I sit here thinking about the past week—one of the most interesting, engaging and fun weeks of my summer. It almost feels weird since it ended so soon. I feel like the car ride down to Monmouth County, N.J., was just a few minutes ago, and yet the week felt like a year. I'm also thinking of all my friends from home, artists of many kinds, and how much they would have enjoyed this outstanding program. I'm thinking, of course, about JCC Maccabi ArtsFest.

ArtsFest was a great experience for me. I learned a lot about my art specialty—keyboarding and singing—and met a lot of cool people from all over the country. At ArtsFest, participants are able to choose from a number of programs, including visual art, graphic art, radio broadcasting, rock music (my choice), jazz ensemble, vocal music, dance, musical and non-musical theater and more.

So who runs the arts programs? The Artists-in-Residence, who are not only highly skilled in their respective fields, but are also exceptional teachers. They are really laid back, so we had a lot of time to chill and had fun with what we were doing. The participants are a pretty relaxed group as well, and came from many different places with different backgrounds. There is a general sense of open-mindedness and a desire to make new friends.

The days were very long: We started at 8 a.m. singing a chorus of little kids' camp songs as a “warm-up” to the day (perhaps not my favorite part of ArtsFest). The rest of the day was broken up into three-hour periods before and after lunch, which I spent mostly with the ArtsFest Rock Band.

For one of those periods, we did some community service, sending care packages to Jewish soldiers overseas—a very moving experience.

Most of my time was spent with the Rock Band. We practiced the tunes we were preparing for the final show, learned music lessons from our Artists-in-Residence, wrote our own tunes and jammed together. It was very relaxed and we were left to mostly do our own thing. Nights were great. There was a party almost every night with DJs, rock climbing, volleyball and a lot more.

But for me, it all came together at the final performance. During the week, I really had no idea what was happening outside of Rock Band. I found out at the final performance, however, and it was amazing. Everything impressed me, including a dance to a really cool jazz tune, a musical theater performance of a medley of show tunes, and slideshows of graphic art that were unbelievable. From backstage, the Rock Band performance took an especially large amount of effort to get up and running. When it was all ready and all the bands went out, however, I was amazed by the talents of all the musicians that had taken part. The final piece, a performance of Lean on Me led by the rock kids (including me on keyboards) gave a chance for everyone in the camp to sing along. It was then that I realized how all of this came together in only four days.

With about 300 kids on one stage, Josh Nelson—our Rock teacher—said, “Take it away, Jon,” and I started playing the chords of the song. As everyone joined in, I looked around and saw people from my delegation, people from different states I had made friends with and people who I didn't know at all. And they were all together.

To me, ArtsFest is a great way for Jewish teen artists to learn more about their art and have a good time. I'm definitely going to Fairfax, Va., to do it again next year.

Jonathan Cohen is 14 years old and lives in Providence, R.I. He goes to the Wheeler School and enjoys playing music.