 The camp's name, from the Hebrew word meaning "foundation", was inspired by a line from the poem "Birkat Am" 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.