Gezahegn Dereve and Demoz Deboch have dreamed of making aliyah to Israel from Ethiopia for almost their entire lives.

As children, the young men moved with their families from rural villages to an Israeli government-sponsored Jewish compound in the Ethiopian city of Gondar, leaving behind everything they owned. They and thousands of other Ethiopians who claim Jewish lineage saw the journey as a first step toward making aliyah. 

Now, years later, having grown up immersed in Judaism, studying at a Jewish school, learning to speak Hebrew, reading the Torah and honoring Jewish traditions, Dereve and Deboch are still waiting to go to the Holy Land. On Aug. 14, the young men stood before dozens of teenagers and staff at Camp Ramah in Ojai to ask them to help put pressure on the Israeli government to allow them to fulfill their dream.

“We believe that our homeland is Israel,” Deboch, 24, said. “We believe we are brothers. We are from one ancestor — we came from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

“It is time to return to our country,” Dereve, 21, added. “We came here to make it soon, and to ask for help from you.”

Dereve and Deboch’s stop at Camp Ramah, a Conservative Jewish summer camp located about 80 miles north of Los Angeles, was part of a monthlong speaking tour organized by a group of American Jewish leaders and rabbis sympathetic to the plight of some 9,000 Ethiopian Jews waiting for aliyah in transit camps in Gondar and the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. These Jews, known as the Falash Mura, a pejorative Ethiopian term that means “outsider,” profess to come from a long line of Jews, although some of their ancestors converted to Christianity in the 18th and 19th centuries, often because of persecution and economic duress.  

Over the past 30 years, tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews have immigrated into Israel, including thousands of Falash Mura, with the help of the Israeli government. In 2013, the Jewish Agency announced the end of Ethhiopian aliyah, saying that Israel had finally “closed the circle” on returning these Jews to their ancestral homeland.

The 9,000 Falash Mura still living in Gondar and Addis Ababa, many of whom have relatives in Israel, did not qualify as Jewish under the country’s Law of Return. That law requires at least one Jewish grandparent and does not accept people who converted to another religion in the past. However, in November of last year, under mounting pressure, the Israeli government agreed to allow the remaining 9,000 Ethiopian Jews to immigrate.

That immigration has yet to happen. In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the state didn’t have the $1 billion it needed to absorb the remaining Falash Mura into Israeli society. A later agreement to bring some of the Falash Mura to Israel starting in June has stalled.

The delay is “devastating” for the Falash Mura, said David Elcott, a professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, who helped organize Dereve and Deboch’s visit to the United States.

“These guys both have siblings in Israel, aunts and uncles in Israel, cousins in Israel, nephews and nieces in Israel that they have not seen in 15 years,” Elcott said. “The idea that we would consciously and knowingly tear families apart is unconscionable just on a humanitarian basis.”

So far, Devere and Deboch have visited Jewish leaders, summer camps, rabbis and other members of the Jewish community in New York, Florida, Washington, D.C., and now Southern California. They spent three days at Camp Ramah, where they shared meals and participated in services, as well as speaking directly to about 500 campers. 

They are asking American Jews to put pressure on the Israeli government to speed up the immigration of the Falash Mura by signing an online petition. More than 600 people have signed the petition, accessible through the Facebook page titled “Return to Zion — Completing the Exodus of the Ethiopian Jews.”

Dereve told the Journal he has enjoyed meeting American Jews and is happy to be able to share his people’s story. But he also feels angry that he has to go to such lengths to achieve what he considers a birthright.

“We think and hope that the situation now will change and we will do aliyah and move to Israel,” he said, speaking in Hebrew through a translator. “But I think to myself, why are we asking for help all the time? Why can’t we just be like any other Jews? … We have to come all the way to America and talk about it and ask for help.”

The two men told the Journal their lives in Ethiopia are forever on hold as they wait to go to Israel. They said their community also is terrified by current ethnic strife in Ethiopia, and they worry that Jews — already ostracized by Christians and Muslims — will become targets. 

Both men said when they move to Israel, they intend to join the Israeli army. Deboch, currently a university student in Ethiopia, dreams of becoming an ambassador. Devere’s goal is to be a doctor.

Rabbi Joe Menashe, Camp Ramah’s executive director, said his decision to have the Ethiopians visit the summer camp was not an official endorsement of their request for support. However, Menashe said he believed campers would learn from the speakers about the broader Jewish community and the role of the State of Israel.

“At Camp Ramah, we believe in the State of Israel, we believe in the Jewish people, we believe in Jewish values, and this is something that touches all of those, and expands and exposes our kids to a real living, breathing part of the Jewish people,” he said. “We’re not just teaching about a subject in school, but we’re teaching about something that shapes who we are and the trajectory of lives.”

Some of the campers said they had already heard about the plight of the Ethiopian Jews, while others said it was their first time. Many marveled that the men had come from such a faraway place to visit.

Camper Aliza Abusch-Magder, 15, of Atlanta, said she was deeply touched by the men’s story and felt heartbroken that they have not been able to go to Israel.

“I thought it was really incredible. I mean, Israel is somewhere that was created as a safe haven for Jews and yet the Jews who need the safety and the love of the community the most aren’t getting it,” she said. It’s “really upsetting because it’s not how I like to picture Israel.”

Bradley Gerber, 15, of West Hills, said he was impressed with Dereve and Deboch and intended to sign their petition.

“I think it’s incredible that people from halfway across the world have such a passion to go to Israel,” he said. “I wish them the best of luck.”

The sky is clearing after a damp morning at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, and kids are emerging from their cluttered bunks.

An impromptu Frisbee game breaks out on the lawn, while down by the lake a counselor prepares the water trampoline and surf kayaks. On the other side of the 200-acre expanse, a staffer tests the high ropes obstacle course. Nearby, a group of teenagers is shooting hoops at the covered basketball courts, where industrial fans turn the sultry air.

There’s something else going on at this camp, Ramahniks say, though it may not be as visible: inculcation of Jewish values. Every day begins with prayer, Hebrew suffuses the camp vernacular, counselors sprinkle discussions of Jewish ethics into nearly every activity and Friday night is many campers’ favorite time of the week.

“It’s a Conservative Jewish utopia,” said counselor Deborah Pollack, 21. “You can get Jewish values on the sports field, doing art. We can all find our access points here. I really grew all my passion for Judaism here.”

