Kol Tzofayich founders Yehuda and Adina Rothner worked together as the directors of Camp Stone for over 20 years, and it was there that their unique educational philosophy crystallized. During their tenure at Camp Stone, a summer campus located in Pennsylvania, they pioneered a completely immersive, interdisciplinary, and experiential platform designed to provide a transformative Jewish educational experience.
During their tenure, the camp grew from around 100 campers and 30 staff members in 1997 to nearly 1,000 campers and 500 staff members in 2016.
After two decades at Camp Stone, the Rothners felt it was time to hand it off to the next generation of leadership and move their efforts to Israel in order to establish an educational institution that would build on many of the same principles, while reaching an even more diverse group of students and helping heal some of the rifts in Israeli society.
(קול צופיך נשאו קול יחדו ירננו כי עין בעין יראו בשוב ה` ציון” (ישעיהו נב:ח”
The words Kol Tzofayich come from a pasuk (passage) in Yeshayahu. In this prophecy Yeshayahu describes the future redemption of Tzion or Yerushalayim and consequently the redemption of the Jewish people. This process will be so animating that even the ruins of Yerushalayim, both metaphorically and in reality, will rejoice and begin the process of rebuilding. As part of the redemptive process, the Nations of the World will also come to recognize the majesty as well as the salvation of the Lord. In this sense, the Tzofeh is the harbinger of things to come. The tzofeh foreshadows and foretells what will happen. The Kol Tzofayich program, the Voice of the Harbinger, seeks, through our students, to foretell the coming of something better, a change which will affect the very fabric of our Nation.
We believe that through an educational process which is ultimately experiential and interdisciplinary, we will be able to introduce a fundamental change in the way that knowledge is learned and transmitted. Through the ideals of Torah Va’Avodah, basically translated as Torah study and Labor, which not only metaphorically express the melding of the worlds of the intellect and the creative process, but actualize an emphasis on the value of responsibility and labor as part of the learning process, we can fundamentally change society and consequently the world.