Kayitz 2023: Don’t Worry About a Thing…!

Our Shavua Hachana — our Staff Week or training and orientation — kicked off yesterday with incredible ruach (spirit) and excitement!

We have assembled an incredible tzevet (staff) for kayitz 2023, and it was a pleasure to see our community start to come together as all of our madrichim/ot (counselors) arrived yesterday to begin their week of training.  There was such joy as old friends reunited and new staff-members (including our robust mishlachat — delegation of Israeli staff) were welcomed into our community.  Already we’ve seen lots of new friendships form, even though our staff has been here for less than 24 hours!

Staff week kicked off with a meeting of each edah’s tzevet, to start getting to know one another and to set the tone for their summer together.  Our program staff led fun icebreakers, and then our CEO Rabbi Ed Gelb and our Camper Support Specialist David Kieval ran training workshops on our approach to taking care of campers.

At night, as is our tradition, we assembled for our peulat erev: a massive edah tzevet competition.

We began, as always, with a video — see above!  This kayitz our theme is marbim b’simcha — increasing joy.  We want our tzevet and chanichim/ot (campers) to come to camp and “don’t worry about a thing”.  At Camp Ramah, “every little thing is gonna be all right.”

Ted Lasso fans recognized the scene we were mimicking.  (For those who want to see the original scene, check out the last 5 minutes of the Ted Lasso season 3 episode “Sunflowers”.)

The edot then competed in an attempt to create the best possible marketing plan for our theme of marbim b’simcha.  They were challenged to record a marbim b’simcha jingle; design a marbim b’simcha logo and slogan; create a marbim b’simcha t-shirt; and about twelve additional challenges.  I’ll be judging each edah’s work and we’ll award a victor at the end of Shavua Hachana!