What Matters Now to counselor Yishai Mogilner: Being Israeli at a US summer camp

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploration into one key issue shaping Israel and the Jewish World — right now.

This week, we're taking a brief break from the headlines and turning to a topic we covered last summer, hearing the experiences of a young Israeli staff member at a Jewish summer camp.

This week's What Matters Now guest, Yishai Mogilner, is royalty of a sort at Camp Ramah in the Poconos, where his late grandfather, Rabbi David Mogilner, was a revered director who helped shape the camp and tragically died of a heart attack, at the age of 42, while at camp one summer.

Yishai Mogilner's father, the late Eitan Mogilner, also worked at Ramah Poconos, and Yishai Mogilner, 19, now spent a summer at the same Ramah, ahead of being drafted into the army and following a year spent in a mechina preparatory program.

He speaks about being in the place that was shaped by his grandfather, that then shaped his own father's life and in turn, has been formative for Yishai and his siblings back home in Israel, where they were raised.

Mogilner talks about being an Israeli in such an American Jewish space, and what that's been like this summer.

What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on iTunes, TuneIn, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, PlayerFM or wherever you get your podcasts.

IMAGE: Yishai Mogilner (Courtesy Ella Goldberg)

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