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Get Off Your Tush! Get Outdoors -- Jewishly January-8-2003
While Judaism stresses the value of learning - by learning Torah and Talmud – it also encourages us to do, to get out and to experience the world. Thanks to several adventurous souls, their great ideas, and the programs they’ve created, it’s never been easier to get out into the world in a Jewish way. 
After Rabbi Mike Comins, as ordained at Jerusalem's Hebrew Union College, and was preparing to start his doctorate, "I felt like my soup had been choked off," he said in The Forward recently. "All this theology was in my head, but it took walking in the desert, in the Sinai, for me to really feel God in my heart. I realized that I was closer to God in the wilderness than in words." Like others, Comins realized that as a Jewish teacher and leader, he could inspire others to experience this unique sense of Jewish spirituality. Two years ago he founded TorahTrek, a company leading Jewish groups on hiking and kayaking trips across the mountains of the West.
The idea has gained momentum over the past few years as adventure travel has increased in popularity, young Jews who grew up in Jewish summer camps crave to continue that experience, and as individuals and families seek spiritual experiences to complement their regular observance and engagement with their community.
Rabbi Jamie Korngold, the "chief spiritual officer" of The Adventure Rabbi, leads trips around Jewish holidays, and Yael Ukeles, founder of Teva Adventure, will be leading adventure trips in Alaska this summer in connection with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) which will combine wilderness training with kosher food, Shabbat and programs which explore the connection between nature and Judaism. Kosher Treks, a new program founded by Yedidya Fraimen, a former director of the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, organizes Shabbat and Kashrut observant advanced adventures in exotic locales such as Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro. MosaicOutdoor Club organizes local outdoor and/or environmental activities for throughout North America and Israel, including a ski trip in Aspen, CO this month.
Such trips inherently bring groups of people close together, and the benefits of teamwork and surmounting a challenge together are incredible. By adding a Jewish element to the experience, these innovative leaders are helping Jews have peak experiences within a Jewish context. Said Comins in the recent Forward article, "If you ask people where they experience God, at a synagogue or a national park, the majority will tell you in the mountains or by a stream. If a person's peak spiritual experience is not connected to Judaism, there's a terrible disconnect and it does damage to our attempts to raise the next generation."
Jewish adventures in the great outdoor don’t require boots and a camping stove, however. Crystal Cruises has just announced that it is now offering kosher meals on all of its ships starting in 2003.
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