Ramah Marriages

Nyack

Ivan Marcus & Judy Lefkowitz Marcus
Camps Attended: Connecticut, Nyack, Berkshires
Met: 1958
Married: 1964
See listing under Connecticut.

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Dan & Ruth Krasner
Camp Attended: Nyack
Year Met: 1960
Year Married: 1964

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David Zisenwine & Anne Brickman Zisenwine
Camp Attended: Nyack
Met: 1963
Married: 1966

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Mark Marpet & Judy Spevack Marpet
Camp Attended: Nyack
Met: 1963
Married: 1967
My husband and I met at Camp Ramah and decided to follow the trend of meeting one's spouse at Ramah along with three other couples. We have been married39 years and have Harold Spevack and his actions to thank for it all.

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Paul Neustadt & Barbara Mencow Neustadt
Camp Attended: Mador, Nyack
Year Met: 1968
Year Married: 1977
We met at American Seminar in Nyack, NY the summer of 1968. We were in the Mador Program at NE Ramah in Palmer, MA the summer of 1969. We had a wonderful group of friends that continue to this day to share our life experiences. Paul and I were close friends until 1974 when we started dating. Our wedding was June 26, 1977. We celebrated our 30th anniversary this year.

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Barry Gavarin & Mindy Roth Gavarin
Camp Attended: Nyack
Met: 1974
Married: 1976
Mindy: Ramah in Nyack was a unique place in those years. Naturally, we were there for staff days and Barry had been there for "pre-staff" days. He had become friends with someone who was a friend of mine from home and when I got there, there was a natural chevra established. He told this friend that he was going to marry me. Nyack was a very intense place because the kids left at 4:00 each day and that's when the staff worked on programming and socially interacted. Of course there was Shabbat, the camp was never closed for a weekend and we never wanted to leave!! Between the beautiful programming and the wonderful environment created by Rabbi Al Thaler our relationship flourished very quickly. I left for my junior year at Hebrew U. and we both came back the next summer. By the next summer we were married and we continued to come to visit camp for many years to visit over Shabbat. Some of our closest friends to this day are from those years at Nyack. (Submitted 2005)

Barry: I came into one of the bunks ('Sunshine') in Nyack on a glorious day at the beginning of the summer 1974 camp season and saw the most beautiful young woman in shorts and splattered work boots, splattering paint on the walls of what would be her campers’ bunk. It was (for me anyway) love at first sight. After relentless pursuit (twice going to visit Mindy during her junior year in Israel at The Hebrew University) we became engaged Shabbos B'raishit of 1975 and married in June of 1976. We continued a long association with both Camp Ramah in Nyack and our many friends and co-staffers from the camp up to this very day. Camp Ramah was, is, and will always be among, if not at the top of the list, of our most memorable and cherished experiences. To say that those halcyon days were life altering is in no way an exaggeration. (Submitted 2009)

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Edward Edelstein & Anna Dicker Edelstein
Camp Attended: Nyack
Met: 1977
Married: 1980
We actually don’t know exactly when we met for the first time. We shared a mutual group of friends that always went out as a group and got together frequently during the year. We were lucky with our director, Rabbi Thaler, having a shul in Queens where we could keep the magic of Ramah going all year long. We both enjoyed Israeli dance, working on props and scenery for all the camp productions and of course going out to Janet Hogan’s diner just about every night of the summer. After working in Eddie's edah for two summers he asked me to be the Kadima advisor at his youth group for the year. Meetings led to dates and more dates and the rest as they say is history!

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Bruce Sklover & Tamar Rader Sklover
Camp Attended: Nyack
Met: 1977
Married: 1984
In 1977, Bruce was assistant chef and Tamar was in charge of the dining room at Ramah Nyack. We also ran the winter weekends retreats at camp. We started dating the first summer we met at Ramah while we were both in college and married about seven years later. Our two daughters have been Ramah campers at Berkshires and our older daughter would be like to be on staff at Nyack next summer.