By nearly all accounts, the Ramah network of Conservative Jewish summer camps is one of the brightest spots in the Conservative movement, which has seen notable declines in affiliation, congregational membership and the fiscal health of its central institutions over the last two decades.

Counselors and alumni alike describe their Ramah experiences as among the most formative of their childhoods, if not the primary influence on their Jewish identity, and Ramah draws campers from across the denominational spectrum, from Orthodox to unaffiliated. Three new Ramah camps have opened since 1997, and a fourth will be added this summer.

It’s not hard to see why campers and counselors love Ramah: As at other summer camps, it’s a home away from home where kids get to hang out with their friends all the time and have fun.

For Ramahniks, 50 percent of whom attend public schools, it’s also a place where young Jews can revel in their Jewish identity without feeling like outsiders, and where doing Jewish is seen as cool. That sensation is not always easy to come by at synagogue or Hebrew school.

More than 750 campers and 300 counselors went to Camp Ramah in the Berkshires in the summer of 2015. 

“Here you’re allowed to explore whatever type of Judaism you’re comfortable with,” said Sam Teitelbaum, 23, who has been going to Ramah in the Berkshires for 14 summers. “Hebrew school can only do so much. Camp has had a huge impact on my life. Everything I know about Judaism has come from camp. I met my girlfriend at camp.”

Studies long have pointed to Jewish summer camp as one of the most effective ways to excite young people about Jewish life and identity, and there’s been an explosion of new Jewish summer camps over the past few years as faith in the efficacy of summer camps has taken hold in the Jewish organizational world. (“Camp Works” was the title of a much-circulated 2011 study commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Camp on the long-term impact of Jewish overnight camp.)

What makes Ramah distinct, say its fans, is that it’s a place to cultivate and celebrate a brand of Judaism that is serious, yet pluralistic and joyful – the hallmarks of what the Conservative movement aspires to be.

“It’s a community infused with Conservative Jewish doctrine — from kashrut to Shabbat to daily prayer,” said Jason Miller, a Conservative rabbi and entrepreneur in Detroit who worked for three summers at Ramah while in rabbinical school. “The magic of the Camp Ramah experience is that it’s a 24/7 shtetl of Jewish life. It gives the children and staff a four- or eight-week taste of what that type of Jewish living is all about.”

Rabbi Mitch Cohen, national director of Ramah, says the camps have become a magnet for parents looking to give their kids a strong Jewish identity.

“This is a place where we live Judaism 24/7,” Cohen told JTA. “We’re not the only camps that do it well, but many camps are just camps for Jews with only a few Jewish programs. At Ramah, Jewish education is part of the fabric of camp life.”

Ramah, which operates as a subsidiary of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative movement’s flagship academic institution, now has nine overnight camps and four day camps in the United States and Canada — including the new Camp Ramah in Northern California due to open this summer.

The waterfront at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires includes a wide variety of inflatable toys and surf kayaks.

In all, that’s about 10,000 campers and staff per year, according to Cohen. Still, he pointed out, that figure is only 6-7 percent of camp-age kids in the Conservative movement.

“Our biggest failure is that we don’t grow faster,” Cohen said, noting that not a single new Ramah sleepaway camp opened between 1964 and 1997.

Over the past 20 years, Ramah has added overnight camps in Georgia (Ramah Darom in 1997), Colorado (Ramah in the Rockies in 2010) and California. A new Ramah day camp opened last summer in the Washington, D.C., area.

“There’s plenty of market share out there for us to grow in,” Cohen said.

Yet some alumni say that while Ramah is doing a great job, the Conservative movement should support alternative camps that can appeal to the 90 percent of Conservative kids not going to Ramah because of the perception that it’s too religious.

According to Cohen, there are more modern Orthodox kids at Ramah than children from liberal or unaffiliated Jewish families: About 70 percent of Ramah campers come from Conservative synagogues, 15-20 percent from modern Orthodox homes, 8 percent from unaffiliated families, and 5 percent from the Reform or Reconstructionist movements.

“Ramah was designed as a leadership camp for the intellectual leadership of the Conservative movement,” said one Ramah alumnus who asked to remain anonymous. “But the Conservative movement’s problem is not so much a lack of leadership as a lack of followership. For the vast majority of Conservative Jews, Ramah is way too Jewy. Where are the Conservative movement camps for them?”

Cohen acknowledged that many Conservative-affiliated families think of Ramah in this way, yet he said those who “take the time to get to know the real Ramah find our Jewish and religious programming very accessible.” Among the other reasons Conservative families don’t send their kids to Ramah is the cost (about$9,000 for a full summer at Ramah in the Berkshires) and the myriad other summer options out there, Cohen said.

Yet in many Conservative communities, Ramah is presented as the only option. Some Conservative synagogues won’t allow representatives of camps other than Ramah to recruit there.

“I grew up with a rabbi who said from the bimah: If you don’t send your child to Ramah, you were doing something wrong,” said Jeremy Fine, a rabbi in Minnesota.

Meanwhile, Ramah is trying to export its magic formula to the rest of the movement. Several years ago the network launched the Ramah Service Corps fellowship, a program for Ramah alumni to try to bring Ramah’s spirit and style to local communities and synagogues throughout the year. The Ramah alumni association,Reshet Ramah, is similarly committed.

“We no longer look at ourselves as just a camp,” said the longtime director of Ramah in the Berkshires, Rabbi Paul Resnick. “We’re a community-building enterprise.”

Julie Platt is one of Los Angeles’ most devoted Jewish communal leaders and philanthropists. For the past two years, she has served as general campaign chair for The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. She is also a past board chair of Camp Ramah, led the advisory board of directors for the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and serves on the board of the Foundation for Jewish Camp. For the past 36 years, Platt has been married to film and theater producer Marc Platt, whom she met as a freshman at their alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. They have five children, ages 16 to 32, and an active family foundation. On a recent morning, Platt sat down in her Westwood living room to talk about her plans for Federation when she takes over as board chair in January. “It’s not the sexiest place to be a volunteer,” she said, “so you’re doing it out of purity of purpose. And the kind of people that are attracted to that work are my kind of people.” 

Jewish Journal: You grew up in Wichita, Kan., in a very small Jewish community. What was that like?

Julie Platt: On a great day, we were 1,000 people. In my high school graduating class of 671 students, I was the only Jew. But I actually think that when you are from a small town, the necessity to stand up and be counted is even stronger. … I felt from the beginning that if we Jews didn’t look out for the Jewish community, there wasn’t anybody else to step up. It wasn’t out of a sense of peril; it was a feeling of “l’dor v’dor,” that I was a link in the chain.

