Many Birthright Israel groups will be landing at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv late this December. One of them will be a group made up exclusively of Camp Ramah alumni, most of them also staff members who will be heading back to work at camp this coming summer.

This is the third consecutive year that Ramah Israel has partnered with Taglit-Birthright Israel to run a Birthright trip with an identifiably Ramah flavor. While the trip resembles other Birthright trips in some ways, it also differs in that it is infused with Ramah’s unique take on Jewish and Israel education.

All-Ramah Birthright Trip, 2014

Many Birthright Israel groups will be landing at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv late this December. One of them will be a group made up exclusively of Camp Ramah alumni, most of them also staff members who will be heading back to work at camp this coming summer.

This is the third consecutive year that Ramah Israel has partnered with Taglit-Birthright Israel to run a Birthright trip with an identifiably Ramah flavor. While the trip resembles other Birthright trips in some ways, it also differs in that it is infused with Ramah’s unique take on Jewish and Israel education.

“The participants will come away from this trip with better tools to teach Israel at camp,” says Ramah Israel executive director Meir Hoyzman.

Hoyzman points out that many of the trip’s participants will have been to Israel before, especially on Ramah Seminar. But this time they will be seeing Israel from a different perspective—that of a camp staff member preparing to teach about Israel to their campers in the summer.

“This trip is meant to enrich the experience of the kids at camp as much as that of the staff members on the trip,” Hoyzman notes.

All-Ramah Birthright Trip, 2014

The 37 Ramah Birthright trip participants will travel through Israel with Ramah staff members Myra Meskin and Aryeh Kalender, who are rashei edah (division heads) at Camp Ramah in California and Camp Ramah in New England, respectively. Joining them will be Ronen Guryevsky, an Israeli tour guide and educator with longstanding ties to Ramah.

In accordance with Taglit-Birthright Israel guidelines, the group will visit specific sites around the country and deal with specific topics that are required of all Birthright trip operators. However, the itinerary will be custom tailored to a significant extent.

For instance, for the Holocaust education portion of the trip, the Ramah group will visit the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum in northern Israel instead of Yad Vashem, which most, if not all, of the Ramah participants have already visited at least once.

Similarly, when the group visits Masada, the participants will have the option of going on a regular tour of the site, or alternatively engaging in an discussion about how the site’s legacy has and can be employed for educational purposes.

For the community service portion of the trip, the Ramah Birthrighters will volunteer with children from Kehillat Netzach Israel, a Masorti congregation and community center in Ashkelon. The congregation offers an egalitarian, pluralistic and family-oriented approach to Judaism and reflects a melting pot of modern Israeli society with its members from many different backgrounds.

The Ramah Birthright Israel trip will run December 22, 2015 – January 3, 2016. Several of the participants will be blogging regularly while they are on the trip—so stay tuned for the exciting news and important insights they will be sharing from Israel!