Camp Ramah in California creates religious educating communities in which campers and staff learn skills for a life committed to God, Torah, the Jewish people and tikkun olam. Such communities support and strengthen Jewish identity and experiences fostered in the home, the synagogue and the school.
Ramah communities embody a powerful combination of the following educational and Jewish characteristics:
- Regular spiritual exploration of, and engagement with, traditional Jewish texts, prayer, practice and values.
- A profound communal ethic of treating “the other” with kavod and compassion in one’s personal relationships.
- A participatory Judaism which fosters and nourishes ever-increasing Jewish confidence, skill, observance, Hebrew ability and a sense of joyous Jewish living.
- A passionate, unabashed commitment to, and connection with, the renewal of the Jewish people in its homeland – the State of Israel and to Klal Yisrael throughout the world.
- A caring, encouraging approach to personal growth and individual religious experience which interact to form Jewish identity.
- A religious commitment to social justice and the ecological welfare of the world God entrusted us to nourish and protect.
- An openness to creative and reflective religious and educational innovation within the framework of Conservative Jewish values and practice.
- Intensive immersion in a totally Jewish environment of Jewish arts and culture, sports and daily living through which one discovers and develops personal commitments and paths to God.
- A commitment to creating the future professional and lay leadership of the Conservative Movement.
Camp Ramah in California is affiliated with the National Ramah Commission and is under the educational auspices of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University, and works in partnership with institutions of the Conservative movement in the Western United States.