HONORING DR. HUGH POLLACK

 

Dr. Hugh Pollack, Chair of Camp Ramah In the Berkshires, has been a dedicated member of the Ramah Berkshires community since 1964, our inaugural summer, when he joined as a camper in Edah Bet.  He grew up in the East Midwood community of Brooklyn, and returned to Camp each summer through the summer of 1970 when he served as a Bogrim counselor.

 

Culminating in his role as President from 2013-2018, Hugh has served as a leader on the Ramah Berkshires Executive Board for 25 years, been a member of every possible committee, and chaired the annual dinner for over a decade.  Hugh’s leadership has been critical to transforming the course and development of Ramah Berkshires, fostering a thriving and growing Camp dedicated to excellence. The Ramah community has, in turn, been a treasured second home and extended family for Hugh and Martha and their children, David and Deborah.  

 

Hugh’s commitment to the greater Jewish community is evidenced by his selection as a Wexner Fellow in 1992, and reflected in his leadership roles as President and Chairman of the Board of Town & Village Synagogue, as Vice-President of the New York region of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, as a Founder and original Board member of the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan,

and as a Board member of the Zamir Choral Foundation.

 

In his day job, Hugh is a dentist in private practice in Manhattan. For 35 years, he also served as Director of Dental Medicine at an outpatient center affiliated with Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.  Martha and Hugh have been together since meeting as undergraduates at Brown University in 1972. 

 

David and Deb both spent many summers at Ramah, as campers and staff members.  Deb met her husband, Gabe Cohen, at Ramah in 2015, and they have continued to return each summer as Deb pursues her Masters degree at the JTS Davidson School and Gabe pursues rabbinic ordination, also at JTS.  David and his wife, Rabbi Lindsey Healey-Pollack, live in Englewood, NJ, where Lindsey is the rabbi at Kol Haneshamah and David is Vice-President of IT at Goldman Sachs. Their two children, Eva and Amitai, are already counting down to their first summer at Ramah Berkshires as the third generation of Pollack-family campers.

 

Hugh’s unique leadership style involves empowering and inspiring others, using his humor and passion to draw people to him and to Ramah. His vision has spurred us to undertake strategic projects and innovations leading to the bold Strategic Plan. Hugh is a true dugma, who embodies the heart and soul of our extraordinary Ramah Berkshires kehillah. 

 

 

RAMAH BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION (RBA)

 

In the early 1990’s, a couple of dozen young adults gathered every Shabbat afternoon in a park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to remember and relive their Shabbat afternoons of playing basketball at Ramah Berkshires.  After several years of dreaming, alumnus Jeremy Sokolic (Gesher ‘86) decided to take action: Jeremy found court space, figured out the logistics, and then enlisted a group of camp friends to recruit players to form teams

and a league. 

 

The first season of RBA launched on a Sunday evening in October 1996, with forty players and four teams at Chelsea Piers.  Each team’s members wore their own blue or white t-shirts, and the league reffed its own games. The teams gathered weekly through April, many bringing along friends and family members for what became a weekly Ramah reunion.  The league’s championship trophy was named the “Jerry Cup,” in honor of Ramah Berkshires Director Rabbi Jerry Abrams z”l, and Rabbi Abrams himself

presented the trophy to the winning team. 

 

The RBA was an instant success: in year two it grew to six teams, and in year three to eight teams.  Ultimately, the league grew to include ten teams with eight players on each. The RBA became a feature of the Ramah Berkshires alumni community, and every year alumni graduating college looked forward to moving to New York City and joining RBA.

 

Over the years the league has evolved: there are now professional referees at every game, the teams are each sponsored by a community business or organization, and the players proudly wear real jerseys displaying their team names.  While the league was initially limited to Ramah Berkshires alumni (due to space limitations), in the early 2000’s the RBA formally expanded to include players who were Ramah Berkshires spouses and/or alumni of other Ramah camps.  

 

Now in its 24th season, the RBA is one of the Ramah Berkshires alumni community’s most treasured programs.  The league has inspired a Ramah Poconos Basketball League in Philadelphia, and the start of a Ramah Berkshires softball team that hopes to one day grow into a league.  The most recent RBA innovation: the August 2019 launch of an annual “Three’s Tournament” at Camp.

 

The RBA fills up quickly each year, and players represent a range of ages, Gesher years, and Ramah connections.  Even with the growth and changes over the years, the RBA has, at its essence, remained the same: an incredible space where Ramah alumni continue to grow, to have fun, to connect across Ramah generations, and to stay a part of each other’s lives well beyond their years as campers and staff members.  We are honored to pay tribute to the RBA and its participants and leaders.