Spolight on Solelim

Sunday night, Solelim hosted a Decades Dance Contest. Each cabin was assigned a decade from which to choose a song and then had the chance to perform a dance routine, complete with costumes, for their eidah. The Te'atron [small theatre] was filled with cheering and laughter as campers watched their peers perform songs like "Greased Lighting" and "Stayin' Alive."

Solelim is made up of campers who are entering seventh grade. It is the first chance for campers to be at Ramah for a full eight weeks, so it is a summer of many firsts, including the first chance to perform a musical.

Sarit Horwitz (Rosh Solelim): I started as a camper in Halutzim in 1997 and went through Nivonim and then I went on Ramah Seminar in Israel in 2003. I came back as a Machon counselor for two years and then was a Garinim counselor in 2006. I took last summer off to be in Israel and this is now my first summer as a Rosh Eidah and my 10th summer in camp.

I worked with these campers when they were in Garinim, so I knew this was a great group of campers. I wanted to be back at camp this summer and wanted to do something different. I had really good experiences as a counselor and I wanted to help infuse other counselors with my experiences to help them be better counselors.

The campers who are in Solelim this year were the first group to be in Garinim, so the Solelim summer has changed from what it used to be. They've had two years at camp as a group already. Normally the Solelim summer is about bringing together the campers who were in the two different sessions of Halutzim. Developmentally, in a camp sense, they're already familiar with the program, which is great because it allows us to do different kinds of programming. They're very energetic. Intellectually, they're great. They're able to think deeply and engage in intellectual conversations and complex ideas. They're very passionate about camp. They really just want to get the most out of camp and get the camp experiences that are so crucial to developing a Jewish identity and friendships.
They're at a really fun age. They really want to have a good time, but at the same time they're beginning to understand more things. They're going into seventh grade, so they're not little kids. They're pretty smart people. Religiously, we're able to do a lot. They're going into the year of their b'nai mitzvah, so that's a good jumping off point for a lot of dialogue and interesting things that we can do. Some of them are starting to wear tallit and tefillin, but more of them aren't, so that's another interesting thing that we can engage them with.

My favorite part of the summer so far has been seeing the campers be comfortable with camp. They're really involved and I love seeing how much they love camp. One of the campers came up to me and said, "I know we've only been here for a week, but it feels like we've been here for a year." That's the best, knowing that they're comfortable here and that they feel safe emotionally and physically and that this is a place that they consider home.

I'm really looking forward to our play, Free to Be You and Me. They've been really enthusiastic so far about play practice. They're really excited about it, the staff is really excited about it, and I think it's a really great play for them to do. This is their first chance to do a play and they are really looking forward to being able to show the rest of camp what they can do.


Jacob Shanas (Junior Counselor, Solelim): I really appreciate working with these campers in the younger eidah because they're the future of Ramah. Solelim is really the first summer when they start developing as an eidah because it's the first full summer. I think it's really important to be there for these campers as they are transitioning into the full summer session. So far it's been really fun and I'm really enjoying working with them.

One of my favorite things that we did this summer was a peulat tzrif [cabin activity], which was a cabin softball game against another cabin. We were winning most of the time but in the last inning we ended up losing. I was really proud of my campers because even though they were upset at first, they realized that it wasn't a big deal to lose and they were really happy that they got the chance to play together. At dinner, they were the first ones to announce "Good Game." I was really proud of them.

I'm looking forward to continuing to getting to know the kids better and bonding with them and helping them bond with each other.

Brian R. (Solelim): I like Solelim because you get to come to camp for eight weeks and you get the full experience, which is really cool.

Jacob H. (Solelim): I like Solelim because we have more independence and more free time.

Sari G. (Solelim): I like Solelim because we have more freedom than we did in Halutzim and we get to stay here longer so we get to be with our friends longer.

Sydney R. (Solelim): I like Solelim because you can hang out with your friends and you have a lot of freedom. It's fun to just hang out and play.

Alana S. (Solelim): I really like the theatre here because I really love drama. It's a lot of fun.

Emily B. (Solelim): I like being in Solelim because I get to see my friends for four more weeks than I did last year.

Tali S. (Solelim): I like being in Solelim because of my friends and because we get to do a lot of fun stuff. I really like woodworking and omanut and basketball and boating.