JJ: What does being Jewish mean to you?

JP: I think Judaism makes sense. I think we got it right, of what people need. We need a roadmap. And, honestly, the best example I can think of are the laws of mourning. They’re so helpful. Holidays and Shabbat and rituals are, for me, an opportunity to gather as family. And that’s the most precious time for me. 

JJ: You have chosen to go beyond traditional philanthropy to play an enormous volunteer role in the Los Angeles Jewish community. Why was that important to you?

JP: [My parents] imparted to me that you have to be supportive of the community in which you live, which they both were, in a very big way. My father was the chairman of the board of education and actually integrated the school system in Wichita, which was a very big deal. So I understood the obligation to be involved civically in your community, but transcending it all was this complete responsibility to the Jewish people. I have this memory of when we all went on vacation in 1967; I was 10, and the ’67 war hit while we were on vacation. None of us ever left the room. The six of us stayed and watched television for the entire duration of the Six-Day War. I remember being terrified. 

JJ: What was your most formative Jewish experience?

JP: Camp Ramah. It changed my life. I remember no place feeling more at home as a Jew than surrounded by that environment. For me, it was like Disneyland, because I didn’t have any Jewish kids around me in Wichita, so to go and make Jewish friends all summer long was just indescribable. I counted the minutes [during the school year] till it was time to go back.

JJ: As a kid, what did you dream of being when you grew up?

JP: Honestly? I only wanted to be a mother. The dream for my life was to be a mother. Second to being a mother was finding the right husband — so I could be a mother. 

JJ: But as the daughter of very active parents — your father was an oil and gas producer and your mother was civically involved — was it rebellious not to pursue a career?

JP: I wanted to be a mother, not a stay-at-home mother. I just wanted to be a parent. That was the No. 1. Simultaneous to that, I thought about joining my father’s business, but Wichita didn’t seem where I would want to spend my life, particularly after I met Marc, who was clearly going to be in the entertainment world. But I did go into corporate banking; I had a deep love of business and of math, and wanted to use that. I went into corporate banking right out of college at University of Pennsylvania. 

JJ: Of the many Jewish institutions you’re involved with, why do you choose to devote most of your time to Federation?

JP: I do believe in it as the central convener of the Los Angeles Jewish community. What has always impressed me is that it is an organization willing to look at itself, to make sure it is on the right path. And it’s not afraid to stumble or refocus or redirect until we get it right. It’s not what people think it is.

JJ: You think Federation is misunderstood?

JP: I think people think it’s a behemoth, that it’s a black hole where you don’t know where your money is going, where we’re blindly writing checks to agencies and that we have no handle on a vision or strategy. And that’s just incorrect. We’re not a black hole. We’re not an umbrella. We’re a convener that works really carefully with partners to take care of this community in every way that we can. And if that means creating something new, we’ll do that. If it means supporting something existing, we’ll do that. And if it simply means getting out of the way because someone else is doing it better, we’ll do that. 

JJ: What has been your biggest challenge there?

JP: Not being able to successfully bring along all the people that I wish I could. And I’d say, most specifically, many people in the entertainment community. That’s sort of my chief goal as chair.

JJ: I’m so glad you brought that up! You’re married to the big-deal producer of Broadway’s “Wicked,” the “Legally Blonde” film franchise and, most recently, Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies.” So you’ve had an insider’s view of Hollywood for many years. What’s your take on why Hollywood Jews are not more active in Jewish communal life or more publicly supportive of Israel?

JP: I want to be careful, because I want to be successful with this group. I do think that the entertainment community gets a bad rap. There are more [entertainment] people who care about the Jewish people than the community thinks, but there is an enormous amount of people in entertainment whom we haven’t brought along yet. And that is my mission. Marc and I have had several small gatherings in our home, and when given the opportunity to explain our work, and speak to people one-on-one, [we have found] there is a Jewish responsibility [in Hollywood], and there is a Jewish soul. It’s rarely tapped into in the world in which they live, and I have to find the way to tap into it. One by one, I’m willing to take on the challenge. 

Alex Michaels will tell you that his dog, Frisco, is no ordinary household pet.

As a trained therapy and service dog, the 2 1/2-year-old poodle is a primary comfort-giver and companion to Alex’s mom, Marlene Michaels, who is fighting stage 4 lung cancer. He stays by her side during the day when Alex; his older brother, Stephen; and his dad, Randy, are out. Frisco patiently accompanies Marlene to all her doctor appointments and the hospital for treatments. And he is a source of love and emotional support to the entire Michaels family as they struggle to cope with Marlene’s illness.

So when Alex, 13, of Westlake Village, considered what to do for his mitzvah project this year, he and his parents knew they wanted to help other families experience the joy that Frisco has given them. Alex, who celebrated his bar mitzvah on March 28 at Camp Ramah in Ojai, set up an online campaign to raise $5,000 to help pay the cost of training a service or therapy dog for other families. As of May 6, he’d raised more than half of his goal.

“I want to raise money to help more people,” said Alex, who attends the Conservative Shomrei Torah Synagogue in West Hills. “I hope it’ll make them feel happy.”

His own family first thought about looking for a service dog for themselves in late 2012, shortly after Marlene was diagnosed. Randy said the family felt that having a dog would provide some relief from the constant focus on his wife’s cancer. 

A friend put them in touch with Jill Breitner, a service and therapy dog trainer who until recently was based in the Los Angeles area and now lives in Northern California. Breitner said she knew of a puppy that would be perfect for them, and the family arranged to meet her and Frisco at a park in Encino.

“It was love at first sight,” Randy said. “He really took not only to the boys but also was so warm and loving toward Marlene, which is a really good sign for a service dog.”

Over the next few months, Breitner trained Frisco, who lived with a breeder. By April 2013, Frisco was ready to begin life in his new home. Marlene said she was worried at first that having both a dog and children in the house would be too chaotic, but Frisco soon proved to be an uplifting and well-behaved member of the family.

“It’s like having a little friend. It’s like mental comfort,” said Marlene, who explained Frisco wears a service dog jacket that allows him to go everywhere with her, including medical facilities. “Wherever I go, he just comes with me. … He keeps me company, and he’s just very easy.” 