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Irwin Kula & Dana Kurzweil
Camp Attended: Nyack
Met: 1978
Married: 1982
We met as staff members and were part of the same social circle for a few years. In the summer of 1978 we went to a game at Yankee Stadium with friends who had tickets to the game. We were sold out of the game so we spent a few hours circling the stadium and waiting for our friends. We have been together ever since. Our younger daughter is a fanatical Ramah Berkshires fan and like us, feels that there are not enough months of the year for camp.

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Sandy Zisser & Ann Lipshie Zisser
Camp Attended: Nyack
Met: 1988
Married: 1992
I always loved Camp Ramah. I was a camper at Berkshires for four summers. Sandy, too, loved Ramah - he was a camper at Nyack throughout his entire childhood and came there as a counselor as soon as he was old enough to be one. It was my first summer at Nyack - 1988 - and Sandy's third on staff.I came late the first day, after everyone arrived.I pulled up in front of New Dorm with another fellow staff member who had been there before. Sandy and his friend were sitting on the steps outside "hanging out" and "checked" us in.

Ann and Sandy at Ramah Nyack's Zimriyah 1988

Ann and Sandy at their 1992 wedding

In those days there was no official check in - but Sandy was a veteran.He had keys to the office so he went and got us all the things we needed.Then, for the whole first week of camp we never saw each other.I was new - and he was with his camp buddies.

After the first week of camp we all went home for July 4th.We returned to camp and a whole bunch of uswent out to the movies. It was all for Sandy because it was the end of his eleven months of saying kaddish. I just went along witheveryone else and to be introduced to Sandy. And I was - right before going into see Who Framed Roger Rabbit. From that night on - it was set in stone. We spent that summer falling in love in a place we love to be in - soaking up and craving this incredible Jewish environment. It is a place that feeds our soul.

After our marriage in 1992 and the birth of our first child in 1997, we were on a mission to return to this place that restores who we are each year.It was where we wanted to spend nine weeks of our year and where we wanted to raise our family - in a Jewish "ghetto" environment where the outside world rarely interferes in our lives there.We returned in the summer of 1998 and haven't left. Our children live in this place each year and learn to love being Jewish more and more. We walk around knowing it's the place that sealed our love where the people who watched us fall in love now play with our kids. It is family. It is home.

Ann and Sandy with Rena and Solly
at Ramah Nyack in 2004

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Jeffrey Fox & Beth Lauren Pepper
Camp Attended: Nyack
Year Met: 1993
Year Married: 1998
We officially met in USY, but spent summer of '93 working together at camp.

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Matthew Binstock & Yaira Singer
Camp Attended: Nyack
Year Met: 1997
Year Married: 2001

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Noah Kalter & Shari Berman Kalter
Camp Attended: Nyack
Met: 1998
Married: 2004
Noah and I first met when we were counselors at Camp Ramah in 1998. Camp played a big role in our relationship. We always went our separate ways during the school year, but always looked forward to seeing each other during the summer. Camp gave us a chance to be together in a unique Jewish environment and have an amazing summer at the same time. I am very grateful for Nyack, because otherwise I would not have met Noah and be married to him today. Camp Ramah was/is a large Jewish influence in my life and meeting my husband and my friends there only adds to that amazing camp experience. I will always have a special place in my heart and mind for Camp Ramah. They are some of my favorite memories!!!

Shari and Noah at Ramah Nyack in 2003

Shari and Noah's wedding in 2004

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Scott Wohlstetter & Robin Fox Wohlstetter
Camp: Nyack
Met: 1998
Married: 2003
Scott and I met initially at Ramah Nyack, but didn't become friends until much later in 2001 when we joined a co-ed volleyball team through Makor in NYC. We started dating in 2002 and married in 2003. We have a 10-month-old girl who we hope will one day become a Ramahnik.

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Jeff Storey & Marcie Kohenak
Camp: Nyack
Met: 2000
Married: 2008

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Danny Jassen and Shiri Levy
Camp: Nyack
Met: 2001
Married: 2004
We met on the basketball court. He was the basketball director and I was on sports staff.