2 minute read
A Normal and Extraordinary 75th Season
From Jacob Cytryn, Executive Director
In the midst of the pandemic, one of the phrases that entered our lexicon was “new normal.” It is, for me at least, a grating phrase that reminded us, every few weeks or months, that we were still in it and that, however far ahead we could see into the future, what was to come was not going to look like those bygone “before times.”
It’s late June, 2022, an unseasonably warm night. The Zimriyah song fest has just ended and the energy of six hundred campers and staff is still hovering over the trampled grass in front of our Mercaz Tarbut (Arts and Outdoor Performance Center). It strikes me: this feels normal. Not “new normal;” just normal.
That was the 2022 summer in a nutshell: normal, and extraordinary. Normalcy is getting back to focusing on camp, and not on COVID. It’s relying on our amazing medical staff to handle the ups and downs of public health during a crazy summer that, yes, included a slow trickle of COVID cases — just about 60 — throughout the season. Normalcy is investing in exciting new activities for our campers, revitalized hadrachah (staff training), and a new staff gym (!) and daily coffee bar (!) to help our staff do their best. Normalcy is days off for staff and overnight trips for campers. Normalcy is Atzmayim (vocational program) participants working in Eagle River.
For 75 years Camp Ramah in Wisconsin has made the extraordinary feel normal; that is what we do each and every summer. And 2022 is no different, for our return to normal is a return to extraordinary. Before camp began we printed out one picture from each of our 75 summers and hung them in one of our dining halls. Those pictures tell a story, of dynamism and stasis. The dynamism is the shift from year-to-year, from black-to-white, from one generation of buildings to the next, from eras of fashion that have not aged well to … other eras of fashion that have not aged well. In a magnificent testimony to Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, the story of stasis is the one much more compelling and magical. It is the story of the same acreage on the shore of Lake Buckatabon, and the children, teens and adults who, from decade to decade, experience transformative summers. It is Camp Ramah in Wisconsin’s story of Jewish friends and Jewish living. Of all that Ramah summers can offer. For us, it is normal. And it is extraordinary.
Alum Mark Harris (Nivo 1969) with photos of our 75 summers. Mark provided valuable waterfront leadership in the mid-70s and again in 2021-22.
