We have just concluded two extraordinarily powerful back-to-back Israel missions for our North American staff and incoming shlichim. During the past two weeks in Israel, we brought together 300 members of the 2024 Ramah community, representing each of our North American camps.
Read MoreOne of the highlights of the busy pre-summer preparation season is the training of mishlachat members at Kibbutz Shefayim. This year’s Shefayim, with its focus on sacrifice, celebration, and sharing personal narratives, lays the foundation for a summer of dialogue and connection that we hope will strengthen bonds among the Jewish people.
Six participants in the Kerem cohort—young professionals working full-time for Ramah camps—traveled to Israel with the National Ramah Commission for a week of learning, touring, and welcoming nearly 350 shlichim and shlichot and 70 NOAM campers at Kibbutz Shefayim. The trip emphasized Jewish peoplehood at all levels.
Read MoreOne of the more remarkable things we do as a Ramah movement is bring nearly 300 young Israelis to our camps each summer. I always knew that shlichim were a great part of camp, but until I first attended the Summer Shlichim Training Seminar in Israel, sponsored by the Jewish Agency, I didn’t realize just how impactful the mishlachat program is.
Read More“Young American Jews and young Israelis form long and enduring relationships that extend well beyond the eight- to nine-week summer experience they share together,” Amy Skopp Cooper, director of Camp Ramah Nyack, north of New York City, and national associate director of Ramah, says.
Read MoreI’ve led Kabbalat Shabbat many times before, but this time is profoundly different. As I sing out the opening words to Yedid Nefesh, I hear only the voices of a handful of Ramah directors amid a sea of 250 people. I look around and see newly-minted Ramah Israeli staff members opening a Masorti siddur, hearing Carlebach melodies, and sitting next to co-daveners of the opposite gender, some for the very first time in their lives. By the second psalm, even though the words are still new, more and more people start to join in, humming and singing along. At one point, moved by the power of the music, shlichim start to get up and dance, forming concentric circles in the middle of our makom teffilah. This is the training seminar for summer shlichim, Israeli emissaries who come to Ramah camps each summer through the Jewish Agency, and I hold the heavy responsibility of being the first person to introduce them to Conservative Judaism in a real, tangible way – the way they’ll come to know and love Judaism at camp in just a few months.
Read MoreAmidst cheers, dancing, and singing, we just concluded the 2015 Mishlachat Training Seminar,which for the first time was held at the Givat Haviva Educational Institute, about halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. We are very grateful to our partners at The Jewish Agency who organize this four-day program and provide Ramah leadership with the unique opportunity to work with the 188 new Ramah shlichim joining us this summer. And unique it was: this was the first year that the training seminar began on Yom Ha’Shoah. Just minutes before the shlichim arrived, Ramah directors stood together and listened to the two-minute siren heard throughout Israel. As we marked Jewish time, it was not lost on us how interconnected memory and destiny are to one another. Minutes after the siren, the most idealistic young ambassadors of Israel joined us.
Read MorePALMER, Massachusetts — At Camp Ramah in New England this weekend, Israeli emissary Yakov described feeling very far away from what’s happening in Israel while sitting in the idyllic Massachusetts forest surrounding his Jewish sleep-away summer camp. He spoke about a disconnect with his otherwise peaceful town of Nazareth Ilit as tires burn in the nearby Arab village where he usually eats “the best shawarma in all of Israel.”
Read MoreI recently returned from an exciting and inspiring five days at Kibbutz Shefayim, training the 250 shlichim–180 new and 70 returning–who will be working at Ramah camps across North America this summer. Together with a delegation of directors and assistant directors from each of the Ramah overnight camps, we talked about the core values of Ramah, the centrality of Israel within our camps, and how shlichim can successfully integrate within our communities.
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