My pre-camp seminar with 35 staff members from Israel had just wrapped up, but Avinoam, our 21-year-old Israeli basketball coach for the summer, lingered behind, looking nervous and shaken.
Five brief pieces, on the following: Shalhevet School\’s recent winning streak, Camp Ramah\’s new solar panels, a five-day summer workshop that shows teachers how to use studying the holocaust to teach morality, an opportunity to serve abroad as part of the \”Jewish Peace Corps,\” and a recent Prejudice Awareness Summit at the University of Judaism.
After spending the summer at Lishma, an intensive yeshiva-style program for young adults at Camp Ramah in Ojai, sisters Olga and Anna Dramchuk expected to be teaching Torah to fellow university students at Hillel in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Instead, they\’re back in Los Angeles in search of more Jewish life and learning.
\”Lishma was one of the best experiences we ever had as Jews, but it was only the beginning,\” said Anna Dramchuk, 18.
Norman and Lela Jacoby are talking about Camp Ramah again.
Scenes from Lishma, a joint project of Camp Ramah and the University of Judaism\’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, in which young adults engage in a six-week program of serious spiritual practice and text study.\nLast year, as summer approached, Julie Pelc was moving towards a master\’s degree in education, with plans to go on to rabbinical school. Andrew Weitz was serving as the northeast field representative of the United Jewish Communities, working with Jewish student leaders on outreach and social action projects. Jonathan Dorff was finishing up his first year of medical school. All three of these young Jewish adults found themselves faced with the luxury of a free summer, what Dorff calls, \”my last summer off ever.\” All chose to take part in Lishma, the six-week egalitarian yeshiva-study program newly inaugurated by Camp Ramah in California.
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