Bohdan Shpytalnyi, a 17-year-old from the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, dreams of playing pro basketball. Dima Stremoukhov, a 16-year-old from Kharkiv, near the Russian border, would like to see Mount Rushmore and thinks American women are beautiful. And Mariya Tsymbalyuk, also 16 and from Kharkiv, can’t wait to see her parents again but dreads returning to Russia’s constant bombardments.
They are three of the 15 Jewish teenagers from Ukraine who have spent the past four weeks at Camp Ramah Northern California, located on Monterey Bay south of Santa Cruz. They will head home to Ukraine on Tuesday, filled with tales about great friends, experiences and food. Yep, camp food.
“The food is delicious!” gushed 15-year-old Angelina Lavrynenko of Kharkiv. “Breakfast is amazing! Pancakes and waffles and granola, and the fruit — the strawberries!”
“You need to fight to get the strawberries,” piped up Mariya, and they both laughed.
A month at Ramah has given these teens a needed respite from life in their war-torn country, which has suffered under 2 1/2 years of invasion, including constant bombings, from neighboring Russia.
All of them have had their lives upended. Most fled their homes in the early days of the war, together with their families. Some have lived in multiple locations. And some have returned home, but not to safety. There is no safety in Ukraine today, they said.
“Some moments, I’m sad when I think about it,” said Angelina about the ongoing attacks on Kharkiv.
The largest city in Ukraine’s northeast, Kharkiv has been hard hit by Russian missiles and artillery and is now preparing for a possible Russian ground invasion.
“But we’ve lived with war for three years now, so it’s part of us,” Angelina said.
“I think about our friends who died, and it’s hard,” said Mariya, adding that the American campers don’t know much about the Russian invasion. “We answer all the questions we get because it’s so important for people to know.”
But these young Ukrainians don’t spend all their time thinking about the war. They’re teens, after all, and it’s their summer vacation.
The Ramah camps in Israel and North America are affiliated with the Conservative movement. Camp Ramah Northern California, also known as Ramah Galim (“galim” is Hebrew for “waves”) was founded in 2016, just steps from the Pacific Ocean.
Thanks to a partnership with Maccabi USA and funding from a Jewish foundation that wishes to remain anonymous, 15 Ukrainian teens were brought to the U.S. this year to attend Ramah Galim, along with a Ukrainian counselor. Another 20 are at a Ramah Camp in Ukraine until Aug. 7.
“It means so much for Maccabi USA to partner with Makkabi Ukraine and Ramah Sports Academy to bring campers from Ukraine to Monterey Bay for four weeks,” said Marshall Einhorn, CEO of Maccabi USA. “At Camp Ramah, they are free from the challenges of the war they continue to endure and get to simply be kids.”
Seven Ukrainian teens attended the California camp last summer, the first year the program was offered.
“It was wildly successful,” said camp director Geoff Menkowitz. “But we learned we really needed a Ukrainian staff member to help, not with the language, but the cultural differences — everything from what it means to be in such a structured program to how frequently they can communicate with their parents.”
And the food differences. “We don’t serve borsch,” he said.
At Ramah Galim, campers choose one of four tracks: ocean exploration, performing arts, outdoor adventure or the Ramah Sports Academy, which offers intensive coaching in soccer and basketball. All the Ukrainians are enrolled in the sports program.
But the real point of the camp is for Jewish teens from America, Ukraine — and Israel — to get to know one another and to learn about themselves and Jewish traditions in an informal setting. They do Havdalah on the beach, for example, something Mariya and Angelina mentioned as a favorite activity.
This summer, Ramah Galim will host 495 campers in sessions of two, four or six weeks. Along with the Ukrainians, 44 Israeli teens are attending, as well as 33 Israelis who are working on staff. Menkowitz said the camp always has an Israeli contingent, but it’s higher than usual this summer “because it’s an unusual year,” he said, referring to the Israel-Hamas war. “We’re able to give them a summer of fun.”
While the Ukrainians do tend to hang out together, due mainly to the shared language, the teens J. interviewed said they have no problems engaging with the Americans and Israelis.
“We use our hands a lot, but somehow we communicate,” said Arthur Dotsenko, a 14-year-old from Kyiv. “Those of us who speak a little Hebrew or English help the others.”
It’s Arthur’s second year at Ramah Galim. His mother is a Jewish educator at the Halom Jewish Community Center in Kyiv, one of the Ukrainian JCCs supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. His mother found out about the Ramah program last year, he said.
“She wanted me to be safe,” Arthur said. “And I wanted to take a break from the sirens and blackouts.”
He liked it so much he asked to come back.
“I like the way they present Jewish traditions here,” he said. “They don’t just open a Torah and read from it. There’s a lot of fun incorporated into the Jewish aspect.”
For Bohdan, it’s all about the basketball. He can’t stop talking about his beloved sport and is ecstatic about the high-level coaching he’s getting at Ramah. Back home in Dnipro, he hasn’t been able to train since the war began in February 2022.
“We don’t live badly,” he said, talking about his parents, sister and himself. “We sleep in the shelter.”
Like several of the Ukrainian campers, Bohdan is a youth leader in his local Jewish community. He volunteers with a humanitarian organization and is a member of Active Jewish Teens, a youth group affiliated with BBYO.
“We help Jewish families and do children’s programs every Sunday,” he said. “I’m a madrich and also a regional representative of the group.”
In addition to the “beautiful” basketball court at Ramah, Bohdan said, he likes the people he has met very much. “The Americans and Israelis, they’re so open, so helpful. Whenever you need something, they are there for you.”
Izolda Zogranian, the Ukrainian counselor accompanying the group, concurs.
“A big part of camp is meeting new people you’d never meet in your day-to-day life,” she said.
At 21, she’s barely older than some of them but has worked in the Reform movement for years and has lived in Germany, England and Ukraine, moving around with her mother, Julia Gris, Ukraine’s only female rabbi.
Born in Odessa, where her mother leads the Shirat Ha-Yam congregation, Zogranian was herself uprooted by the war, fleeing to Germany with her mother and much of the congregation as Odessa came under attack. So she knows what her campers are going through.
“The safety they have here is so important,” she said. “A lot of them are from places being bombed. Two of them were evacuated to a neighboring country. Safety is a basic human right — just being able to live without being afraid you won’t see another day.”
Each session of camp, Menkowitz has made sure to schedule an evening for the Israeli and Ukrainian teens to run a panel discussion about the wars in their countries. They field questions from the Americans and from one another.
“It’s needed, very much needed,” said Zogranian. “When I got here, I think five staff members asked me if there’s still a war in Ukraine. And the kids know even less. The panels and discussions are so important.”
That may be true for her, but some of the Ukrainian teens feel otherwise. Asked whether the American campers ask him about the war in Ukraine, Dima gives a curt, “No!” And he likes it that way. Like the other Ukrainians, he “goes to school” on Zoom, but he said that it’s OK and that his family is OK, too.
He’s more interested in learning about America and hanging out with his friends. He sports red streaks in his hair now, the result of a lunchtime experiment with two of the other boys.
What will his parents do when he comes home from California like that?
“Mama will welcome me in, but Papa will kick me out,” Dima laughed.
It’s good to hear these kids laugh.