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BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. — Big Bear Lake has welcomed tourists, campers and nature lovers for decades, and though the town has come a long way from its gold mining past, modern amenities like electricity can still be hard to come by.
At the end of a dirt road that winds up into the mountains, staff and students at Camp Gilboa spent an October Saturday preparing for winter, filling pipes with antifreeze and boarding up windows so the snow wouldn’t cave them in. While they worked, on-site generators kept the lights on.
“We are an off-grid site, and so we completely rely on generators for all of our power, which — they are propane generators — and so, you know, they’re not environmentally friendly,” said Michael Auerbach, executive director for Camp Gilboa.
Auerbach and his team have begun to transition away from the generators, a transition they hope becomes permanent.
“There’s a risk there with no safeguard or only having one power source,” Auerbach said. “And so the idea behind the solar panels was to have an additional power source and then have the generators act as just a backup in case of emergency and lost power.”
Funded in part by grants from the Jewish Solar Challenge, the camp installed a solar and battery array on their dining hall, which they rely on for 12 hours out of the day. Auerbach says that the new array reduced the camp’s fuel costs by more than 50% — from just over $7,501 last summer to $2,612 this year.
Although in addition to the savings, Auerbach says that the new energy source embodies the values of the camp, which instructs students in social and environmental justice.
“Camp Gilboa is on a literal nature preserve,” Auerbach said. “We’re surrounded by the Wildlands Conservancy. “So they not only have like a practical value to us, but they have a deep symbolic and philosophical value to them.”
Mitchell Schwartz, founder of the Jewish Solar Challenge, joins Auerbach in that belief. Schwartz began the organization in 2021, with the goal of equipping every Jewish nonprofit in the country with solar power.
“We started in the Jewish community because personally, I’m Jewish, and I feel that I want to make sure our community is doing the right thing before we start to advocate and try to get other folks to do it,” Schwartz said. “Although obviously it’s happening across the country with religious groups, nonreligious groups, etc., but we want this to be a model to help any nonprofit put solar up there.”
Already, the Jewish Solar Challenge has awarded grants for over two dozen solar installations, with several more scheduled before the end of 2026. Over half of those are in California.
Schwartz said that Camp Gilboa is the “perfect candidate” for a grant because of their off-grid location, but also because of the camp’s cause.
 “It’s the perfect project,” Schwartz said. “You have wonderful people teaching kids here the right things to really honor and love and respect and care for the earth and reducing emissions, reducing costs. It’s just the perfect project.”
Ultimately, Camp Gilboa hopes to convert to 100% solar-powered energy.
“It’s one thing to sit around and learn about and talk about environmental justice, but also we have an imperative to actually do something about it,” Auerbach said.

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