Ramah Day Camp opened in 1996 at Tiferet Bet Israel in Blue Bell before moving to the Perelman Jewish Day School’s Mandell Education Campus in 2005, where it has remained ever since.

In that time, it has served hundreds of Jewish families in the Philadelphia area.

But in June, Camp Ramah in the Poconos, Inc., which operates Camp Ramah in the Poconos and Ramah Day Camp, announced that the day camp operation would end after the 2026 season.

“There are messages that are simply hard to write. This is one of them,” wrote Andrew Barnett, president of the Camp Ramah in the Poconos board of directors; Miryam Seid, CEO of Camp Ramah in the Poconos; and Amy Schulz, the director of Ramah Day Camp; in an email to the Ramah community dated June 11.

“For 30 years, Ramah Day Camp in Elkins Park has been a place of laughter, friendship, Jewish pride, and a deep love of Israel. It has shaped generations of children and families, and so many of you are living proof of that legacy. It is with profound love for this community that we share some difficult news,” it continued.

“Following a rigorous, multi-year review of enrollment trends, operational realities, and financial projections, the Camp Ramah Board of Directors has made the painful decision to close Ramah Day Camp following the 2026 season,” the letter concluded.

The announcement came as a surprise to many camp families.

“Like so many families, we were devastated to receive an email last month announcing the planned closure of Ramah Day Camp Philadelphia after the 2026 season,” wrote Rachel Saifer, the COO of Penn Hillel and the mother of two kids who have grown up at Ramah, in an op-ed on ejewishphilanthropy.com.

In 2026, Ramah Day Camp still has 166 campers, according to the camp directors. But that number is down from 317 in 2014.

Shrinking enrollment made it harder to cover operating costs.

“The Philadelphia day camp landscape has become increasingly competitive, and the fixed costs of operating a safe, high-quality camp do not shrink proportionally as enrollment declines,” the directors wrote in their letter. “These realities are hard to face, but they are realities and we can’t afford to ignore them.”

In a conversation with Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, Seid said the leadership team recognized these trends years ago and started looking for solutions. They explored different locations, camping models and transportation strategies.

The competitive day camp market in the Philadelphia area also hurt Ramah. Seid pointed to the JCC Camps at Medford, Camp Gan Izzy and Camp Kef (at the Kaiserman JCC) as examples of alternatives in the Jewish community.

“And those are just the Jewish camps,” she said.

Ramah Day Camp also doesn’t have a pool on site.

“Not having a pool on site had a lot of challenges, not only in terms of operation, but when families would come and see that,” Seid said.

While Ramah leaders never made a public announcement to solicit community support in finding a solution, they did engage stakeholders from various perspectives, according to Seid. The Day Camp Working Group that was part of the process included parents, board members and year-round employees of Camp Ramah in the Poconos.

“Even the most optimistic projections continue to show significant annual operating deficits,” the leaders wrote in the letter.

Even though Ramah Day Camp and Camp Ramah in the Poconos are run by the same organization, the former is not necessarily a pipeline to the latter.

Camp Ramah in the Poconos continues to grow, with over 550 campers during the 2026 season, according to Seid.

There are also many “day camp people” and “overnight camp people,” she said.

That was part of the reason why Ramah Day Camp families were upset by the closure.

Rachel Blum, an Ambler resident, was an original camper at Ramah in 1996. She later became a counselor and met her husband at the day camp. Blum’s 12-year-old daughter has been attending Ramah since she was 5.

Blum opened the email from the Ramah directors on her phone while grocery shopping with her daughter and a friend. She started tearing up. Her friend asked her if she was ok. She whispered the news because she didn’t want her daughter to hear.

Blum wanted to tell her at home.

“She was devastated,” Blum said.

Blum’s daughter also attended a session at Camp Ramah in the Poconos this summer, and now, in 2027, she plans to go back for two.

“She’s at an age where she’s ready for that,” Blum said.

Sara Ravitch has worked at Ramah Day Camp in 15 different summers since 2008. She met her Israeli husband there in 2012 and got married at camp during the pandemic.

“We needed something small,” she recalled. “We jumped in the pool at the end.”

Ravitch grew up in Elkins Park but lives in Israel now, where she works as an autistic support teacher. But she still comes back to Ramah every summer to oversee the group of Israelis that the camp hosts each year.

Her 4-year-old son is also in his first summer at Ramah.

“He’s in the youngest group,” she said.

Ravitch said the announcement felt like “being punched in your gut.”

“The kids that are on staff now, I saw them dunk their heads in the pool when I taught them how to swim,” she said.

Ravitch hasn’t even thought about what her son will do next summer.

“There’s a lot of me that doesn’t understand why people didn’t fight for it more, or reach out to the parents and say, ‘Let’s give this a go,’” she said. “There’s a lot of people that love this place and would fight for it.”

Blum learned “through the grapevine” that there’s a letter to the board of directors written by a group of parents.

“They are finally getting it out there to people. Now I think they’re starting to get a lot of signatures on it,” she said.

The Ramah alum and mother might want to participate in such an effort come the fall.

“I want them to be able to get through the summer. I don’t want the program to be affected because they’re having all these conversations with parents,” she said.

jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com