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Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

Abstract

Several years ago I participated in Yitziah, a 21-day Jewish Outdoor Environmental Leadership Training backpacking course in western North Carolina. AB the lone Christian participant in this thoroughly Jewish program, I was curious to witness how wilderness experiences could be connected with Jewish religious practice, in hopes that I could make the translation into my own faith tradition. The course was held during the time of Shavuot, when Jews celebrate the constitutive occasion of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. Our group was to follow in the footsteps of Judaism's forebears, whose religious and spiritual identity was born out of the freeing yet challenging experiences of the Exodus. By actually returning to a wilderness area to commemorate Shavuot, we would learn a great deal about Jewish laws and traditions, and also about the character of wilderness living through which they were gained.

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