We have all experienced it — the “AHA!” moment.  And you should always remember the first.

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 sense of self that makes all of those pieces work.

Of course, it was more than one moment.  It was being opened to the knowledge — through Yochanan Muffs, zichrono l’vracha, and Bezalel Porten, she-yivadel l’hayim arukim — that our texts had to be understood by going beyond the literal words; that you could not understand Genesis without knowing about other creation epics and surrounding cultures, and that we can contrast Jeremiah’s response to his critics with that of Plato.  And look where that leads!  Using and understanding language is a key to my career as a lawyer; in writing and explaining, and in understanding what others are saying.  It opens a broad doorway to understanding my own relationship to Judaism, and Conservative/Masorti Judaism in particular–seeing the challenge in pursuing “principled change” without “changes in principle” and convincing others that excitement and meaning lies in the search.  All this (and more) from a few hours sitting with my fellow campers on the grass.

Having benefited, daily, from exciting and committed role models, one other value keeps rising to the top.  Yes, Conservative/Masorti Judaism is a thinking process, but before thinking can lead to positive growth (and change), there must be learning.  We pursue new insights and new understandings — but we cannot do that do so simply by saying “I thought of something new.”  We think through the lens of the sources that reflect the thinking and processes of those who preceded us.

But there is more.  Somewhere in the interaction between my cabin-mates and others at camp came another insight — the recognition that ideas, values and action all arise in the context of interpersonal relations, communities of two, often and often hundred–and that we are obligated to engage with others, leaving them room to do the same (making tzimtzum one of the most powerful and multi-dimensional concepts in our tradition.  From what part of the kikar did that grow?  I do not know, but I know it was nurtured by Lou Newman and Seymour Fox, zichronum l’vracha, and I learned that as they (and others) planted, I am obligated to garden.

Ramah, as I grew up a bit, and became a staff member, a lay leader, a camp president, an NRC president and so on, was the defining and shaping force for what I was trying to accomplish and how I tried to do it.  It defined and shaped my professional career.  And it has been the foundation pillar of the additional community activities in which I have been privileged to be involved.