As the rising temperatures indicate, summer is officially upon us. And for many kids, in between celebrating school being over, the summer means a chance to get away from it all and head to camp for some bug juice and arts and crafts.
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“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.
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When you go to Ramah Darom, magic starts to happen, said Fred Levick, the CEO of the retreat and camp facility in the North Georgia mountains in the Clayton area.
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Frigid temperatures and blasts of wind weren’t enough to keep area residents from running for a worthy cause Sunday morning.About 200 runners braved the cold for a one-mile loop beginning at Congregation B’nai Israel. The Purim 5K is organized by the Sisterhood of the Fair Lawn Jewish Center at Congregation B'nai Israel. Proceeds support the Tikvah program of Camp Ramah, a network of nine overnight summer camps in the United States and Canada for children with disabilities.
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A sure sign, according to Karen Alford, a sleepaway camp consultant, is that he or she has grown tired of day camp.
“At 9 [or going into fourth grade], you’ve probably been doing day camp for several years, and there’s just a natural progression to sleepaway camp,” she told JTA.
Of course, Alford added, some kids aren’t ready until they’re older.
“You have to know your child and what they can handle,” she said, adding that “some parents with kids who have trouble separating find camp even more helpful at a younger age because it builds independence.”
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In the summer of 2010, with just hours to go before campers arrived for the first day of the first season of Eden Village Camp, director Yoni Stadlin got some bad news from the health department: A procedural issue had delayed the issuance of a permit and the camp could not open as scheduled.
Luckily, another camp near the Jewish environmental camp’s Putnam Valley, New York, home offered a temporary space, but staff members were still forced to scramble. One put on a Moses costume and declared that, just as Jews took a circuitous route on their journey to the Promised Land from Egypt, Eden Village campers would take the long road to their summertime home. Daily programming was improvised on the fly. Supplies were whatever could be rustled up. Programs were held in a field or the forest.
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Little slices of magic are witnessed at Camp Ramah. "The most satisfying thing is to see kids smile and discover something new about themselves," said Rabbi David Soloff, director of Camp Ramah from 1975 to 2009, and now its CEO. "We had a softball league, and there was this kid that was not popular and kind of shy. In the last inning with a man on base, the kid is at bat. Remarkably he gets a hit, and he scores and he gets on his teammates' shoulders. He had broken through."
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Is summer really right around the corner?
Though it certainly doesn’t feel like it, kids planning to return for year two at Camp Ramah Northern California are already talking to their friends about attending, coordinating their schedules, and eagerly anticipating more adventures on the beach, in the nearby mountains and elsewhere.
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Camp Ramah in California has closed escrow on property adjacent to its Ojai, California, facility. The new land on the northern border will extend the camp to the north and west from its current location and bring the total camp acreage to 445 contiguous acres.
The purchase of the 174 acres of additional property will enable Camp Ramah to grow with the changing needs of current and future summer campers as well as service non-summer retreat needs. The new property will be preserved in its natural state and used to enhance nature experiences and camp programming.
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