When it came time to begin his mitzvah project, Alex had a plan. He called his fundraising campaign “Pi for Pets”  (youcaring.com/piforpets) because, as he writes on his campaign page: “my birthday is 3.14, I love my Frisco to infinity and WHO DOESN’T LOVE PIE!!!!!”

Randy said the family has already identified one person in need and is working with the cancer treatment center City of Hope in Duarte to find others. He said the full cost of training a service dog can range between $5,000 and $10,000, so it won’t be possible to pay the full amount, but Alex plans to help offset about $750 for each family, depending on need. 

Breitner said she was impressed when Alex first talked about doing the project, which she said he did soon after his family got Frisco.

“I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what an incredible thing for an 11-year-old to think about doing,’ ” she said. “I think it’s awesome; I think it’s incredible. It’s a testament to the family in how they’ve raised this little munchkin who’s turning into being a wonderful young man.”

Breitner said the definition of service dogs has expanded greatly since the days when they were used primarily as visual aids for the blind. Today, service dogs are used to help people who have various disabilities, and they can perform tasks such as helping people open doors, pick things up, press buttons and carry groceries. Therapy dogs, which are different from service dogs, provide comfort and cheer to people with cancer and other illnesses, she said. Frisco is trained as both a therapy and a service dog, although he is being used as a therapy dog.

Randy said his family is excited to introduce more families to the benefits of having a well-trained service or therapy dog.

“I don’t think we ever imagined [Frisco] would make as much of an impact as he has on our lives,” he said. “It’s just really important for us to raise awareness for service animals to be trained properly and matched up with the right family.”

Like many children and teenagers, Michael Rosenbaum of Los Feliz sees going to summer camp as a highlight of his year.

He relishes the outdoor activities, cooking classes, swimming, dancing and games at Camp Ramah in Ojai. He enjoys connecting with his Jewish heritage through daily celebrations and songs, and he especially loves seeing his camp friends from previous years. And, since last summer, the 18-year-old has been thrilled at the opportunity to work at the camp as a cooking teacher’s assistant.

Rosenbaum’s trajectory from camp participant to camp helper is typical of many teenagers as they reach adulthood, but for him, the transition is particularly auspicious. Rosenbaum has Down syndrome, a genetic disorder that makes it difficult for him to participate in many of the activities other children at summer camp take for granted. Yet, according to his mother, Rony Rosenbaum, he has been able to take part fully, thanks to Camp Ramah’s programs for special needs youth.

“It’s really one of the most incredible programs that you can possibly imagine for these kids,” she said. “The kids are not just integrated into everything that the whole rest of the camp does, they’re rock stars. Kids in the rest of the camp actually fight to be their buddies.”

Camp Ramah (ramah.org) runs an umbrella initiative called Tikvah for children and youth with special needs, under which three programs are available: Ohr Lanu, a weeklong family camp in early June for special needs children, their parents and siblings; Amitzim, where special needs children ages 11 to 17 participate alongside regular attendees in Camp Ramah; and Ezra, a seven-week vocational training program for young adults. The goal is to make summer camp something that youth of all abilities can enjoy, and where they can find a welcome place as members of the Jewish community, Tikvah director Elana Naftalin-Kelman said. About 80 children with a wide range of disabilities attend the programs each year, mostly from the Los Angeles area, she said. 

The Ezra vocational program takes the participation of special needs teenagers and young adults to a new level. The program grew out of recognition at Camp Ramah that there needed to be opportunities for young people with disabilities to continue their camp experience after they turned 18, even though they are unable to become counselors, Naftalin-Kelman said.

Under the Ezra program, youth ages 17 to 23 live at the camp in Ojai and are given jobs, either within the camp or at businesses in town. Tasks at the camp include setting up and clearing tables in the dining hall, helping staff run the sports programs, working in the mail and supply rooms or running the staff store, where they make smoothies and sandwiches. Jobs in Ojai have included work at the local library, a grocery store, a senior living facility and an animal shelter.

In addition, participants receive daily life-skills lessons to help them become more independent, such as cooking healthy meals, setting up a bank account and using public transportation. Three times a week, they attend classes on Jewish holidays, keeping kosher, what it means to be a Jewish adult and other aspects of Jewish life.

Naftalin-Kelman said the experience helps them develop independence, self-confidence and a sense of belonging. She said many families have struggled to find acceptance in the communities they live in because of their child’s disability and often do not belong to a synagogue. 

“These families are more often than not feeling like they’ve been rejected from the Jewish community,” she said. “Camp Ramah is their Jewish community.”

That’s not the case for Rosenbaum, an Ezra program participant who is keenly devout and involved at Temple Israel of Hollywood, his mother said. 

“The Jewish aspect of Ramah is key to how much he loves it there,” she said. “[Jewish traditions] are really, really important to him, and for that reason it’s really important to us.”

Rosenbaum said he’s looking forward to attending Camp Ramah again this summer. The reason is simple: “It’s my favorite place.”

For many Jews, nothing cooks up piping-hot nostalgia quite like reminiscing about summer camp. Adults who recall those times may think back to pounding on tables during birkat (grace after meals), intense and often heated Maccabiah competitions or “color wars” and musical theater performances. 

For some, that list might include memories of meeting that special someone. For the rest, it might not be too late, thanks to some help from the Internet. 

RamahDate, a specialized online dating platform that Camp Ramah and matchmaking powerhouse JDate are working on together, will launch in May. It will give alumni of the Conservative Camp Ramah movement — campers and staff — the opportunity to mingle online and possibly even quiet the kvetching of frustrated Jewish mothers. 

Rabbi Mitchell Cohen, the National Ramah Commission’s national director, told the Journal that parents of Ramah alums have been adamant for years that the experience of camp shouldn’t stop after camp. 

“Mothers and fathers have been asking me for the last seven or eight years, ‘My son or daughter didn’t meet anyone at camp, so why can’t there be some sort of online dating?’ ” Cohen said. 

But many did meet spouses through camp, a shared experience that creates a powerful bond. Cohen claims that Ramah can identify at least 700 such couples — and more than 300 Ramah marriages are registered on ramahmarriages.org, complete with touching stories of how the couples met.  With others undoubtedly uncounted, Cohen said he firmly believes there are well over a thousand couples who met at Ramah. 

Lauren Ross, a 41-year-old social worker at a Denver public school, met her husband, David, a piano teacher, while staffing together at Camp Ramah in Ojai in the early ’90s. They eventually got married on the picturesque Ojai camp and now have two children together. 

