Who We Are

National Ramah Commission

The National Ramah Commission is the convening, catalyzing, and coordinating body of the Ramah Camping Movement, supporting our camps and Israel programs; providing opportunities for leadership development, offering year-round alumni engagement; and strengthening connections with Am Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael. The National Ramah Commission operates under the educational and religious supervision of The Jewish Theological Seminary.

Our Values

  • We live according to Jewish time—we celebrate Shabbat, engage in daily tefillah, frame our meals with brachot, and guide our actions with Jewish values. We feel awe and wonder in our encounters with Divinity at camp. Such joyful observance brings our kehillot together and generates a longing to experience the vibrancy of camp-style Jewish living year-round, and for a lifetime. Ramah camps are living laboratories for adapting Conservative Judaism to the present and future, while still holding on to our most treasured traditions.

  • Camp Ramah is a comprehensive Jewish educational experience, from formal study sessions to bunk activities to playing sports and more. Our educational philosophy emphasizes active listening, engaging with diverse perspectives, and seeking to understand the human being behind each idea we encounter. We prioritize process over product, and participation over achievement.

  • We see serious engagement with Israel as a critical expression of contemporary Jewish life. We welcome large mishlachot of Israeli staff members to facilitate cultural and educational exchange, and friendship. We infuse Hebrew into everyday life at camp, including through full immersion programs at our day camps. We promote solidarity with Jews all over the world, helping our campers and alumni appreciate our global diversity. We appreciate the vast cultural production of our People, and we make our own contributions to Jewish culture in such areas of music, dance, food, and visual art.

  • Our camps are incubators of innovation in Jewish life and leadership, and they inspire attitudes of openness and curiosity. We challenge and educate Ramahniks to become lay and professional leaders, in the Conservative Movement and beyond, prepared to approach 21st century challenges rooted in Jewish perspectives, especially justice and responsibility. The word “Ramah” means “high level.” We have ambitious goals for our young people. We see our informal setting and the young age of our campers and staff as assets, and believe that they are capable of exercising such leadership now and in the future.

  • At Camp Ramah there is no “other,” only “each other.” Every member of our community is of equal and supreme worth. Therefore, we strive to create accepting environments that celebrate people of all Jewish backgrounds. We are particularly proud that our Tikvah programs have opened the Ramah experience to children, teens, and young adults with disabilities. The friends made in our diverse communities are friends for life, through joys and sorrows. They’ll be at each other’s b’nai mitzvah celebrations, at college, as they enter the job market, at weddings, and beyond. As they grow up, Ramah campers will discover a vast network of Ramahniks to help and support them throughout their lives.

  • The foundation of all morality is the question: “How shall we live together?” At camp, this question could not be more literal. Campers and staff members spend their entire days together in close community, resolving the constant moral questions that emerge. Children who learn how to share space in their bunks become adults who think critically and compassionately about how resources should be allocated in their communities. At Ramah, we take seriously the responsibility of training the next generation of Jewish leaders to act with kindness in the world.

  • Ramah camps are located in some of the most breathtaking landscapes of the North American continent. Our lakes, mountains, forests, farms, and rainbows inspire radical amazement. Vitality courses through Ramahniks as they play and learn in these great outdoors. Surrounded by such beauty, Jewishness and daily living merge in a very natural way. We preserve these magnificent places for future generations and build an ethic of conservation among our young people.

Our Mission

The mission of the Ramah Camping Movement, the camping arm of Conservative Judaism, is to create and sustain excellent summer camps and Israel programs that inspire commitment to Jewish life, and develop the next generation of Jewish leaders. At Ramah, thousands of children, teens, and young adults come together each summer in communities that nurture social, educational, physical, and spiritual growth, creating lifelong friendships, a love for Israel, and a strong Jewish identity.

Since the establishment of the first Ramah camp in 1947, the Ramah Camping Movement has become, by all accounts, an extraordinarily successful Jewish educational endeavor, emphasizing the teaching and daily use of Hebrew language, the fostering of religious and spiritual development, and the strengthening of Jewish and Zionist identity through extensive Israel programming.

Ramah has also had a powerful impact on leadership development in the Jewish world. In numbers far exceeding what one might expect from a camping movement, Ramah alumni populate the highest reaches of North American Jewish communal life, from Jewish foundations and Federations to advocacy, social service, and educational institutions that serve the Jewish community and galvanize public support for Israel. Since the first Ramah Tikvah program opened in 1970, Tikvah programs have provided the inspirational Ramah experience to Jewish children, teens, and young adults with intellectual, developmental, and learning disabilities. Ramah is also celebrated as a place where young Jews make lifelong Jewish friends, and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jewish marriages can be credited to the Ramah summer camp experience.

Each year, more than 11,000 campers and university-aged staff members populate our ten residential camps, seven day camps, and Israel programs. An additional 300 young Israeli adults join the Ramah camp communities annually, and help to inculcate in the campers a love of Hebrew language together with a familiarity with and connection to Israel.

Dates of Establishment of Ramah Camps

1947 | Camp Ramah in Wisconsin
1948 | Camp Ramah in Maine (closed 1949; replaced by Poconos in 1950)
1950 | Camp Ramah in the Poconos
1953 | Camp Ramah in New England (originally located in CT; moved to Palmer, MA in 1965)
1955 | Camp Ramah in California (“Ojai”)
1959 | Mador National Counselor Training Program (1959-1980)
1960 | Camp Ramah in Canada
1961 | Camp Ramah in the Berkshires (originally located at site of Ramah Nyack, moved to current location in 1964)
1961 | American Seminar at Nyack (1961-1971)
1962 | Ramah Programs in Israel (Ramah Israel Seminar)
1966 | Ramah Day Camp in Nyack
1967 | Camp Ramah in Glen Spey (closed in 1971, campers went to Berkshires and New England in 1972)
1982 | Tichon Ramah Yerushalayim (TRY)
1993 | Jerusalem Day Camp
1996 | Ramah Day Camp, Philadelphia
1997 | Ramah Darom
1998 | Ramah Day Camp of Central New Jersey (1998-2003)
1999 | Ramah Day Camp in Chicagoland
2010 | Ramah in the Rockies
2015 | Ramah Day Camp Greater DC
2016 | Camp Ramah in Northern California (“Ramah Galim”)
2018 | Ramah Sports Academy (in 2023, became a program of Ramah Galim)
2023 | Ramah Day Camp Greater Boston
2023 | Camp Ramah in Israel
2024 | Ramah Day Camp LA