The starting date for the relationship between Margaret (Maggie) Auslander and Alan Silberman that became a Ramah Wisconsin marriage is a matter of some confusion.

She says: “It started when I was 12 and you were the camping counselor and took my tzrif on an overnight trip in the woods.”

He says: “I do not recall this and if it happened, I deny it.”

But then perhaps Rabbi David Mogilner (z”l ) knew what he was doing when he assigned an (almost) 17-year-old junior counselor to take charge of the overnight program and spend 35 nights out of camp. Whatever the “beginning,” we found ourselves—in December 1959—on an overnight train trip to an LTF (Leadership Training Fellows) kallah in Minneapolis. Margaret was the 15-year-old LTF’er. Alan was the 19-year-old chaperone and staff member. And in the middle of night, he received a visit—in the “lounge” at the end of the train—from Margaret and two of her girlfriends who could not sleep. And then, the two friends disappeared. A crisis! How did we avoid impropriety? The answer is pure Ramah legend: It took only a few moments to remember that Margaret’s brother, Ira, was about to become bar mitzvah. The conversation, of course, turned to “What is his haftarah?” And the next hours were spent reviewing and chanting the words of Isaiah, Chapter 66—the haftarah for Shabbat Rosh Hodesh.

Of course, staff-camper relationships cannot be, and were NOT. Indeed, the next summer, when Margaret was en route to camp with the then-mandatory stay at Chicago’s Morrison Hotel, the counselor responsible for Margaret and several other young women made sure they were all in bed and—after a quick laylatov and a transfer of responsibility to another staff member, went out on the town with…Alan, of course.

But wait, there’s more: Two years later (after Margaret’s stint at the first Ramah American seminar in Nyack), she was the staff member! Margaret was starting college at the University of Michigan, and Alan, a 21-year-old “Assistant to the Director,” was off to law school in New Haven. So she got to go out on the town—that year, and the next, and the next! And, of course, summer romance faced the age-old question: “Will we still want to be with each other after 8 weeks?” And the answer (at least Alan’s) was the equivocal “maybe”—a few visits to Ann Arbor and New Haven, yes, but no plans for any permanent relationship.

Fast forward three more years. Alan is a lawyer in Chicago, beginning to become involved in the Ramah Wisconsin committee. Margaret is pursuing a Masters’ Degree in Special Education in Michigan. But old habits are ingrained deeply—when you went to camp, you had to go to Chicago; when you went to an LTF Kallah in the winter, you usually went to or through Chicago. So where else would Margaret pick to spend a couple of days to visit? And if you are going to check up on people from the past, what could be more obvious then your Ramah connections? After some cajoling, Margaret was able to pry Alan’s office phone number from Alan’s mother, and Alan was smart enough to ask Margaret out that very evening! About 14 months later, with a pile of long distance phone bills between Chicago and Detroit, and a few airplane tickets, the choice was clear: it would either be marriage or mutual bankruptcy. One of Margaret’s Ramah friends was getting married, Alan came in for the wedding—and as the long, long, weekend ended the question finally passed from Alan’s lips—and it wasn’t “What is your brother’s haftarah?”

The rest, of course, is history: now nearing 38 years of history. And the Ramah connection has remained one of the focal points—for both Alan and Margaret’s involvement in Wisconsin and National Ramah activities, a further role as camper parents for daughter Elena and son Mark, and most recently adjusting to the newest Ramah role, as Bubbe and Saba of the latest generation of Ramah campers, granddaughter Lauren, a happy camper at the Chicago-area Ramah Day Camp!