Kama tov she'batem ha’bayta: Welcome home, dear shlichim. You are our heroes. You bring us yontif!
Read More
For the second year in a row, the National Ramah Commission invited North American staff members to join us for a week in Israel of volunteering, learning with the Shalom Hartman Institute, bearing witness in the Gaza Envelope, and meeting shlichim (Israeli staff members) before the summer season.
Read More
Last week's NRC Leaders Solidarity Trip to Israel, led by Ramah Israel Institute, was a powerful experience for the National Ramah officers, camp board members, and supporters of Ramah who participated.
Read More
We have just concluded two extraordinarily powerful back-to-back Israel missions for our North American staff and incoming shlichim. During the past two weeks in Israel, we brought together 300 members of the 2024 Ramah community, representing each of our North American camps.
Read More
One of the highlights of the busy pre-summer preparation season is the training of mishlachat members at Kibbutz Shefayim. This year’s Shefayim, with its focus on sacrifice, celebration, and sharing personal narratives, lays the foundation for a summer of dialogue and connection that we hope will strengthen bonds among the Jewish people.
Six participants in the Kerem cohort—young professionals working full-time for Ramah camps—traveled to Israel with the National Ramah Commission for a week of learning, touring, and welcoming nearly 350 shlichim and shlichot and 70 NOAM campers at Kibbutz Shefayim. The trip emphasized Jewish peoplehood at all levels.
Read More
One of the more remarkable things we do as a Ramah movement is bring nearly 300 young Israelis to our camps each summer. I always knew that shlichim were a great part of camp, but until I first attended the Summer Shlichim Training Seminar in Israel, sponsored by the Jewish Agency, I didn’t realize just how impactful the mishlachat program is.
Read More
“Young American Jews and young Israelis form long and enduring relationships that extend well beyond the eight- to nine-week summer experience they share together,” Amy Skopp Cooper, director of Camp Ramah Nyack, north of New York City, and national associate director of Ramah, says.
Read More
I’ve led Kabbalat Shabbat many times before, but this time is profoundly different. As I sing out the opening words to Yedid Nefesh, I hear only the voices of a handful of Ramah directors amid a sea of 250 people. I look around and see newly-minted Ramah Israeli staff members opening a Masorti siddur, hearing Carlebach melodies, and sitting next to co-daveners of the opposite gender, some for the very first time in their lives. By the second psalm, even though the words are still new, more and more people start to join in, humming and singing along. At one point, moved by the power of the music, shlichim start to get up and dance, forming concentric circles in the middle of our makom teffilah. This is the training seminar for summer shlichim, Israeli emissaries who come to Ramah camps each summer through the Jewish Agency, and I hold the heavy responsibility of being the first person to introduce them to Conservative Judaism in a real, tangible way – the way they’ll come to know and love Judaism at camp in just a few months.
Read More