“David and I have a lot of similarities because of the camp experience,” Ross said. “It’s definitely something that came up.”

Sarah Shulman, the education director at Temple Ramat Zion in Northridge and newly appointed camp director at the soon-to-be Camp Ramah in Northern California, met her husband, Nate, while staffing together at Ramah Outdoor Adventure in Colorado five years ago. 

“It’s not always easy to find people who share common values and interests and that are also Jewish,” Shulman said. “It wasn’t always easy to meet people who wanted to spend their summers like I did. When I met Nate, I was baffled and in awe of how much we had in common. I just thought, ‘He’s a teacher who’s Jewish with incredible outdoor adventure skills. This guy exists?’ I heard about people getting married based on Ramah. It wasn’t until I became one of those people that I understood how that really happens.” 

Marriages that originated in camps long have been a source of pride for Ramah leadership. Campgrounds are covered with plaques inscribed with the names of couples who met at camp and who often have their wedding ceremonies there. And while there’s long been interest by some in creating an online meeting place to give adults an opportunity to engage with other alums who share their core values, the question for people like Cohen was: Would people actually use it? Not to mention, initial research indicated that implementing such a site would cost the nonprofit National Ramah Commission $150,000. 

Things started to move ahead after the formation of Reshet Ramah, the camp’s alumni network that took shape in 2012, thanks in large part to $1.8 million in grants from the Avi Chai Foundation and the Maimonides Fund. The newly formed organization set out to strengthen and connect an alumni network of 200,000 and initiate a variety of new programs based in Jewish engagement for adults of all ages. According to Cohen, Reshet Ramah estimated there to be a subset of 15,000 singles under the age of 40 among its network. 

Cohen and his cohorts at the New York-based National Ramah Commission had previously worried that online dating and its reputation would scare off users. But now, JDate reports that half of married Jewish couples meet online; all involved agreed that this hurdle had been cleared and that the only hurdle remaining was financing the project. 

Laura Belinfante, National Ramah Commission’s program marketing manager, saw working with JDate as a no-brainer.

“It’s a reputable, proven model. I knew it would be great for us to have the JDate name behind the project and that it would help make our product more reputable,” she said. “Once we got on the phone and they became aware of how many alumni we had and that they’d have direct marketing to those people, from their end, it was just like, ‘OK, great.’ ” 

According to Belinfante, the partnership with JDate will alleviate much of the upfront financial burden. Its engineers, project management and customer service teams will be the ones essentially creating the service. 

Ramah users will simply subscribe to JDate and provide their Ramah background with such pieces of information as camp attended and years at camp. Then, Ramah users will receive a badge that will be featured on their profile. They then have the option to interact with all of JDate’s 750,000 active users or only with fellow Ramah badge holders. It will operate like any other online dating filter service.

“We felt that it was important to make the registration process distinguished from the JDate process. Other than that, it’s the same. We wanted to stand out and make alumni feel like it was a little different,” Belinfante said. 

Sarah Koppel Smith, a 26-year-old geriatric social worker in New York who met her husband at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, is excited about the possibilities. Smith believes in the mystique of the Ramah romance and points to values that were largely learned and honed at Ramah as the foundation of her relationship. 

“It’s more than just a camp. It’s a way of life,” she said. “I think it’s something really special to be with someone who also went to Ramah. I’m really excited for my single friends! I hope it works!”

Negotiations with JDate also resulted in an agreement to donate 70 percent of Ramah users’ initial subscription fees to camp scholarships. 

“We want to make this appealing to alumni. They can get a service and can be donating to an organization they obviously care about through that service,” Belinfante said. “They’re able to contribute in a meaningful way.” 

As the May launch date approaches, Belinfante and her colleagues at the National Ramah Commission are working diligently with JDate to get the website up and running and are planning launch parties in at least four Israeli and North American cities, Los Angeles likely being one of them. 

Rabbi Joe Menashe, the executive director of Camp Ramah in Ojai, expressed to the Journal his admiration for Ramah’s forward thinking and commitment to its vast network of alumni. 

“The Ramah movement now welcomes over 10,000 campers and staff a summer, and why should we limit the potential to find our beshert to only one camp limited by one’s year?” Menashe said. “We’d be ignoring our mission if we did not take advantage of technology to facilitate [campers’ and alumni’s] connection more easily and naturally around the world.”

CORRECTION 2/5/15: This article originally stated that Ramah users would have to provide the names of their camp counselors in order to subscribe.

Approximately 900 people turned out for the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Centennial Gala on Dec. 10, which was held at the Beverly Hilton hotel. 

“The event raised nearly $1.4 million to support ADL efforts to combat anti-Semitism and bigotry of all kinds,” said a statement by the ADL, which was founded in 1913. 

It also honored several community members, including Barbara and Thomas Leanse and George David Kieffer — “for their excellence in their professional fields and community leadership,” the ADL statement said.

Speakers included Los Angles World Airports Police Chief Patrick Gannon, who was part of the official response team to the recent deadly shooting at LAX; UCLA student Sunny Singh, a participant in ADL’s campus leaders mission; Detective Chris Keeling of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department; and high school teacher Katherine Friedman, who has taught ADL’s Holocaust education curriculum to her students.

Additionally, UC Irvine School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky attended, presenting the Jurisprudence Award to Kieffer, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and member of the Board of Regents of the University of California. Meanwhile, the Leanses received the Humanitarian Award, in recognition of their philanthropic efforts.

“It is incumbent on all of us to help when we can,” said Thomas Leanse, senior executive vice president, chief legal officer and secretary of the Macerich Co., a real-estate company based in Santa Monica. Barbara Leanse is staff director of Cedars-Sinai’s volunteer services.

Other attendees included ADL National Director Abraham Foxman. The event was emceed by actor Mark Feuerstein and included musical entertainment from the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.

The Shalom Institute’s 2013 gala, which took place on Dec. 5, honored Camp JCA Shalom alumni Jennifer Rheuban, Barri Worth Girvan and Jacob Knobel. More than 300 people turned out for the event, which was held at the Peterson Automotive Museum, in the Miracle Mile.

Camp JCA Shalom, a sleep-away camp in Malibu, is Shalom Institute’s “biggest and most known program,” according to shalominstitute.com.

The event shed light on the honorees’ various accomplishments. Rheuban, an institute board member, created Adult Color Wars, which raises money for camp scholarships; Worth Girvan is the director of government affairs and community engagement programs for The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and is a former staff member in the L.A. mayor’s office; and Knobel, a software engineer and entrepreneur, has supported Shalom Institute’s technological infrastructure. 

