Posts tagged Israel
My Community Is Bigger Than Your Button

To be a member of the Ramah kehilla (community in Hebrew) is a beautiful gift. We learn how to accept and love others for their weaknesses and not just their strengths....We learn how to ask for forgiveness and to forgive, to embrace our differences, to celebrate with immeasurable joy during the good times, and to comfort each other with endless sympathy during the hard times.

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Reflections on the 2017 Summer Shlichim Training Seminar

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.

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The Incredible 2015 Ramah Mishlachat

Amidst cheers, dancing, and singing, we just concluded the 2015 Mishlachat Training Seminar,which for the first time was held at the Givat Haviva Educational Institute, about halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. We are very grateful to our partners at The Jewish Agency who organize this four-day program and provide Ramah leadership with the unique opportunity to work with the 188 new Ramah shlichim joining us this summer. And unique it was: this was the first year that the training seminar began on Yom Ha’Shoah. Just minutes before the shlichim arrived, Ramah directors stood together and listened to the two-minute siren heard throughout Israel. As we marked Jewish time, it was not lost on us how interconnected memory and destiny are to one another. Minutes after the siren, the most idealistic young ambassadors of Israel joined us.

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Inclusion Comes from the Top – and the Bottom, and Middle

On a recent ten-day Tikvah Ramah Israel trip, twelve participants with disabilities, ages 18-40, were treated to a once-in-a-lifetime visit to a 1,000-soldier army base. Admittedly, other tour groups visit army bases; our group spent three hours at the MAZI/Bar-Lev base near Kiryat Milachi, where soldiers – in full uniform – with Down Syndrome, autism, and other intellectual disabilities are “just soldiers.”

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Israel Update From Ramah

The ongoing war, misery, and anxiety in Israel and Gaza stand in sharp contrast to the incredible joy appropriately taking place at all of our camps.
 

Sandwiched between both these worlds are our 250 shlichim and our 250 participants on Ramah Seminar in Israel. Our shlichim are doing an incredible job continuing to plan programs, teach, and share their love for Israel with our campers, even as they closely monitor their families' safety under missile fire and the lists of the dead and wounded IDF soldiers who may be their friends, comrades, or relatives.

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