I am hoping to write a longer update from camp before Shabbat, but I wanted everyone to have a chance to also read the following update written by Rabbi Mitch Cohen, the National Ramah Director.  Rabbi Cohen was here for opening day and shared his thoughts in an email to members of the Ramah Community.  Below are some excerpts.

After all the hype and the worries, all the planning and dreaming – I can now report that Ramah Outdoor Adventure is up and running, open for business, and doing quite well!

I left camp this morning after a hectic 48 hours there.

A number of points and impressions:

Rabbi Eliav hired an incredible staff – these young adults are working 24/7 and loving it! They are perfect for the mission of Ramah and they are passionate about the environment, each in his or her own way.

After a long afternoon yesterday of arriving campers, unpacking and touring camp, there were Opening Ceremonies featuring a Torah dedication, introductions, song and dance, and some orientation including the history of this site and of this project. Everyone then sang and danced through the pine trees, across the rushing waters of the creek, past the fields with deer, birds and glorious butterflies, and down the path to our chadar ochel for dinner.

At the evening medura (campfire) everyone shared their hopes and concerns for the summer. One 14 year old girl expressed it beautifully: “I can’t believe I’m finally here. I’m so excited to be in an intensely Jewish environment that also cares all about the environment. My only concern is that this really lives up to my expectations, but so far it already has!”

There are twelve gorgeous horses, each with a Hebrew name. Our Israeli leader of horseback riding is a delightful woman just out of the army. She has been riding since age 9, has won multiple awards, and has taught horseback riding at Vered Hagalil for many years. Yesterday she asked me if I could “help out” a little. I didn’t realized that 20 minutes later I’d be shoveling manure! But then again I did this together with Eliav and visiting Rabbi Ita Paskind. Some rabbinical gathering! This morning after tefila she asked for 2 camper volunteers and they happily agreed, smiling all the way. It is amazing what we all, and especially our kids will do when motivated, when pushed beyond normal limits, and when placed in the right social context with peers and young, accessible role models.
Regular programming started today. When I left campers were preparing for mountain biking or horseback riding or rock climbing or forest navigation. Monday everyone departs on their first excursion, a 5 day wilderness trip using many of their newly developing skills.

The setting is simply magnificent. On each of my visits I am amazed by the breathtaking views, the clean mountain air, and the trees.

One particularly satisfying thought for me is how this camp in so many ways integrates our year-round work at the NRC: I met the staff members who were trained and inspired on our JNF service trip to Israel and our Weinstein Institute; the mishlachat (only 2 this year) who embody the values taught at our Shefayim training program; I see the kids who were able to attend because of funding from JWest (Jim Joseph Foundation) or RISHON or other incentive awards from the Foundation for Jewish Camp; and this morning, after breakfast, everyone was treated to a hilarious skit put on by staff posing as Rami and Chani, our two characters who are the catalysts for so much Hebrew language usage trained by our new “Daber” program to increase Hebrew usage (funded by Avi Chai).

A word about the site: a year ago we held a staff training program and a family camp, and yet I hardly recognized the Ramah area. So much has been done, on limited funding, to build tents, add facilities and improve conditions. So much credit goes to our board leader Don Skupsky who has made this project his mission in life. (“I was introduced to the inspiring joy of judaism as a child at ramah canada and I so wanted to make this a reality in Colorado.”) He has put his resources and himself fully into this task, living on site for weeks building and organizing and supervising. We are also fortunate to have Mikki Gooding as site manager. Her expertise, hard work and passion for excellence is one of our greatest assets.  We also owe a huge debt of gratitude to Tammy Dollin who not only has been managing this project for 2 years and recruiting new lay leaders, but she is up at camp now as a yoetzet (social worker), helping kids and staff with all their issues.

When the FJC, with generous Jim Joseph Foundation funding, announced their support for this project, I was overjoyed. This combines so many of the values inherent in specialty camping, jewish camping, and Ramah camping.

150 volunteers from many communities came here on Sunday to attend official ribbon cutting ceremonies. More and more families are excited about this outdoor adventure camp, and we will certainly need their support as we continue to grow and build this extraordinary camp.

Mostly, I’m just so happy that above all else, we now have “more Ramah.” As our 8th overnight camp, ROA is already meeting our lofty expectations for a Ramah experience, and more families and future leaders will benefit for years to come.

