Loren Sykes

Rabbi Loren Sykes has spent thirty consecutive summers in Ramah camps—twenty at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin and ten at Camp Ramah Darom. It’s little wonder that today he is such a passionate believer in Jewish camping.

Loren’s parents, Lynne and Allan z”l, were active members of Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, Illinois. Loren was very much at home at Beth Shalom, where congregational professionals and lay leaders noticed his love of being Jewish and cultivated his involvement. In the winter of 1976, Loren met Rabbi David Soloff for the first time and decided to attend Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. Little did he know that Rabbi Soloff would become not only his camp director, but his mentor, teacher, colleague and beloved friend of thirty years. It was at Ramah in Wisconsin that Loren discovered the significance of experiential Jewish education, learning important lessons in Torah, education, influence, observance, and life.

Upon completing his undergraduate studies at the Joint Program between JTS and Columbia University, Loren started rabbinical school at JTS intending to enter the pulpit. Loren’s love for Israel and Israel education, first cultivated by shlichim at Ramah, was intensified by a year of study at Machon Schechter. Following ordination, Loren chose to serve as assistant director of Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, to the surprise of no one but himself.

Loren’s first introduction to the Jewish South was as the student rabbi of the Fitzgerald Hebrew Congregation in Fitzgerald, Georgia, a small town three hours south of Atlanta. For six years, Loren gave Hebrew lessons in the Perlis Truck Stop in Cordele, conducted Erev Shabbat services, and led Torah discussions in different homes on Saturday nights. During that time, Loren learned about the challenges of small-town Southern Jewish life and became an advocate for Southern Jewry.

In the summer of 1994, Louis Winer z”l asked Loren to help get the Fitzgerald Jews excited about a southern Ramah. Loren applied and was invited to serve as the founding director of Camp Ramah Darom. He and his soul-mate Rebecca—whom he met and proposed to at Ramah in Wisconsin—have since spent every summer, along with their three blessings, Elan Nesher, Mira Shoshana, and Amalya Dina, in the spectacular mountains of North Georgia.

In 2005, Loren inspired Ramah Darom’s board of directors to create Camp Yofi: Family Camp for Jewish Families with Children with Autism. Under the exceptional leadership of Susan Tecktiel and Su Kabot, Ramah Darom reached out to a segment of the Jewish community 1990–1991, I had an entire Ramah family to help me acclimate and have a rich year of learning and life that I would have otherwise missed. Camp introduced me to my wife, Rebecca, and was the summer home for our son, Elan, until we moved to Atlanta to help lead Camp Ramah Darom. Virtually every facet of my life has been touched or shaped by thirty years with Ramah.

“Serving as the founding director of Camp Ramah Darom allows me to spend nine months of the year dreaming about the Jewish future and planning a kehilla—a sacred community—that can serve as a model for what the Jewish South can look like. I share that vision with campers, staff members, families and communities and watch them shape it and make it a reality. Building creative, fun, dynamic and sustainable Jewish educational communities has always been and will continue to be my raison d’etre.”