Reflections from Rabbi Gordon Tucker
We were honored to once again have Rabbi Gordon Tucker as part of our tzevet limud (educational staff) for kayitz 2024. Rabbi Tucker was kind enough to share his reflections, looking back on this powerful kayitz:
The summer of 2024 in camp was the first summer subsequent to the horrors of October 7 and the ensuing war against Hamas. That being the case, much additional thought went into just how we would be educating both our campers and our staff. The presence of a sizable mishlahat (delegation from Israel), all of whose members had been profoundly and tragically affected by those events, meant that special sensitivity to their feelings and needs, and raising that awareness among our American campers, was going to be crucial.
The overall educational theme of “Shema” proved to be extremely well suited to the achievement of these objectives. For listening — genuinely listening — to the concerns, anxieties, and pains of others is at the heart of what creates understanding, respect, and solidarity among people, even when they disagree. And conversely, the inability or unwillingness to listen and empathize is what polarizes societies and tears communities apart. Teaching in staff week (before the arrival of campers), to prepare our counselors and division heads, was devoted in large part to the importance of empathy and compassion, and texts in Jewish tradition and in other sources were taught to illustrate the centrality of this aspect of “Shema”. And the curriculum of “Niv U” (the “university” for the oldest Edah of Nivonim) centered around doubt and the absence of certainty as an inescapable part of being human, and thus the critical need to cultivate humility in our relations to others.
Happily, our Israeli staff felt enormous gratitude from fellow madrikhim and campers alike, for being willing to serve as teachers and guides in a summer when they could well have said “not this year, with all that we are trying to work through”. They were truly heroic for being with us, and for sharing in the delights of summer games, of the exuberance of Shabbat in camp, and of learning about one another and our tradition. The weeks in Palmer were thus filled with the usual pleasures of camp, without eclipsing the serious challenges that we are, after all, training our young people to know how to meet and overcome. It was, as always, a high privilege to be part of summer 2024 at Ramah.
Rabbi Gordon Tucker is a leading scholar of Conservative Judaism, and he’s been an influential teacher and educator at Camp Ramah New England all the way back to 1987. As vice chancellor for Religious Life and Engagement at The Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Tucker focuses on enhancing Jewish life at JTS.