One need only look at the lengthening of the days, the warming of the weather and expanding “to do” list to know that camp is just around the corner!   The next time you receive a Chodesh Tov newsletter, we will be living full-time at the Ramah in the Rockies ranch and nearing the end of our staff training week!

Read more

When I was studying to be a rabbi, I never thought that part of the official duties in my rabbinate would be to drive 450 miles to Pavillion, Wyoming (a town of 126 people, two hours west of Casper) to ride horses in the pouring rain.  And yet, last Thursday I found myself standing next to veteran ranchers Dar and Bob Vogel on their 2,000 acre ranch checking out about 50 horses that they had pulled off the range.  Each horse had spent the past six month on the Wyoming plains eating the winter grasses and trying to stay warm in the freezing temperatures.  While horses that live in barns need constant attention, horses on the plains can run freely, need almost no grooming, and do not even need shoes on their hooves.

Read more

It’s official, we met our initial recruitment goal tonight when Vivi from Denver became our 100th camper!  We also filled our 6&7th grade bunks for session II–31 campers in three bunks.  Vivi will be getting a custom made fleece, and on Monday we will pick a name at random from our first 50 registrants and award them a fleece as well–no one should be penalized for registering early! Read more

After a long Pesach break, we are back blogging.  Here is the latest update:

Camp by the numbers:

91 Number of registered campers as of April 12, 2010

70 Number of organic, locally grown tomatoes we have ordered for each week of the summer

68  Days remaining until opening day of camp

40 Number of organic, locally grown cucumbers we have ordered for each week of the summer

24 Number of organic locally grown heads of lettuce ordered for each week of the summer

20 Numbered of staff hired for summer

18 Number of Trek Mountain bikes available to our campers at the ranch

16 Number of states from which we are drawing registered campers

12 Numbers of horses used in our riding program this summer

10 number of  staff training days at base camp before campers arrive

9 Number of new platform tents being constructed on the Ramah Ranch for this summer’s program

8 Number of free weeks of camp given out this summer as part of our “free week of camp” promotion

2 Staff remaining to hire

1 Number of campers coming to camp from Israel

0 Camper  slots remaining in our two week session for 6th and 7th grade girls

It is the month of Nissan and spring is in the air.  If I was living on a farm here in Colorado, I would be plowing the fields, spreading manure, and getting ready to plant our first spring vegetables.  Sadly I do not live in such close proximity with the land.  Instead, I live in a house in Metro Denver and would not be able to fit a tractor through the door that leads to my back yard.

Read more

An issue that surfaced on numerous occasions over the past two weeks in my talks with parents about Ramah, is about the religious standards and attitudes present at Ramah Outdoor Adventure.  One parent, with whom I spoke, told me that she could never send her child to Ramah because we did not hold to a high enough religious standard.  Another parent told me that he was concerned about sending his child to Ramah Outdoor Adventure because we were going to indoctrinate his child with our religious thinking.  In other words, we were both “too religious” and “not religious enough.”

Read more

My intention was to write an extended post for the Adar newsletter about the progress we have made this past month.  But God had other plans, and my wife, Dina Danon, gave birth today to a beautiful baby boy a few weeks early.  My writing abilities have been severely curtailed and I am not going to make the deadline for sending out my thoughts for the Adar post.  Instead, I will use this space to welcome our youngest member of the Ramah Outdoor Adventure community.  I have been walking my new son around the hospital telling him about the beautiful mountains, lakes and meadows that await him as soon as we go home.   A Colorado baby must understand that there is a huge natural world out there beyond the fluorescent lights of the maternity ward.

Dad and Baby

Thank you to Talya for catching all the spelling mistakes in the previous version of this post. . .

Today is the first of many blog posts about food at Ramah Outdoor Adventure. Because the food we  eat at camp will play such an integral part in supporting the overall mission of the camp, I thought it appropriate to focus some of the blog posts leading up to camp on the use of food.

For those who missed the announcement yesterday, The First Lady, Michelle Obama, launched the “Let’s Move” campaign.  She has correctly singled out childhood obesity as a major epidemic facing America.   Her campaign aims to get kids off the couch, away from video games, and eating more wholesome food.  For anyone who has been aware of the growing food movement in America these past few years, nothing that she said yesterday is too surprising.   It is an indisputable fact that as a society, our children today are less healthy than they were a generation ago.  Anywhere from 25%-30% of American children are overweight.  As Mrs. Obama pointed out, today’s children are the first generation whose life expectancy is shorter than that of their parents. Read more

First of all congratulations to the winners of a free week of camp for February:  Ariel from New Rochelle  & Rose from California.

