NEWTON, Mass. - The challenge of finding a director for a Jewish camp sounds like what women have been saying about men for generations: A good one is hard to find.

At least that's the word from Massachusetts this week as Camp Ramah in New England prepares to begin its 48th summer. The Conservative-movement camp found itself without a director for the fifth time in 15 years at the end of last summer when its director resigned as her three-year contract came to an end, the national director of Ramah, Rabbi Sheldon Dorph, said. So last fall Rabbi Dorph himself assumed the job of acting director of the overnight camp as the camp's board searched for a permanent replacement.

But Rabbi Dorph's summer sojourn is more than just a walk in the woods. While the camp recently hired a new director who will begin in the fall, the fact that Rabbi Dorph had to take over the Palmer, Mass., facility this summer throws new light on a troubling problem: the dearth of qualified Jewish educators and administrators. Even as Jewish professional and lay leaders point to Jewish educational experiences such as summer camp as the linchpin of communal continuity, institutions are scrambling to come up with personnel to fill the growing number of openings.

"Being a camp director is like being mayor of a small city," said Rabbi Dorph, who worked as the director of Camp Ramah in the Berkshires before assuming the Ramah camps' top national post. "A good match is hard to find," he said.

The challenge in finding a director is "really understanding what the needs are, understanding what the vision of Ramah is in marrying the administrative capabilities and educational programs," the president of the New England camp's board of directors, Gerrald Silverman, told the Forward.

"The people that we had were very talented," he said, adding that past directors were of "tremendous aptitude and skill." But he said that a "camp director is a special position" that requires someone who "really understands the whole playing field."

The executive director of the Foundation for Jewish Camping, Rabbi Ramie Arian, said that to be a camp director requires not only educational know-how but also administrative savoir-faire. While Brandeis University has begun a program in informal Jewish education, no professional program exists that is devoted to the training of camp directors. "I don't think the fact that they've had trouble keeping a director is indicative of a national trend," he said of Ramah in New England. The problem, he said, has been in finding directors in the first place.

In an age of expanding Jewish day schools, boards seeking camp directors face stiff competition from their school-year counterparts. The head of the search committee for Camp Ramah in New England, Sanford Remz, a lawyer in Boston, said that a number of the candidates he interviewed were also looking at day school positions. "the reality is, there's not enough experienced trained people to run our institutions."

"Finding that type of person is not an easy task," Rabbi Dorph said, but he added that a camp director is a plum position and that their salaries range from $70,000 to $125,000. "We treat our professional directors as top educators in the Jewish community," he said.

Nationally, the Ramah camps are in a period of expansion, Rabbi Dorph said. Having opened up Ramah Darom in Georgia four years ago, the National Ramah Commission has set its sights on the Rocky Mountains and is looking as well to open a magnet camp on the East Coast. The day-camp arm of the movement has opened three new sites in the past three years - in Philadelphia, New Jersey and Chicago - and is scheduled to open a branch this summer in Berkley. At least two more day camps are slated to open within the next two years. These new branches will help to shorten the lines on the waiting lists for the current camps, Rabbi Dorph said.

As with the camp in New England, almost all of the seven overnight camps have at one point found themselves in a period of instability, Rabbi Dorph said, adding that it is not uncommon for a national director to take over during a transitional period. Once a camp finds a director, that person often stays for many years, he said. The director of the Wisconsin Ramah camp has been at his post for 25 years; the director of the Poconos camp has been at hers for 14, and the director of the Berkshires Ramah has been at his for at least 10. "So much of this is chemistry," Rabbi Dorph said.

Rabbi Dorph also underscored the important role a board of directors plays in steering a camp educationally and managerially. "There's a big change in how organizations work," Rabbi Dorph said. "Before, boards gave advice and the professionals ran the organization. It's much more of a partnership now; it really has to be a synergy."

Since last fall, the board has been headed by Mr. Silverman, who besides being a Ramah parent, is the president of the Stride Rite's Children's Group. "Having been involved in brands my whole life, I look at Ramah as a brand. Everyone has to embody what that vision stands for together," Mr. Silverman said.

Part of the challenge of "branding" the camp is creating support in the many Jewish communities served by the camp up and down the Eastern seaboard. The Massachusetts camp's jurisdiction stretches to the Washington, D.C. area from Northern New England, with the exception of the metropolitan Philadelphia and New York, which are served by their own camps. Until the opening of Ramah Darom four years ago, Camp Ramah in New England also served the Southeast.

"Our camp is very unique in terms of the Ramah camps because of the wide geographic area we cover," the immediate past president of the board, Elizabeth Pressman, said. This broad jurisdiction compounded the problem of finding a permanent director for the job because of the travel the post entailed.

"There's a lot of competition for good people," Mrs. Pressman said. "In the summer it's a 24-hour-a-day job."

Reprinted with permission of The Forward -- The original article appeared in The Forward on June 16, 2000.