This past weekend, Camp Coleman welcomed home a truly special part of our community as alumni from the 1970s returned to Coleman for an unforgettable reunion weekend!
More than 50 years after their summers together, our 1970s alumni had the chance to experience Coleman side by side once again. They walked around Lake Shalom, reminiscing about summers spent swimming, playing, and growing up together along its shores. They stood in the Brody, surrounded by decades of MAC plaques, remembering the teams they once cheered for with all their ruach as campers and staff. And they gathered in the Minsky, a space they once knew as their Chadar Ohel, where countless meals were shared, songs were sung, and friendships grew stronger summer after summer.
Returning to these familiar places brought back more than memories. Coleman has grown and changed over the decades, but so much of what made it special all those years ago remains—the friendships, traditions, Jewish community, music, laughter, and unmistakable feeling of belonging. For some, it had been decades since they had been back, but it didn’t take long for the stories to start flowing, the songs to come back, and old friendships to feel as though no time had passed at all.
One of the reunion organizers, Micah Greenstein, beautifully captured the meaning of the weekend and what it felt like for this community to return to the place where so much of it began:
“Three cantors and a rabbi did not walk into a bar, but returned instead to the outdoor chapel of our childhoods. Named for the impactful youth rabbi of the 1970s, Andy Hillman, the weekend was a thank you and tribute to Coleman’s legendary director, Allan F. Solomon (z”l), who died recently.
Certain people and places stay in your DNA forever, like grooves in a vinyl record album. It’s more than muscle memory—it’s a soul print.
From Friday evening Shabbat through Havdalah and music past midnight, the only emotions greater than gratitude were feelings of love, joy, awe, and wonder.
This less-than-fancy camp in the woods of Cleveland, Georgia, was the Jerusalem of our childhoods. It was filled with the most gifted and greatest people whose spirits still live.
What started in the 1970s at Camp Coleman changed the Jewish world and countless lives.”
— Micah Greenstein