And now the blog post:  On Thursday night, I had the pleasure of holding a toast to Ramah Outdoor Adventure at a local bar in Midtown.  A fellow staff member from Camp Ramah in Canada, Sharon Zinns, who currently works as a lawyer in New York City was instrumental in helping to arrange the evening.

Originally, Sharon and I thought that we would use this gathering as a chance to reconnect with our Ramah friends from our years at camp and perhaps raise a few dollars to help campers afford to attend Ramah Outdoor Adventure in Colorado.  As it turned out, many of the people who came on Thursday were not people whom either of us knew from our time at camp, but rather, Ramahniks who wanted an excuse to come and meet their other camp friends and hear more about this exciting project.

Read more

I write this update having just returned from an afternoon at the Ramah in the Rockies Ranch.  We needed a 4 wheel drive vehicle to access the camp today, but once we reached the grounds it was amazing to drive around the pristine ranch.  As is the case in so much of Colorado this time of year, there were parts of the road that had no snow at all and others that were buried in one foot drifts!  I did get stuck a few times, but with the help of my passengers, we managed to push the SUV each time the wheels just wanted to spin.

Being at camp, made me realize that summer is around the corner.  We open for campers in under six months!  I could not have had this realization at a better point; last week we had our best week yet for recruiting.  We have been receiving so many inquiries, that Douglas, Elyssa and I are working overtime just to return emails and phone calls within one business day, as is the policy of Ramah Outdoor Adventure.  And, by the time this Chodesh Tov email is sent to the community, I expect that we will have already begun our waiting list for 6th & 7th grade boys in Session II. We have one more spot available, and about seven more families who I expect will want to register their son for this spot.  We will be working in the coming weeks to see whether we can find additional space for the younger boys who want to join us this summer, but in the meantime we will be taking names and opening spots only after we are certain we will be able to have appropriate accommodations for them. Read more

First, the winners of January’s “free week of camp” raffle are Amarissa from Colorado Springs and Emilie from Los Angeles.  Please note we attempt to contact winners by phone the day that their name is picked, but wait to send out the names to the rest of the community until the next blog posting.

And now onto the blog post. . .   I spend most of my time these days: recruiting, hiring, and working on other administrative aspects of our program for this summer.  On any given day I read and write about 100 work related emails & make about 10-20 phone calls.  While I still think I have one of the best jobs in the world, there are times when I am sitting in the office that I yearn to be at camp actually working with the counselors and campers.  After all, the reason I decided to dedicate my rabbinate to working with youth in a summer camp, is that I believe that if Jews want to lead meaningful Jewish lives they must connect with their Jewish identity in a deep, emotional, and passionate manner.  There is no better place to achieve this connection than at summer camp!

Read more

Thoughts on the New Year:

It has been a few weeks since last writing.  The month of December was a blur, with travel (two trips to Texas, one to N. California) and vacation.  But it is now 2010, which means that the summer is just around the corner.  So first some updates, then some musings:

  1. We had our best month yet for recruitment.  In the past ten days, we had nine 9th and 10th grade girls register for camp (considering that we only have 10-20 beds for this age group, this is quite a large percentage of the available spots).
  2. We made our second round of hires for the summer.  Some amazing people applied to be part of our team.  If we were running a huge camp, I would have hired most of those people who applied.  Sadly, we had to turn away many of the people who applied.  I have sent some of them to other Ramah camps, and helped direct others to alternative outdoor programs.  I am convinced that for some of the people we did not hire, this was one of the first times that they have been rejected from a job, because frankly, they were terrific.
  3. We had our best day yet on the website on December 15th, when we had 455 unique hits in one day!  The power of social marketing and networking!
  4. We have been hard at work securing the necessary permits for our trips for this summer.  We got confirmation from a few of the places where we plan to run trips for this summer and are awaiting word on many other trails.

And now for my musings:  Last weekend I spent the week at the Hazon food conference.  For those who are not familiar with Hazon, it is the largest Jewish environmental group in the country.  The purpose of the Food Conference was to bring together Jews who are making their relationship with food and the environment a key part of how they are living their Jewish lives.  There were over 650 attendees at the conference ranging in age from 3 months to over 85 years old!  In addition to eating yummy meals that often lasted more than an hour, I had a chance to meet amazing people involved in all sorts of interesting environmental work.