Rheuban received the Trailblazers Award. Worth Girvan and Knobel both received the Emerging Young Leaders Award.

Camp Ramah in California celebrated board member Bruce Whizin on Nov. 17 at Sinai Temple.

“Everybody in this room deserves to be up here,” said Whizin, a philanthropist in the Jewish community who has supported Camp Ramah for many years.

The Westwood fundraiser for the Conservative movement’s summer camp in Ojai drew more than 360 attendees, including clergy who once worked or camped there. Among them were Rabbis Ed Feinstein (Valley Beth Shalom), Sharon Brous (IKAR) and David Wolpe (Sinai Temple). The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles president Jay Sanderson also attended the event.

Ramah-California Executive Director Rabbi Joe Menashe called the event a “multigenerational celebration of Camp Ramah.”

Moving and Shaking acknowledges accomplishments by members of the local Jewish community, including people who start new jobs, leave jobs, win awards and more, as well as local events that featured leaders from the Jewish and Israeli communities. Got a tip? E-mail it to ryant@jewishjournal.com.

In 2007, my three daughters asked me if they could go to summer camp along with their school  friends. For the previous several years, I had always said no. It was far, it was costly. And summer was the only time I had vacation from work, and I wanted to spend that time with my children. I said I would think about it.  

That day at work I stopped in to see one of my colleagues and told her of my dilemma. She asked me if I had ever attended a Jewish summer camp as a child. I told her I had never been to a camp of any kind. She went on to explain what camp had meant to her growing up, and following her bat mitzvah, she said, it was the only thing that kept her involved in her religion, temple and Jewish community. I decided that there would be no harm in sending my kids for one summer, and we would get back to our normal summer plans the following year.  

What I did not realize then was that camp would indeed change their lives, and our days of long family summer vacations were over. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make once I realized the impact camp would have on their confidence and development over the next five years.  

My girls have all graduated from Camp Ramah, the eldest having just finished her second summer as a camp counselor, my two younger girls pining for their turns to become counselors as well. They have taken away from camp several important life lessons from their camp experience. The first is the importance of committing themselves to service within our Jewish community, in spite of living and going to school in a secular environment. My girls have participated in the Friendship Circle, working with Jewish children with special needs. They have been teaching assistants in our Talmud Torah Program, as well as active members of United Synagogue Youth. Most of their volunteer activities are within our Jewish community, and I believe this stems from the concept of tikkun olam, healing the world, which was emphasized and modeled so strongly at summer camp. My girls always told me that a big part of camp was learning the importance of the passing down of tradition, and providing others with the experiences they were privileged to have themselves.  

My girls learned that all Jewish kids do not come from middle-class, two-parent families. At camp they became friends with kids from varying backgrounds who had family problems including divorce, illness, financial stressors and mental-health issues. They met kids being raised by grandparents and kids who had been in foster care. They roomed with kids who were very wealthy and others who were financially challenged.  Everyone was treated equally, and most shared openly. When we had our own family stressors, camp became a safe haven for my girls and a place they could talk to friends and counselors, and receive unconditional love, support, understanding and plenty of healthy advice. In the last year my girls were at camp, our financial situation had drastically changed and we were unable to afford the expense. I explained our financial situation when I applied for financial aid. I was asked what I needed for them to attend and was granted that amount. I will always be grateful for the generosity shown to me and our family during our own time of need.

Each summer when I picked my kids up from camp I observed a maturity that had developed over the course of the month. When they came home to their own neighborhood and school, they were able to make good decisions for themselves in terms of who they chose as their friends and what they chose as their entertainment. I have never had to worry about what my girls were doing on a Friday or Saturday night when they were out with their friends. The foundation they received from home was the same as they received at camp. Camp prepared them for the many temptations faced by our teens. Their sense of right and wrong, moral and not, can be credited as much to camp as what we have tried to instill as parents.  

Jewish summer camp has made my children better people. There are only so many life lessons that a parent can impart. To experience goodness, kindness, learning and a commitment to Judaism, all on a grassy knoll and under tall pine trees, is more than I could have ever wished.  

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles is holding its first Tour de Summer Camps on Oct. 27. This community-wide cycling event is raising funds for Jewish summer camp scholarships, in support of Federation’s ongoing work ensuring our Jewish future. Riders can choose from one of three scenic routes of 36, 62 or 100 miles. To sign up, make a donation, become a sponsor or volunteer, visit TourdeSummerCamps.org.

Rose Bern isn’t afraid to fight for her values.

The 17-year-old, who recently graduated from Shalhevet High School and lives in Westwood, has strong convictions when it comes to feminism, justice and fairness. 

In the ninth grade, she gave a passionate speech at her school about women serving as rabbis. She sits on the Fairness Committee, where she and her peers hear cases between two students or a teacher and a student and decide upon a verdict. One day, she might even decide to be a prosecuting attorney and “serve justice to people who deserve it,” she said. “There are certain issues that really get me pumped up.”

Her former music appreciation teacher and journalism advisor Joelle Keene has noticed Bern’s enthusiasm about different causes.

“She's a firecracker,” she said. “She has a tremendous amount of passion, personality, drive and a sense of outrage too.”

Keene said that at Shalhevet, Bern’s candid nature made her stand out amongst the other students.

“She gets fired up about the way things ought to be,” she said. “At the town hall meetings at school, where they present a moral dilemma about school policy, news or the dress code, she'll feel more strongly about it than most of the kids.”

No doubt this tremendous energy has served Bern well in other areas of her life as well, whether through the award-winning writing she did for Shalhevet’s newspaper, The Boiling Point; her acting in numerous drama productions; or her passionate work on the debate team. She even wrote three one-act plays that were produced.

Somehow, she still finds time to be a babysitter every other Shabbat at her shul, the Westwood Village Synagogue, and work as a counselor at Camp Ramah in California.

In 2014, she’ll attend New York University (NYU). But before she goes to the East Coast, she’s taking a yearlong trip to Israel, where she plans to live on multiple kibbutzim and travel the country.

“I really wanted a year to decompress, and I think this is the prime opportunity to do this,” she said. “Once you go to college you don't have much time to explore the world.”

Though Bern said she doesn’t know what she’ll major in at NYU or what kind of career she will end up choosing, she’s interested in the fields of law and psychology.

