Comments on: The Magic of Jewish Summer Camp

By: Sean - Toddler Sleeping Bag

Sean - Toddler Sleeping Bag — Thu, 24 May 2012 07:59:44 +0000

Camping can give you some great perspective on various things in life. Thanks for sharing your camping experience.

By: toperfolg

toperfolg — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:33:02 +0000

We’re a bunch of volunteers and starting a new scheme in our community. Your site provided us with useful information to paintings on. You have performed an impressive activity and our entire neighborhood will likely be thankful to you.

By: Stephen Simons

Stephen Simons — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 21:51:55 +0000

Please don’t forget the intensive Jewish camping experiences of Orthodox and Reform camps, as well as the array of Zionist, Bundist, Yiddishist and other camps. We need a holistic approach to education, including not only camps for kids, but camp experiences for adults and families,and of course on-G
going Jewish education made available to all.Wealthy federations should consider scholarships and day school support for members of not as advantaged Jewish communities. The various movements, likewise, should fund days schools and camps and Israel trips for Jews living outside o the large centers. In that way, there will be a diversity of experience for all of our children.

By: Jacob Malki

Jacob Malki — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 03:17:02 +0000

Prof. Einsen’s note should not have been written, because it is “obvious”;but unfortunately it is not.
Much larger efforts, educational and financial ones, should be spent on this “informal method of education”.

“Torah is studied and practiced in surroundings filled with Jews, Jewish commitments, Jewish images, and Jewish fun.” Yes, strange but it is true,Judaism can be fun. Smile!

By: Elizabeth Pressman

Elizabeth Pressman — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 03:35:51 +0000

Your comments are most welcome. My life was transformed by Ramah, begnning as a camper at the age of 12 in CT. Later I participated in the MADOR program and subsequently was a counselor in CT. As an adult I have been on the Board of CRNE for many years. Our three kids were campers and staff members and now our oldest grandson is camper.

I am encouraged by the initiatives of the NRC and local camps to reach out to Congregational and Day schools. However, an area that I believe must be addressed is Shabbat davenning in many congregations. There are a growing number of congregations where alternative Minyanim meet and better resemble Shabbat at Ramah than the main service. I suggest that this area needs a lot more development.

Ramah alums for at least the last 15 years or so have been instrumental in the development of Independent Minyanim because they found most synagogue services didn’t meet their needs. How can we encourage our Rabbis, JTS graduates, to be more proactive in developing a true Shabbat community? How can they be assisted in educating their congregants so that at least one Shabbat Minyan(either the main service or an alternative Minyan) can resemble Ramah and USY? Why after more than 60 years should Ramah campers still come home and be turned off by the davenning in their synagogues, the lack of a community with whom they can share Shabbat? I recognize this is not a simple transformation, but had we begun 60 years ago we might be in a different place today. ” Lo alecha ham’lacha ligmor, v’lo ata ven-chorin libatel mimena.” “You are not obliged to finish the task, neither are you free to neglect it.” Pirkei Avot 2:21

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:04:17 +0000

As someone who did not attend such a camp growing up, but was a Ramah counselor one summer, I worry that certain institutional realities undermine undermine the diversity of the committed, adult Jewish laity.

Not ethnic diversity, but experiential.

Ex-campers are a power house in Jewish life. Their passion and education propels them to places of formal and informal leadership, and their shared experiences bind them together in every American city where Jews live.

Part and parcel with this is a certain homogeneity of perspectives on life and the world. Specifically, many of the most influential ex-campers are people who come from families that had the means to give them the exact same summer experience year after year, and the personal desire to do the (almost) the exact same thing every summer.

Ex-campers are the essence of rooted-ness, and are therefore the natural and sorely needed pillars of our Jewish community, which loves to pull itself in every which ideological direction.

However, developing this pillar-strength, under the current system seems to undermine the development of skills and experiences that allow for effective outreach to those who wish for Jewish connection, but do not share these life experiences.

Having been allowed to master moving through tight-knit communities as children- have they ever had the experiences to spur them to know how reach out to those who are not, and bring them in?

We all want a vibrant Conservative Judaism whose population extends beyond its bare-bone, skeleton. It needs muscles, organs, ligaments, skin- the soft tissue comprising of people whose ideological DNA is the same, but express it differently.

I wonder how much of the attrition of the conservative laity is not ideological, but has to do with these sort of hidden factors:

A Conservative Jewish core that is -overwhelmingly financially secure,
-have whole families
-that overwhelmingly eschew cultural diversity/disharmony in the home

…clashing with…

a general Jewish population that is
-less financially well off
-more likely to come from broken homes
- and more likely to be culturally mixed, and deeply value the richness/complication that comes with

Neither group need to be very Jewishly distinct from each other to drive each other away from a given Jewish institution, via “I don’t fit in here” feeling.

I applaud the Ramah Outdoor Adventure in the Rockies initiative as a wonderful step in the right direction. By promoting and validating different Jewish summer experiences for children, we can ultimately enrich and solidify our adult Jewish communities.

By: Florence Abramowitz

Florence Abramowitz — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:59:54 +0000

I attended the first Camp Ramah in the east during the summer of 1948 at the campsite in the Belgrade Lakes Maine It was one of the greatest summers I ever had I sent my children to Camp Ramah in the Berkshires We all made wonderful friends and enjoyed the experiences Florence Abramowitz, Ed.D. first Camp Ramah

By: Mel Scult

Mel Scult — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:45:58 +0000

Ramah was the most important educational=religious experience of my life. It took a kid from a Conservative congregation who didnt know very much about Jewish life and transformed him into a dedicated Jewish scholar active in many phases of Jewish life. As a young person I attended Ramah camps in Maine, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and California. The path became clear-Ramah, JTS. and a Phd in Jewish Studies

It is the story of my life and has given my life meaning.