  • There was Farmer D who, in addition to building community gardens for schools, composts over 50,000 pounds of organic waste each week and sells it to farmers and home gardeners.
  • There was Rabbi Mike who has dedicated his life to helping Jews explore the outdoors through a Jewish lens.
  • There was Juliet who is an avid gardener and grows much of her own food in her backyard.
  • There was Eric who is the marketing brains behind a successful line of granola and organic bread that is found in markets throughout the country.
  • There was Joan who is a renowned cookbook author who has taught thousands of Jews the joys of Jewish cooking.
  • There was Elisheva who is helping to start a new Jewish commune in Colorado—an American Kibbutz 21st century style.

For me, there were three main take-home lessons from the food conference.

#1 Many Jews care deeply about the environment and the food that we are eating.  I know that for every person who attended the conference, there were probably at least 5-10 others who would love to have been there, but for one reason or another (mainly financial) could not make it.  Most of us from Denver received very generous grants from the Rose Foundation to attend the conference.  Without the assistance of Rose, this conference would have been out of reach for many of us.  But the conference also highlighted a major issue in the Jewish environmental movement.  At this point, eating healthy, sustainably grown food is an issue of class.  Sustainably grown food has higher upfront cost.  Today, I went to a farmers market, and bought a pound of broccoli grown about 75 miles away for double the cost of broccoli grown in South America and available for purchase at the local supermarket (I am in San Francisco as I write this).  I have the luxury of spending the extra $1.50 per pound.  But if my expenses were higher, say if I had two or three kids, I am not sure I would feel able to spend the extra money.

#2 There are very few ‘black and whites’ when it comes to eating.  I did not meet many people who said “only eat organic” or “only eat local” or “only eat vegetarian food”.   In general there is a trade off:

  • Organic food is often flown to us from far off places.  When one accounts for the amount of jet fuel it takes to eat a nice organic tomato from New Zealand, one must wonder how much environmental damage one is causing by eating these organic tomatoes.
  • If we only eat local, we might not be getting a good variety of produce.  For example, during this time of year, there is not much produce being grown in Colorado.
  • If we eat no meat, and just use soy as a source of protein, we are causing further damage to the land and our bodies, by taking in the extra hormones found in soy and encouraging monoculture agriculture.

The operative word is not “organic, vegetarian, or local,” but “sustainable.”  When we live in a sustainable manner with the environment, we realize that there are tradeoffs when we eat.  We take these tradeoffs into account, realizing that there is no such thing as the “perfect” food during each part of the year.  For some people, sustainable means eating less meat, for others it means eating more local produce and forgoing some foods in the off season, and for others it means only eating organic food.  But this is a deeply personal choice, one that no one at the conference was trying to dictate to others.  One of the messages of the conference was “be aware of what you are eating and make an educated choice.”

#3  There are some amazing educational enterprises going on today in the Jewish world.  I met teachers who were using the Hazon Tuv Haaretz curriculum in their classrooms, people who are working in camps, Hebrew schools, and synagogues, all of whom are making Jewish environmentalism a core part of their program.

And of course, I have to bring it back to camp. . . For camp, I hope to be able to raise awareness of all three of these issues.  We are committed to living this summer in a sustainable manner with the natural world.  This means every aspect of our program will be open for examination, from the food we eat, to the trails we hike to the resources we use in running the camp.  I look forward to engaging with our chalutzim about the choices we are making about the camp, from the manner we recruit (flying WAY too much) to the use of flush and composting toilets, to the food we are eating (sometimes choosing less expensive food from Costco, instead of locally grown produce).

To be a committed Jewish environmentalist does not mean to reject everything modern.  I believe it means to live in the tension of the modern world and understand that every day we make hundreds of choices that affect not just our own lives, but the lives of people in all parts of the world.  One of our goals at camp  is to empower our chalutzim to take these lessons home with them and help their family make more educated choices given their own personal situations.

The votes are in and the new edot (unit) עדות names have been chosen!

Over the past three months over 570 people cast their vote.  They selected from numerous choices, including twenty-five new names that focused on our activities in the Rockies such as Sayarim (rangers) סיירים and Bokarim (cowboys) בוקרים.  We hoped that by expanding the selection of names beyond the traditional Ramah names, we would have new edot that reflected the culture we are creating at this outdoor adventure camp.

