mountains and valleys — and you walk
all of them. It took us a good 30 min-
utes just to get from our cabin to the
chadar ochel, dining hall. That is, unless
we were able to procure a golf cart.
To you, a golf cart might not sound
too exciting. But at Camp Ramah, a
golf cart is like a gift from the Almighty.
It means that for one blessed moment
you don't have to walk up, up, up a
steep hill to get somewhere. I mean us
adults, of course.
Whenever I heard one of the campers
complaining about the topography I
would thrust my chest forward, fill my
lungs with air and heartily proclaim, "I
LOVE walking here! The hills are gor-
geous! The air is pure! You can just feel
your body thanking you! Move forward,
young man!"
I rode in the golf cart from time to
time, but not often. First of all, only a
very select few have their own golf carts
— and once they get their little hands
on them, they don't always share.
Second, I didn't want to look like I was
privileged just because the camp director
is my brother-in-law.
Which brings me to one of the
most important discoveries I made at
Camp Ramah: what, exactly, does the
director do all day? The answer, in a
word: everything.
I pretty much thought, before work-
ing at Camp Ramah, that being a camp
director was perhaps the most challeng-
ing job in the world.
Now I know it is.
From the moment he drives through
the camp gates until the moment he
leaves at the end of the summer, the
camp director is responsible for every-
thing, from a homesick camper to two
staff members who don't get along to
the sheets a visiting board member does-
n't believe are soft enough to the chicken
delivery that didn't come to the broken
telephone in an office to pieces of litter
found along a nature walk to the
camper who has forgotten the medicine
without which he cannot live.
He deals with the administration, the
maintenance, the paperwork — but
most important, all the needs of all
those children, each of whom is the cen-
ter of his parents' world.
I got wise to this my very first day. I
was helping welcome campers and their
parents, directing them to cabins where
"your counselor will be happy to answer
all your questions!" when a parent casu-
ally asked, "Is my little Bobby in the
same cabin as Joey Stein?" I looked at
the list. "Actually, Bobby is in Cabin 10,
and Joey is in Cabin 11 — so they'll be
right next to each other. Isn't that great!"
(Perky, even in the face of certain doom.
That's the camp spirit!)
"What do you mean they're not
together?" the parent yelled. "I specifi-
cally told Rabbi Sykes that Joey and
Bobby had BETTER be together in a
cabin. Now you get on that walkie-talkie
of yours and you get Rabbi Sykes here
now Do you understand me? Do you?"
Perhaps you are thinking, "I bet she
took care of the situation and saved her
brother-in-law anguish over such a small
matter.
Friends, I picked that walkie-talkie
right up and said, "Loren, please come
over here — now.
There is no such thing as privacy for
a camp director. 'I-hough Loren has his
own house, staffers feel free to come in
and out, without knocking, any time.
They come just
to talk, for a
break, for meet-
ings and, of
course, for food.
Almost every
evening, Loren
and Rebecca
were hosting
late-night par-
ties for staff,
that always
included tons of
delicious treats
which my sister
prepared herself.
I was
always
amazed that,
through it
all, Loren
was in a
good mood,
because he
genuinely
loves camping. Best of all, he was
never too high and mighty for any
aspect of the job, as I quickly saw
when I watched him spend a long
time helping clean up a mess in the
dining hall.
At camp, you become dependent on
people in a way you never would in the
real world. While normally I eschew
baby-sitters, on many occasions I left my
children with Janet because of vital
camp newspaper business.
I was always borrowing stuff from my
neighbors and using my new friends for
psychiatric help. This is a key element to
maintaining sanity at camp because
there is much that conspires to drive you
stark-raving mad. It is usually little stuff,
like other adults who never clean up
after themselves after eating. But, if you
don't have friends with whom you can
whine, and laugh, you cannot make it.
And yes, laughter is vital. If you
Top: Shane the maintenance man takes a Ramah camper for
a ride.
Left Hallie Katz, Talya, Yitzhak and Adina Applebaum, and
Jamie Katz get a ride on the "sacred" golf cart.
Above: Camp director Loren Sykes with nephew Yitzhak
Applebaum and son Elan.
don't have a sense of humor and a
sense of fun, don't go to camp. I
remember one hot afternoon when
the pool was closed. My children, and
my sister's two, decided to start play-
ing in a small circle of mud.
Rebecca and I just sat, watching, as
they soon discovered a hose and the
small circle became bigger and bigger
and bigger and the mud was everywhere.
At last, the rosh aides, unit head,
Aaron Alexander, passed by.
"Hey!" he called. "Can I play?" Of
course, our tiny children were delighted.
Aaron jumped in and soon had mud
everywhere from his T-shirt to his shoes
and even in his hair. To this day, my
children remember this as one of the
highlights of camp.
Three other things you should know
about camp:
First, it's physically beautiful. I
have worked at other camps, and
invariably they are held tightly by the
most glorious blue-green mountains,
and surrounded by fresh grass and a
lake (a camp always has a crisp-blue
lake). At Ramah, my children actual-
ly played in a waterfall from which
you could drink.
Second, the campers are the center of
the world. There is nothing their coun-
selors (who are rarely paid much) won't
do for them. They are listened to, enter-
tained, encouraged, educated and loved.
They may get homesick, but this has
nothing to do with the extraordinary
amount of care they receive at camp.
Third, everyone in the world has a
connection to metro Detroit. All the
way down there in Atlanta I thought
surely I was as far from home as I could
be. If only I could have had $1 for every
kid who said to me, "You know, I spent
a weekend in West Bloomfield," or "Do
you know my uncle? He's rabbi at ..1"
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