So argues Rabbi Jamie Korngold, the Boulder, Colo.-based religious leader who believes getting back to nature and away from the trappings of modern society can be key to spiritual growth.
"There are certain spiritual lessons we get better when we're outdoors," says Korngold, 42, whose self-described former "ski-bumming career" brought her to Snowbird for five winters. "Once religions moved indoors - as beautiful as our tabernacles, churches and synagogues are - we lost something."
Korngold, also known as the Adventure Rabbi (no, she doesn't own a cape), brings her teachings to Utah this weekend. She, a handful of guides and 185 other Jews are camping in and wandering the desert outside Moab.
Tonight, on the ground and beneath the open sky and redrock formations, they'll enjoy a Passover Seder (pronounced say-der), a festive meal to commemorate the Israelites' exodus from the land of Egypt. Passover, which attracts secular and religious Jews alike and is the most commonly observed of Jewish holidays, begins at sundown and technically lasts eight days.
Korngold founded the Adventure Rabbi program in 2001, months after she fulfilled the wish of two friends who wanted her to perform a baby naming and conversion ceremony for their newly adopted daughter at the base of the Grand Canyon, an area they called their "holy of holies." At the time, Korngold was a pulpit rabbi in a Reform synagogue in Calgary. A lifelong lover of the outdoors, she jumped in her truck and drove from Canada to Arizona to be with her friends, who were leading an expedition for Williams College.
It turned out that many of the student participants were "Jewish kids who'd jettisoned religion," Korngold remembers. They saw what she did, how she combined the wisdom of the canyon and the roaring river with Jewish teachings, and told her they "didn't know Judaism could be like this."
By the time she came out of the canyon a week later, touched by how enthralled these kids had been throughout the trip, Korngold says she was "transformed" and knew she had hit on something.
"Seventy percent of Jews in America are not affiliated with any congregation," she says. "Thirty percent are being served by the bulk of the rabbis. . . . I'm worried about the 70 percent."
Brian Posner, 45, of West Haven, is just the kind of guy she cares about. The electrical engineer moved from Boulder about a year and a half ago, but it took the Adventure Rabbi coming to Utah - "the least Jewish place I've ever lived," he says - for him to sign up for one of her programs.
"I've been a cultural Jew for the last 10 or 15 years," says Posner, one of three Utahns who signed up for the Passover retreat. "The way Jamie strips the pretense off of religion, . . . [the idea of] talking about the exodus in the desert . . . in addition to just having a great time, I think it's going to be one of the most spiritual experiences in my life."
Providing something different, including hikes up mountains or into meadows with a Torah in a backpack, has proven enormously successful. The program, which includes regular Shabbat services, life-cycle events and retreats, serves thousands of Jews each year, Korngold estimates. Ninety percent of participants are "unaffiliated with the Jewish community in any other way," she continues. The others are "people who are looking for another way to complement their practice."
The Adventure Rabbi Web site, which includes social-networking tools, gets half-a-million hits each month. Released less than two weeks ago, Korngold's book, God in the Wilderness: Rediscovering the Spirituality of the Great Outdoors with the Adventure Rabbi, was nearly sold out Wednesday afternoon on Amazon.com. The Passover retreat, the first of its kind, is completely booked. It's drawn participants from states including New York, Georgia and California. The waiting list, as of Wednesday, had hit about 30.
"We really struck a chord with this one," the rabbi says.
It's one that resonated with Adam Goodkind, a 23-year-old newcomer to Salt Lake City who moved from New York City for a financial analyst position. The opportunity to do something so unusual was one he couldn't pass up.
"I'm not traditionally religious. . . . I'm just kind of wandering around with no definite endpoint," he said in a recent e-mail. "One of the strongest connections I have is with nature, and whether you believe in any higher power or not, there is something sublime about open expanses and dramatic natural scenes."
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* JESSICA RAVITZ can be reached at jravitz@sltrib.com or 801-257-8776. Send comments to livingeditor@sltrib.com.
For more information
* To learn more about the Adventure Rabbi program, visit www.adventurerabbi.org.
* To read about and see photos from the Adventure Rabbi's Passover retreat in the desert, visit www.sltrib.com Sunday afternoon and see the print edition of The Salt Lake Tribune on Monday.