Despite our hopes that these edot would be known by new names, tradition has reigned supreme!

And the names are (drum roll please. . .):  Read more

This weeks post is a VERY short one.  I just wanted to say congratulations to Noah from Boulder and Savannah from California for being the winners of the Ram Outdoor Adventure December raffle.  Both are entering 6th grade!  We are looking forward to seeing you guys at camp this summer.   The families were notified by phone on Monday, though we are only sending this out to the broader community today.

Remember, we give away two weeks of camp the first Monday of each month.  To enter our raffle for next month, please send an email with your child’s name, daytime phone number and email to freeweeksofcamp@ramahoutdoors.org

A more complete post will be coming next week.

Without a doubt the best part of doing this job has been the opportunity to speak with so many people who are passionate about the outdoors and excited that Ramah is finally opening an outdoor adventure camp. Some are Ramah alumni, other are campers while others are active members of their Jewish community and have seen the positive effect that Ramah has had on their friends and family.

Read more

I never went to Jewish camp as a kid.  I went to Boy Scout camp instead.  My parents did not want to send me to a place that they said was basically “a spa,” — which is how they described most Jewish summer camps.  I loved my Boy Scout camp (Camp Kunatah in upstate NY), and learned a ton about being in the outdoors and being a leader.  Even though the boy scouts are a mission based organization, and my camp was kosher (though not Jewish), I never felt an overwhelming connection to the other kids in my troop or to the camp as a whole.  I was friendly with all of them, but did not develop any deep, lasting or meaningful relationships with the group of kids with whom I spent three weeks at camp each summer.

After 11th grade, when I was finally able to work at Ramah, I went to Ramah in New England (AKA Ramah Palmer) where I worked as a lifeguard.  This summer literally changed my life!

Read more

I wrote this on Thursday night, but due to our system uploading updates on shabbat automatically, I am only now posting this– on Sunday night

I am writing this blog post on the way home from a recruiting trip to Houston.  This week has been a terrific week for recruiting.  It was the first week where I finally had a chance to sit in front of many groups of potential campers and talk about the camp.  From Sunday to Wednesday, I met with 8 different groups to talk about camp.   I spent time in Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs and Houston!  On  Shabbat I am teaching at Rodef Shalom.

Perhaps one of the most interesting  parts of the week was having the opportunity to recruit along side other camp directors.  While I am a veteran of camps (12 years on staff—5 on outdoors staff of Ramah in Canada) this is the first time I running a camp during the off season.  I never would have thought that camp directors, as a whole, are such a warm and friendly group.  Rather than seeing each other as competitors, I have found that most Jewish camp directors see each other as partners. Read more

What is in a name?

One of my favorite parts of starting this new Ramah camp has been the opportunity to reconnect with so many people who I have encountered in my 12 summers of working at Ramah.  Some of the campers who were my students in swimming lessons back in the mid 1990s are now colleagues in the Rabbinate.  Others whom I worked with on the waterfront or on the “tripping” staff at Ramah in Canada are now lawyers, teachers and parents.  But somehow, whether people have not been at a Ramah in the past 10 years or whether they are continuing to work at Ramah through their early parenting years, most still feel a strong connection to their friends from Ramah and to many of the traditions they were a part of at camp.

It was after many discussions with former Ramahniks, that I decided to start an online survey to help name the new edot (age groups) in this new Ramah camp.  I created a basic survey with the names of all the edot at Ramah and put it out there into the world of cyber space.  A little known fact is that every Ramah camp has different edot orders, though many have the same names. Read more

For better or for worse, Jewish educators like to say that the year really begins once the chagim are over.  From the end of the summer until the end of Sukoth/ simchat Torah the weeks fly by as we are either planning for a holiday or barely recovered from one when it is time to begin the next one.  As is often the case, the fall holidays never occur at the “right” time, either happening too early, or too late, on the weekends or in the middle of the week.  Sure enough, this year was true to form, and here I am on the 12th of October ready to begin the year! Read more

It has been two weeks since I have written a blog post.  I have to admit, that when I was hiking last week with David, I had wanted to whip out a computer at many points and write some of my thoughts.  But of course, we were in the back country and even though we did camp near our car each night, we did not have electricity and certainly no computer.  In short the trip was amazing. Read more