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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home JANUARY 28, 2016 | The Jewish Home
Meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti
(L-R) Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald, East German spymaster Wolfgang Vogel and Congressman Benjamin Gilman in New York in 1978 (Hamodia)
he wouldn’t take care of this, we will have people at risk. He was the first to create a teen camp [Camp Heller, a division of Camp Sternberg] to reach teenagers.” She continues, “There was emes in the camp. We’ve all heard stories about spy swapping – that was for the world. But he did more than that. Girls who were suicidal, anorexic: they have families now. No one would have given them a chance. “One ba’alas teshuva was crying at the levaya. As she became frum, Rabbi Greenwald gave her a job in the camp. She is now the mother of seven children, and her grandchild was born on the day of the petira. She sobbed, ‘My new grandson is frum because of Rabbi Greenwald.’ “The big stories are about his spy swapping, but this is not the Rabbi Greenwald the girls knew. He made time to talk to everyone. He made a kiddush in the Alot program when he gave girls a [Jewish] name. He was always successful.” In Camp Sternberg, Pia says, everyone learned from each other. “He was an innovator,” she recounts. “I remember when we met in my living room, and he said that he wanted to bring in special ed, handicapped children from Mishkan to the camp.” This was controversial at the time. But Rabbi Greenwald started a precedent. Not only that, but initially Camp Mishkan was staffed
by non-Jewish workers from the city. Rabbi Greenwald guided Sternberg staff and counselors to work at Mishkan, and, within four years, this special needs camp was fully staffed by frum girls. Eventually Sternberg added Kesher for more high-functioning special needs girls. Today, Kesher includes Job Study Kesher, as Kesher campers graduate to become waitresses and day camp counselors. Other camps in the mountains have followed suit, and today it is de rigueur for most camps to have a special needs bunk. This was entirely due to Rabbi Greenwald’s attitude and efforts. “Everybody is good and equal,” Pia says. “To Ronnie, special kids are not ‘special.’ They’re kids that need bit of extra help.” He was the first to plan a trip down the Delaware River. “Two years later,” continues Pia, “other camps were calling: how do you plan this?” (For those who went to Sternberg, the answer is: call Mr. Robinson.) He started the Pioneer program and Wilderness programs for campers. More recently, he made “bat mitzvahs” for campers who had been in Sternberg for 12 years. Rabbi Greenwald originally ran the boys’ camp and his wife took charge of the girls’. Eventually, the Greenwalds teamed up to run Sternberg and hired Rabbi Dovid Ka-
Participating in the levaya for destroyed Torah scrolls in Lithuania
minetzky to take charge of Mogen Avraham. Rabbi Kaminetzky claims that “Ronnie was my mentor. I learned most to care for the downtrodden.” These camps have been thriving for more than 50 years, and, at its peak, Camp Sternberg had 150 buildings and 1,800 people on campus over hundreds of acres in Narrowsburg, New York. An estimated 55,000 campers have attended Camp Sternberg. What made Sternberg under Rabbi Greenwald thrive was the fact that Sternberg completely reflected Ronnie and Miriam Greenwald’s zeitgeist, and Rabbi Greenwald was determined to make a camp where all children were welcome. One woman, child number ten of 12, reflected, “I was one of 12 children, and I went to camp. That’s amazing.” Another recounts, “I did not originally plan to go to Sternberg; my parents could afford one of the private camps for me. But then my father lost his job. And I went to Camp Sternberg for $300 that summer. Even when our finances shifted, I remained a loyal Sternberg person, as did my siblings and cousins. Nothing has impacted my life as much as my summers there.” Though their fellow campers may not have known, Rabbi Greenwald was keenly aware of those campers who did not have fathers to give them a bracha on Friday night.
With that, he began to give a Friday night bracha to all campers each week in camp. Each week, he would share seudah shlishis in Camp Heller, the girls’ teen division, with several girls he did not know to establish a kesher with them. He would join a sports game or activity to make himself accessible to campers. “He was a pillar of chessed,” recounts Racheli (Warshavchik) Indig, a Sternberg native who currently runs their teen camp. “There was never anyone, anything, he couldn’t help. He was always calm. Nothing shocked him. He always thought it out.” When it came to discipline, “he spoke to each kid differently. And he talked to them. And they came out better.” Rabbi Greenwald cared about making a kiddush Hashem and understanding that we represent something larger than ourselves. Before each trip, no matter how early it departed, he went on the bus and spoke to the campers. “A lot of people have a negative view of Jews,” he told them. “You have an opportunity to make a kiddush Hashem,” he charged. Says Pia, “No one handled things like he did. He was a people person, so clever. Hundreds of young women from Camp Sternberg felt this loss, because the kesher of girls in Sternberg is amazing. He showed through his presence how to interact with kids.”