“I took Advanced Placement psychology this year, and it was the most fascinating thing in the world,” she said. “[Learning about] the way people behave and why they behave that way, [as well as about] their inner consciousness really struck me.”

What’s most important to Bern is making sure that she is content with whatever she chooses to do. 

“I want to make sure that at the end of my life, I did everything I could,” she said. “I want to be able to look back and say I did it all because I wanted to, and I didn’t let outside circumstances, like money, [dictate my life]. I just want to be happy.”

As a key leader in a number of organizations at Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth, it’s hard to imagine that Michael Sacks ever felt left out. After all, the 18-year-old senior is student body president, chapter co-founder and co-president of Future Business Leaders of America, team captain of the speech and debate and mock trial clubs, and business director and opinion editor of the school paper, The Trailblazer. 

And yet …

“As an observant Jewish student at a secular school, I often felt as if I was the ‘odd one out’ for keeping kosher, observing Shabbat or missing school on Jewish holidays,” he said. 

The answer for Sacks was United Synagogue Youth (USY), the Jewish youth group associated with the Conservative movement for which he now is international president.

“USY provided me with a community of empowerment, one that truly allowed me to become comfortable with my Judaism and with myself,” said Sacks, a former regional vice president and president and international board member.

As president, he travels to the East Coast a few times per year to help set up conferences and communicate with the organization’s leadership. Sacks also serves as representative of six states in the West, including Hawaii, making sure “all operations on a youth level are continuing on a day-to-day basis.”

His personal initiatives at the organization involve connecting USY alumni with present members. Sacks said he is creating an alumni college database of former USY members to help prospective college students navigate the application process. And for two years, he has worked on USY Speaks, which he said “reaches out to every single congregation that has a USY chapter in the country, urging the congregational leadership to afford a past or present USYer [a chance] to speak about his or her experience in USY.” 

[Next Grad: Sepora Makabeh]

Along with his work at USY, the Calabasas resident attended Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, a Jewish summer camp in New York, where he was a counselor-in-training for children with special needs. 

An accomplished student, Sacks will attend Harvard in the fall. When he’s older, Sacks wants to work for an institution like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. “I always thought those were cool,” he said.

In addition to his keen interest in government, Sacks is passionate about social issues. He is the chapter president of the Human Rights Watch Student Task Force at his school, where he sets up speeches, conducts informational sessions and leads social action campaigns. In 2011, he founded Bridging the Gap, a club that brings in speakers to talk about the Middle East conflict. 

Sacks said his ultimate goal in life involves making an impact on the world that extends far beyond the confines of Southern California. “I realize that I have been blessed with opportunity at every step of the way,” he said, “and I hope to make the best of those opportunities.”

With “Faith Unravels: A Rabbi’s Struggle With Grief and God,” Rabbi Daniel Greyber, former executive director of Camp Ramah in California, has written a memoir that explores the unique grieving process of a clergyman.

“How can I provide consolation when I myself need comfort?” Greyber writes midway through the book, after the death of his best friend.

The friend is Joel Shickman, who served as Ramah’s rosh musika (head of music) during the summers of 2005 and 2006. Shickman died at the age of 37 as the result of a rare form of leukemia. At the time, he was still in rabbinical school. With his death, he left behind a wife and three children.

In the book, which was released in September, Greyber tells the story of how he and Shickman and their families became close; how Shickman unexpectedly became sick and then underwent treatment, seesawing between infections and recoveries; how Shickman lost to the cancer after an 11-month battle and how this affected Greyber.

Now serving as rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in Durham, N.C., Greyber will be back in Los Angeles to discuss his book on Jan. 27 at Shomrei Torah Synagogue in West Hills.

“Faith Unravels” also follows Greyber tending to another wound. As he writes in the opening chapter, titled “Jay,” it is a story of Greyber’s best friend from high school and college roommate, Jay Rosen, who died in 1996 — also of leukemia. At the time, Greyber was too young to process the loss. 

Shickman’s death roused the rabbi’s memories of Rosen.

“I was confronting questions about the death of a friend that had not been resolved from many years before,” Greyber told the Journal.

Throughout the book, Greyber’s memories of Shickman and Rosen interweave. On Nov. 17, 2007, the day Shickman dies, Greyber walks out of the hospital and remembers when Rosen, during their days at Northwestern University, turned to him and said, “The big bad wolf is back” — a reference to the leukemia he had fought since childhood.

Greyber hired Shickman in 2005, who moved from Dallas to Los Angeles to attend rabbinical school, for the position at Ramah. In the book’s third chapter, “Joel,” Greyber describes his first impression of Shickman.

“Joel wears a tie-dyed shirt and carries a guitar most places … he is a mensch, a kind and humble person.”

Shickman died on a Shabbat morning. Greyber said that the next day, during a sleepless night in a hotel, he began writing about how it felt to be with Shickman when he died, and that was the beginning of the book.  

 “I needed to tell my story. I needed to talk about my own experience, my own crisis of faith, and how it was that — how this impacted me,” Greyber said. “It was not easy.”

Greyber found that his faith, his usual source of comfort when things got complicated, did not offer answers in his grief. Jewish tradition, filled with guidance for mourning blood relatives — the Mourner’s Kaddish and the act of sitting shivah are reserved for the biological family — does instruct us on how to mourn a friend. Friends are prescribed to the role of comforters, there to support the deceased’s family.

“How do we acknowledge the loss that is experienced by friends of those who have passed away? … There’s virtually no literature about it, both in terms of Jewish mourning practices and most other faiths,” Greyber said.

Greyber said in writing “Faith Unravels,” he wanted to create something to fill the void.

Initially hesitant to presume to include tips for mourners, Greyber changed his mind when his friend, actress Mayim Bialik, read an early draft. Bialik wrote the book’s foreword, and she told Greyber she wanted his practical advice on the subject.

As a result, the book’s appendix became a “Reluctant Guide” for mourners.

Greyber is 41, a husband and the father of three children, and he spends an early section in the book sharing how he became a rabbi, inspired first by being part of the 1993 United States World Maccabiah team, at 21, being surrounded by thousands of young Jewish athletes. At 26, he enrolled at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism (now American Jewish University).

He graduated in 2002, and spent the next eight years leading Camp Ramah, which mixes recreational activities with Jewish learning.

After Ramah, Greyber spent a year in Israel as a fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute, which provides support and tools for mid-career professionals in Jewish education and communal leadership. And when he returned to the States, in 2011, he moved to North Carolina to serve full time as the leader of a Conservative congregation of 330 families at Beth El.

