Amy Skopp Cooper, National Ramah Director

Reflections on Kayitz 2023 - as of Thursday, August 10, 2023

This has truly been a remarkable week of endings and beginnings. I spent the past six days in Israel bidding farewell to our Ramah Israel Seminar participants, experiencing the beauty of our Ramah Jerusalem Day Camp, and welcoming staff and 56 campers to the inaugural season of our newest overnight camp, Machaneh Ramah Yisrael, housed this year at the Ben Shemen Youth Village in central Israel.

There is nothing as powerful as joining 280 teens for their last Shabbat in Jerusalem. Amidst singing (accompanied by lots of tears), reflection time, and divrei Torah offered by our participants, teens shared the impact that Ramah Seminar has had on their lives. As we all know, our teens were in Israel for one of the most tumultuous summers in Israel’s political history, and they had numerous opportunities to hear different narratives, ask questions, and form opinions. What was expressed during their reflections is that even amidst this backdrop, they formed an enduring love and commitment to the land and people of Israel. For that, I am grateful and hopeful.

In the minutes before havdalah, under a beautiful purple Jerusalem sky, I spoke to the teens about the next steps in their Jewish lives and their Jewish leadership, and described Ramah’s commitment to nurture, mentor, and empower them along the way.

Fast forward to Sunday, which I spent helping to train the 20 staff members launching our newest overnight camp, Machaneh Ramah Yisrael. While a few staff members had been Ramah shlichim and one had been a camper at Ramah Day Camp at Nyack (when I served as director!), for the overwhelming majority, this was their first Ramah experience. The exceptional tzevet, all post army and having served as leaders in various youth movements, come to this program with a vast amount of hadracha (guidance) experience. It is not easy launching a new program on a new site, and they understood the gmishut (flexibility) that would be required.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to return to the camp along with Beth and Jeff Kopin, who is the former NRC president and current Vice President for Ramah Israel programs. The camp was abuzz with activity—campers writing edah cheers and creating edah posters, participating in a juggling activity, and running around camp as though they had been there the entire summer. It was my turn to shed tears of pure happiness.

Launching a new program is always challenging. Undoubtedly we will learn a lot in the next few years. We have big dreams: hopefully, many of these campers will join the NOAM youth movement, spend a summer at one of our North American Ramah camps, gain hadracha skills, and become our shlichim in the years to come. We are so grateful to the visionary Shawna Goodman Sone, an alumna of Ramah Canada and founder of Summer Camps Israel, who has supported this initiative from dream to reality. I would not be writing about this program if it were not for Shawna.

The Ramah Jerusalem Day Camp is truly joyful and a stop I look forward to each year. The 300 children, who had just finished tefillot, were baking pitot (I declined the one offered to me), and were covered in chocolate spread, flour, and some type of gooey syrup. Camp perfection!

This Shabbat, I’ll be at Ramah New England, where my own Ramah trajectory started when I was in my teens, and where I spent eight years serving as a counselor and rosh edah. As I told the Seminar participants, by the end of the first week of my first summer there, I knew that I wanted to become a Ramah director, and I was taken seriously when I shared that goal. Under the purple sky turning star-studded, I told the teens that a future cohort of Ramah directors was sitting in the circle, and I promised them that we would take them seriously. One approached me right after havdalah to start the conversation.

Shabbat Shalom,

Amy

Endings and Beginnings