Micah Gould
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending the Weinstein Leadership Conference at Camp Ramah in California. When I got the email inviting me to the conference, I was very excited to attend because I viewed it as a great opportunity to grow as a leader and jewish educator, and a chance to meet other Ramahnikim from all over.
Attending Weinstein was probably one of the best decisions I made as a Jewish leader. I was expecting the content to be mainly about how to be a better counselor at camp and to give us some hands-on skills that we could apply during this summer at camp. While I did gain some of those skills, the biggest gain for me from the weekend was that we learned how to think like Jewish leaders. While the external view of leadership is that to be a good leader you need to know how to act like one, in reality, anyone can be a good leader. As long as you know how to think like one, the actions will follow naturally. This key takeaway is not only applicable to our work at camp, but also to the way that I show up in the world.
Outside of learning how to be a better leader and staff member, we also had the opportunity to gain insight into how summer camps are run. As a camper, camp is this magical place that no one can explain how it works. As a staff member, you start to see a bit behind the scenes, and you are part of creating the magic of camp for the campers. During Weinstein I had the opportunity to take my learning one step further and learn about the financials of camp, and what it truly takes every summer to run our awesome camp and all of the Ramah programs across the US, Canada, and Israel. It really is magical that every year we are able to create such an amazing place for our campers to spend their summer.
Looking back on Weinstein, I got the chance to learn so much about being a counselor, the larger Ramah community, and Jewish life across the states. For anyone who has the opportunity to partake, I strongly recommend taking the time to go to Weinstein. You gain invaluable skills and knowledge that you can not get anywhere else, and you will get to meet awesome people from all of the Ramah network.
