Rabbi Elliot Dorff, is Rector and Anne and Sol Dorff Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the American Jewish University, Visiting Professor at UCLA School of Law, and Chair of the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. Author of over 200 articles and 12 books on Jewish thought, law, and ethics, and editor of […]
“I look back on my work with Tikvah, that summer and in the five summers which followed, as my proudest accomplishment, and give thanks for the skills I have gained and the lessons I have learned.” – Joseph Eskin
“How many times have we been told no matter where you go in the world you’ll find a Ramah connection? All the time! My husband and I are Ramah Poconos alumni. Our kids were staff kids and then became campers. Our older two children have worked at camp for several years. Our youngest is currently […]
I recently had a conversation with someone about THE existential crisis of my life: when will it be time to stop going back to camp?
Recently, my eldest son Omer, who lives in New York, called me. He told me with excitement that he had registered his daughter Ariel, my eldest grandchild, for Ramah Day Camp in Nyack for the coming summer. After I put the phone down, my mind drifted back to the summer of ’81, when I had […]
“My first summer at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin was in 1949. Over the next few summers, Rabbi Seymour (Shlomo) Fox, z”l, the camp’s director, brought the University of Chicago influence to camp. He introduced many of us to John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, and Bruno Bettelheim’s psychoanalytical approach. Somehow, Rabbi Fox made it all come together […]
When I was growing up, I thought that God lived at Camp Ramah. Ramah was my first experience praying every morning, and later three times a day, and in the quiet moments of the Amidah, I discovered that I could talk to God.
This one time at Jewish overnight camp … I discovered my calling. No, I am not a rabbi. No, I am not a teacher. And I am not a social worker either. Instead, it was at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin that I realized I wanted to work in the health field.
If you went to Ramah, it was probably at camp. For me, it was the beginning of an understanding that, despite the confusions of adolescence, everything really can come together in a reasonably-consistent whole: friends and community, Jewish learning and practice, liberal educational principles, participation in the civil society of the 20th-21st century, and a […]
It was Friday night, June 29, 1956 — the first Shabbat of the first full summer of Camp Ramah in California. One hundred and fifty of us, probably dressed in white, sat nervously on benches in Kikkar Tziyyon, as that area of camp had been named, waiting for the kabbalat shabbat service to begin.