This summer, Greyber will return to the U.S. Maccabiah team, as its official rabbi. In that role he will lead commemorative services at Yad Vashem and the Western Wall as well as preside over an adult bar and bat mitzvah ceremony for athletes who have never had that rite of passage.

His goal, Greyber said, is to “help people figure out what their story is.”

It really bothered Jonathan Gerber, a 30-year-old financial adviser and resident of Pico-Robertson, that there was no Modern Orthodox sleep-away camp in Los Angeles. Ever since the Zionist youth group Bnei Akiva discontinued its Moshava Los Angeles camp in the mid-1990s, local kids had been forced to head East for a similar summer overnight experience.   

“Each summer, there’s a planeload of 48 students going to the East Coast,” Gerber said. 

And that’s not all. Hundreds of Orthodox kids are thought to leave Southern California for sleep-away camp every summer. Many Orthodox kids also attend the Conservative Camp Ramah in Ojai.

Gerber believed that a local option that matched the Modern Orthodox observance families practiced at home would give more kids a chance to have a summer experience that studies have shown can strongly impact Jewish identity.

So during a conversation in May with Ari Moss, his friend and then-president of the Shalom Institute in Malibu, Gerber floated the idea of borrowing the institute’s 220-acre campground and retreat facility for a two-week Modern Orthodox camp.   

His dream finally will take shape this summer in the form of Moshava Malibu (moshavamalibu.org), where officials hope to attract 150 boys and girls Aug. 11-25. Tuition is $2,000, with a special early-bird rate of $1,800 available until Jan. 1. Applicants must currently be in grades 3-9.

It helped that the nondenominational Shalom Institute, which hosts the Big Jewish Tent events as well as its own camp and retreats, was interested in engaging the Modern Orthodox community. 

Gerber next reached out to Bnei Akiva — which runs camps and programs throughout North America and Israel and has a strong presence in Los Angeles — and offered it the opportunity to bring a Moshava camp back to Los Angeles. 

Moshava — a moshav is a cooperative agricultural settlement in the State of Israel — has become synonymous in the Modern Orthodox community with popular sleep-away camps that promote religious Zionism, aliyah (immigration to Israel) and outdoor experiences. 

Another draw of Moshava is the emphasis on youth leadership, according to Shimi Baras, shaliach (emissary) for Bnei Akiva of Los Angeles. 

“This is the only place where programs are run by high school kids. There’s no professional staff,” he said. “There’s a lot of independence … high-schoolers are the counselors; a lot of them later get management and leadership positions and say they learned the leadership in Bnei Akiva.”

Until now, other Moshava camps, such as Wild Rose in Wisconsin or Camp Stone in Pennsylvania, have benefited from the leadership provided by Los Angeles youths. 

Rabbi Kenny Pollack, an L.A. native and Moshava veteran who was hired to be the director of Moshava Malibu, said the approach to camping is experiential.

“In terms of a sleep-away camp, it’s very unique in that you’re running a tochnit — a program — that’s Zionistic and experiential in education. We’re not going to offer Torah out of a book. … Instead of learning about olive oil and grape juice, we’ll be making it.” 

The camp also will feature traditional summer activities — swimming, archery, hiking, organic farming, a ropes course and other outdoor fun. 

While this first session will run for two weeks, the camp hopes to expand eventually. 

“Ultimately, within the next five years, the goal would be to have a full summer program — two four-week sessions — and a week-long winter camp,” Gerber said.

And while a full summer session might require Moshava Malibu to get its own space, Gerber hopes to continue the model of leveraging the current infrastructure.  

“This is a great model of combining three teams: the Shalom Institute, which has the actual facility; Bnei Akiva of North America, which is providing registration services and programming and hiring of staff; and then Bnei Akiva of Los Angeles,” which is doing recruitment and helping in other ways.

Baras also hopes that the camp will help position Los Angeles as a West Coast Bnei Akiva center. In the last year or two, he has reached out to Jewish communities in the West like San Francisco, Denver and even Mexico for Shabbatons and retreats, and he is stepping up his outreach in advance of Moshava Malibu registration. 

The stakes are high for Gerber, who sees camping as an effective, low-cost tool to keep young Jews impassioned and connected. 

“Take a look at the Ramah community, which is keeping Conservative youth so impassioned,” he said.

Besides providing an enriching camp experience, the directors hope to transform the L.A. landscape with committed, leadership-oriented young Jews. Pollack predicted that down the road, having a Moshava camp here could increase the number of homegrown Jewish educators at local day schools.

The L.A. camp director, who lives and works as a teacher in Cleveland during the school year, called Moshava, “a camp incubator of educators.” He said that many of his fellow teachers in Cleveland went through the Moshava camps and were trained early to become leaders and educators.  

“We are all products, and that model is where L.A. could be,” he said.

Lauren Levine is settling in with a group of friends apartment to watch “American Idol,” when a look of panic comes over her face. She rummages around, finds her keys and darts out.

“I left the hair thing on,” she says when she returns, breathless, from her own apartment downstairs. “I was straightening Jasmine’s hair before we came up here, and I forgot to turn it off. Wow. That was close.”

Levine has wide blue eyes accentuated with sparkly eye shadow, and her voice is spiced with a sense of interested wonder. She wants to be a cosmetologist — she’s taken some classes — but for now she is just happy to be living on her own, and working the front desk at a gym in Century City.

Levine’s developmental delays are less obvious than those of her roommate, Jasmine Banayan, who has Down syndrome. Banayan is gregarious and warm and asserts herself as something of a leader among the dozen or so friends who live in a cluster of apartments in Westwood.

The group gets together every night to hang out at one or another of their homes, or to go out to dinner, and, on Friday nights, the five Jewish members of the group are regulars at Shabbat dinner and services at nearby UCLA Hillel.

All are participants in a parent-led experiment in independent living for adults with developmental or cognitive disabilities.

Today’s 20-somethings with disabilities have grown up at the vanguard of a successful mainstreaming model, and they and their parents now are determined to continue to break the mold, to live adult lives with high expectations, in keeping with the ideal that not only is there a place for them within mainstream society, but that they can contribute in meaningful and enriching ways.

While the impetus for change exists, needed funds won’t necessarily follow. Government budget cuts are endangering existing programs, and start-up costs for new programs can be prohibitive.

Story continues after the video.

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