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A love story
that started
at camp
DENISE KAYE | GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
Eric and Denise when they met in 1998.

COURTESY OF DENISE KAYE
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B4 JANUARY 6, 2023
t is said that to create Jewish children,
one must make sure to give their chil-
dren the opportunity to attend a Jewish
summer camp and experience going to
Israel. Our story begins in Israel, where my
sister, now Rabbi Erica Burech, was
studying abroad during her junior year of
college at Brandeis University. She always
knew she wanted to be a rabbi, so it made
sense for her to spend some time in Israel.

One day while in Israel, instead of sitting
with students from Brandeis, she decided
to sit with a different group from another
university. That is where she met Craig
Weiss, a junior studying abroad from the
University of Pennsylvania. He was from
Phoenix, which started the domino effect
of how Eric Kaye and I met.

My sister and Weiss started dating, con-
tinuing through the rest of their college
careers. He ultimately took a gap year
when Erica had her first year in rabbinical
school in Israel. Weiss was accepted into
Arizona State University for law school
and Erica wanted to be a student rabbi
at a Jewish summer camp.

In 1997, my sister met Eric Kaye, one
of the song leaders at Camp Charles
Pearlstein (now Camp Daisy and Harry
Stein). The following summer in 1998,
she had planned to return to work at the
camp and convinced me that I should
consider working there too, as a unit
head. I had recently graduated with an
education degree from the University
of Tampa, so it made sense to work in a
camp setting to utilize my degree while
potentially meeting other teachers who
could assist me with finding the right
teaching job in Phoenix.

My sister might have also convinced
me to come to camp because she wanted
me to meet the song leader, with whom
she and Craig had formed a friendship.

I’ll always remember meeting Eric for the
first time during staff orientation week.

I was walking inside to what is known as
JEWISH NEWS
The Kaye family today.

COURTESY OF DENISE KAYE
“the barn” and he was coming outside
the building, and we practically bumped
right into each other. From that moment
on, we built a friendship that turned into
an amazing partnership of marriage,
ultimately becoming parents and even
transitioning into business partners.

We have committed to sending both
of our children to Jewish summer camp.

Our son, Asher, who is in college at
Oberlin University, will be a second-year
counselor at Gindling Hilltop Camp in
California, where Andrea Cohen is the
resident director during the summer.

(Cohen is also the director of youth
philanthropy and community programs
at the Center for Jewish Philanthropy of
Greater Phoenix.) Cohen was the direc-
tor when Eric and I met at camp in 1998
and was front and center at our wedding
ceremony in 2001. Our daughter, Lirit,
a sophomore at Horizon High School in
Scottsdale, will travel to Israel this sum-
mer with other campers from the Wilshire
Boulevard Temple Camps in California.

We utilize a concept we learned at
camp daily, tikkun olam (acts of loving
kindness), as one of our core values in
our business, where we assist older adults
in aging gracefully in their homes with a
caregiver and helping them to find the
right assisted living community.

We are both also involved with the
Jewish community, and it is largely due to
our experiences attending Jewish summer
camps as children and working at a Jewish
summer camp as adults that instilled that
importance in us. JN
Denise and Eric Kaye own Connections In Homecare
& Communities (connectionsinhomecare.com).

Jewish News is published by the Jewish Community
Foundation of Greater Phoenix, a component of the
Center for Jewish Philanthropy of Greater Phoenix.

JEWISHAZ.COM