Camping the Faith
Rabbi Jamie Korngold brings worship to the wild.
By Lynn Harris August 2007
It’s
a bright March Saturday at Copper Mountain in central Colorado.
For 41-year-old Jamie Korngold, a ski bum turned Reform rabbi,
the day offers perfect conditions for spring skiing—and
for prayer. After spending the morning on the slopes, the
group she is leading stops and stands in the snow halfway
down the mountain for a brief, not-so-traditional Sabbath
service, mixing prayers with appreciation for the blessings
of nature: sun on snow, sailing clouds, the mountain itself.
Why not repair to the lodge—or a synagogue? “There
are certain spiritual lessons we can only learn outside,”
says Korngold.
Because
of Korngold, thousands of Jews—many having drifted from
the confines of synagogues—have come to find that for
them, communing with nature is, quite literally, a religious
experience. In 2001, inspired while performing a baby-naming
ceremony at the base of the Grand Canyon, Korngold founded
Adventure Rabbi: Synagogue Without Walls (adventurerabbi.com).
Run on a shoestring from Korngold’s home office in Boulder,
Adventure Rabbi offers Jewish services and learning atop mountains
and in meadows, on snowshoeing expeditions, hikes, and camping
retreats. (The Torah often comes along in a dry-bag.) The
group has about 300 active participants—and draws 300,000
visitors to its website each month, which includes a social
networking community that helps people outside Boulder organize
Adventure Rabbi–style activities on their own. Korngold’s
web-developer husband volunteers his time; they have a two-year-old
daughter.
What’s
the particular connection between Judaism and nature? The
religion itself was born in a desert wilderness, its fundamental
laws bestowed on a mountaintop, Korngold notes. Then there
are its central practices. “Judaism teaches us the importance
of slowing down and cultivating awareness of what we see around
us,” says Korngold. Traditionally, Jews recite blessings
for everyday moments—walking, eating, seeing falling
snow—and observe the Sabbath by performing no work at
all. “It’s a day on which we should not create,
so that we can appreciate what’s been created,”
Korngold says.
Of
course, it’s not only Jews who can encounter a higher
power outdoors. “You sit quietly at an overlook or beside
a Ponderosa pine, and it’s easy to experience a connection
to something greater than yourself,” says Korngold,
who is the author of the forthcoming God
in the Wilderness: Rediscovering the Spirituality of the Great
Outdoors with the Adventure Rabbi (Random House, $11.95).
“Out there we can no longer fool ourselves—ultimately,
it’s not we who control the world.” However, it
is we who must “till it and tend it,” as in the
book of Genesis, she says: “When we recognize that the
outdoors is a place of spiritual awakening, we know we have
to take care of it.”
Posted
on Aug 14, 2007 at 11:10 AM
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