About Rami
Rami Schwartzer’s work as a leader and healer blends spiritual depth, creative expression, and a commitment to community care.
Founding Director of the Den Collective and the Ramah Day Camp in Washington, DC, Rami reshapes what community can be. Spaces he facilitates prioritize self-expression, connection, and spiritual growth, pushing beyond the status quo into new relational paradigms. An ordained rabbi, Rami’s identity transcends the confines of particular labels. His work, as his life, is neither religious nor secular; it is fluid and expansive, a constant exploration of the sacred and profound.
Recognized for his innovative programming, Rami has been a consultant for Honeymoon Israel, the Jewish Federation, the Ramah Camping Movement, Hillel, Mem Global, and local communities around the world designing experiences that challenge assumptions, deepen human connection, and step outside the ordinary to embrace the unknown.
Trained in the complexities of psychedelic-assisted therapy and end-of-life care, Rami’s work in the healing arts reflects his broader vision: to invite people into transformative vulnerability that opens new possibilities for understanding. He also helps communities devastated by climate catastrophe cope with the ongoing trauma of loss as a disaster responder, most recently rebuilding Western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene with NECHAMA: Jewish Response to Disaster.
An uncle, partner, sibling, son, friend, and goat herder, Rami adores his family and community, embracing each role with warmth, humor, and openness.
Rami lives a nomadic lifestyle that offers space to reflect, explore, and deepen his connection to the earth beneath his [often bare] feet. He has lived and traveled through Europe, India, the Middle East, South Africa, and 46 US states, and has left pieces of his heart in the places he calls home—New England, New York, Washington, DC, Tel Aviv, Colorado, and Asheville, NC.
Artist Statement
My art is woven into the fabric of my existence, defined by the intentional ways I spend my days. It can’t be contained by studios or walls—it happens in the wild, in the body, spontaneously, in the small and the grand acts of cohering. It lives in my loving—and grieving—all of what happens to humans being.
In my work, there is no distinction between the act of living and the act of creating. The way I engage with people, the spaces I inhabit, and the thoughts I discover, all unfold as expressions of my practice. A former jazz musician, I approach life like an improvisational composition, an ongoing exercise of listening and responding, erring and readjusting, collaboration and cacophony. I flow through the world favoring unconventional pathways, where discovery and transformation take root. I create environments that value vulnerability as a gateway to deep, authentic connection and growth. Each moment, relationship, and challenge is an invitation to reinvent, sparking change and inviting people into ever evolving iterations of life.
With an academic background in philosophy and religion, and a professional background in institutional leadership, I blend intellectual curiosity with practical wisdom, always questioning, subverting, and expanding the worlds I wander. My understanding of tradition and spirituality is anything but conventional, rooted in a constant unfolding of new ideas.
Nature is integral to my being—I embrace the world in its raw, unfiltered beauty. My passions for music, dance, rock climbing, hiking, and biking are manifestations of my work—balancing freedom and groundedness, spirit and body, ecstatic and mundane.
