statement by Rosemary Farm Sanctuary that links to a Facebook post outlining the details, these horses were recovered from The Zone. The animals were found starved, exhausted, and branded by hot iron. It was only when one of the horses died from being overworked that the person leasing these horses to the camp got involved. Ultimately it was only because of this intervention that the abuse even came to light in the first place. Thankfully, the horses have found new homes with help from Rosemary Farm and Equine Rescue Resource, but the fact that it took the death of one of these horses for any investigation to occur is troubling.
Also of note is The Zone’s unusually diverse collection of birds. Beyond the standard fare of chickens and turkeys, The Zone also has resident parrots and peacocks. Why do I bring this up? Mainly because of how they choose to advertise these animals on their official YouTube channel.
It may also be the cause of an abnormally high number of exotic bird sightings around Stamford, New York. While looking for any anecdotes that might lead me to news stories in the Facebook group Stanford New York Neighbors, I noticed that a few people seemed to have spotted some kind of exotic bird walking around their yards. I’m not saying it’s necessarily an escapee of The Zone, but given all the information we have on the treatment of animals there, it’s not impossible.
Exactly one week after the dining hall went up in flames, Oorah had a new problem related to The Girl Zone’s camp.
This is normally where I would put a paywall in one of my article. However, given the nature of what is being described, I feel it would be disingenuous to hide it behind a paywall. If you would like to support me, I can ask for you to do a paid subscription. I’ll have an article about Oorah and the wider Lakewood real estate market out soon just for those subscribers.
By the time Dorina Sokolovsky settled out of court with Oorah after uploading a video detailing her sexual abuse by Gittie Kohn Sheinkopf, one of the counselors at The Girl’s Zone, over six years had passed. For all these years, Sokolovsky was pursued relentlessly by the Orthodox community for speaking up about this abuse and the issue was repeatedly pushed to rabbinical courts in order to protect Sheinkopf from answering for the crimes as an employee of Oorah. It was only thanks to the work of the people in Zaakah, a victims advocacy group working in the Orthodox community, that this case even came to light.
Speaking out against abuse in any community is hard enough, but one that prizes insularity and trust as much as the Orthodox makes coming forward a uniquely difficult emotional, mental, and sometimes physical ordeal. Zaakah actually lists on their website a few of the key difficulties with holding abusers accountable in Orthodox communities.
“Many communities, particularly Charedi (Ultra Orthodox) communities, have institutional policies requiring that victims ask rabbis for permission before reporting child sexual abusers to secular authorities.
The other leverage points often involve pressuring victims or their families into silence by threatening them with unemployment, eviction, expulsion of their children from yeshiva, the prospect of their children and extended families being ineligible for shidduchim (matchmaking), or general ostracism from the community.”
This was also not a case of hush money being paid so that an organization wouldn't have to deal with the fallout and paperwork of a lawsuit. Oorah fought this lawsuit with its full legal might. According to Zaakah, motions and subpoenas were filed as often as possible in order to prove that the lawsuit was being brought on by Zaakah and not the plaintiff. Some of this is obviously to be expected by a group trying to win a legal battle, and we don’t have Oorah’s interpretation of events. But given how long this was drawn out and the fact Oorah went on the legal counter offensive to get as many documents sealed as possible does raise a lot of questions as to what their end goal was. The lengths gone to here, paired with what the victim was put through out of court, suggest that the goal is not quiet settlement, but explicit punishment.
Of course, the greatest revelation from all this is that the money donated to Kars4Kids/Oorah is being used to settle child sexual abuse lawsuits. There’s no way around the fact, and it should raise more red flags than even the disregard for children’s physical safety at their camps. Oorah has not publicly acknowledged this lawsuit or offered any kind of explanation of what their role was in it, leaving Zaakah as the only reliable source on what transpired. I have reached out to Oorah but have not gotten a response yet.
The final danger for those in The Zone is not to campers, but to the contractors it relies upon. Subcontracting isn’t at all unusual, and a summer camp that needs regular maintenance and new construction is going to be utilizing these services fairly often. What’s notable about Oorah is how they treat their contractors, or really anyone outside their immediate organization. According to an anonymous source who lived in the community around The Zone I spoke to, people who do work at The Zone are routinely underpaid, which would be consistent with protests outside Oorah headquarters that occurred back in 2010. This anonymous source also alerted to me to an incident that occurred in one of the ponds owned by Oorah near The Zone. Due to the restrictions on contact between men and women in Orthodox Judaism, processes like signing for a package were made incredibly difficult for delivery drivers who happened to be women.
Around 2:30pm on Friday, March 31st, 2023, police were called to respond to a call off Scotch Valley road in Schoharie County, according to the Times Union. A small boat had flipped and three of the passengers were plunged into the icy waters. Two of the men emerged, one could not be found. It would be another day before the body of Juan E. Parco Saez could be recovered. Saez, an Ecuadorian national, was being employed as part of a team installing tiles for The Zone but were not officially employees of the company, a fact that a camp spokesperson was quick to point out.
Despite only working as contractors, it was reported that these men were living on site at the camp. It was never clarified why these men were fishing in a pond that had just recently thawed. The fact these men were living on site in a remote area with potentially hostile employers makes the fact they were fishing in these conditions seem less and less like a way to pass the time. My source told me that the other two men were gone the next day, presumably going back to New Jersey or their families in Ecuador.
Oorah runs a ruthlessly efficient operation in The Zone. But the way in which it is ruthless is not in its staff management, its scheduling, or even its building, in fact, it’s pretty bad at all those things. What it is ruthlessly efficient is how they have kept this operation going for over a decade without significant public backlash, despite the fact it is the beneficiary of a nation wide advertising campaign. One hopes that changes soon.