Baltimore Jewish Times, January 25, 2002

TORAHTREK: FINDING YOUR INNER SELF OUTDOORS

Barbara Pash
Special Sections Editor

When Robin Silverman turned 50, she decided to mark the milestone by doing something she'd never done before. So Mrs. Silverman signed up for a 10-day-long spiritual retreat that combined Judaism with nature.

Called "Teshuva in the Wilderness," the retreat was held in a remote area of New Mexico. After physical and spiritual exercises with the group to prepare her, Mrs. Silverman, a free-lance writer who had never even gone camping before, spent four of the days alone in the desert, fasting and meditating.

"I didn't have any great epiphanies that changed my life," said Mrs. Silverman, who, with her husband and daughter lives in a Kansas City, Kan., suburb and belongs to the Reform Congregation Beth Torah. "But I did expect to get quiet ­ to hear the still, small voice within. And that did happen."

"Teshuva in the Wilderness" is just one of the programs of TorahTrek, Spiritual Wilderness Adventures. Rabbi Michael Comins founded the company last year, to offer a variety of Jewish-connected programs, from group camping retreats in Colorado to a Yellowstone kayaking trip, from scholar-in-residence programs to customized b'nai mitzvah ceremonies.

Although spiritual retreats are not new to Judaism, outdoor "spiritual education," as Rabbi Comins prefers to call it, is. TorahTrek is intended to bring inner meditation and the outdoor experience together, as hokey as that may sound. "Most Jewish environmental work is with kids and bases itself on environmental values. But I work with adults and I think the wilderness is the greatest classroom in the world to teach about and help people experience God and prayer," Rabbi Comins, a fit-looking man with an enthusiastic manner, said of the trips he plans and leads.

Rabbi Comins, 44 and single, a Los Angeles native, has extensive experience in the field. A graduate of UCLA and a former regional adviser for the Southern California Federation of Temple Youth, he made aliyah to Israel at age 26. In Israel, the Reform rabbi served as chairman for Netzer Olami, the International Reform-Zionist Youth Movement, and studied classical Jewish texts for four years at Machon Pardes, a yeshiva in Jerusalem.

He received a master's degree in Jewish education from Hebrew University, and worked as education director at Kehilat Kol HaNeshama, a Jerusalem congregation he helped to establish. In 1997, after receiving his license as an Israeli desert guide, he founded Ruach HaMidbar Desert Trips and Retreats, which led trekkers, often rabbis and rabbinical students, through Israel's deserts and mountains.

But in 1999, after 16 years in Israel, Rabbi Comins reluctantly returned to the United States. Because of Israel's dwindling tourism, Ruach HaMidbar was no longer financially feasible. But the decision to leave Israel was not easy. Not only had he found a home he loved, it meant giving up his image of himself as a person who was helping to build the Jewish state, he says.

Once the decision was made, though, he had another difficult choice. Rather than jumping into a pulpit in the United States, where he could earn a nice living, he went on a "spiritual sabbatical" for about a year before deciding on his next move.

It was not easy to explain his choice to family and friends. "People really don't know what to do with you when you could take advantage of the rabbi shortage," Rabbi Comins said, "and instead you tell them that you're fasting by yourself in the desert."

Rabbi Comins is the first to say that people who don't know him might consider him a "space cadet in the midst of very bad mid-life crisis." During his sabbatical, he studied spirituality in nature from various traditions, went on long solo meditation retreats, and participated in two institutes for rabbis in new modes of Jewish spirituality.

But just as his sabbatical was ending, he received, and accepted, the position of spiritual leader of the Jackson Hole Chaverim, in Wyoming. This allows him to live in a place he loves and gives him the flexibility to get TorahTrek off the ground.

Rabbi Comins calls Jackson Hole a "great Jewish community." The Chaverim, the only Jewish institution in town, has about 100 member-units, many of whom are seasonal residents and second home-owners. Still, High Holiday services attract more than 100 worshippers and the Hebrew school enrolls 15 children from first through seventh grades.

Through TorahTrek, he hopes to share the feeling that, as he told his congregation last year in his High Holiday sermon, "we can live our lives in the flow, in listening mode" as "people who are more flexible than rigid, trusting that real security comes more from being in harmony with the world."

From a personal standpoint, Rabbi Comins said, "My transformation has been from standard Jewish belief into kabbalistic and Chasidic expressions of Jewish theology. I try to teach that on the trail."

As far as he knows, TorahTrek's outdoor spiritual education programs are unique, although there are a few other outfits that incorporate Jewish spiritual elements in their trips as well as wilderness trips based on Native American tradition.

Depending on the trip, Rabbi Comins may have participants walk silently, or follow meditative techniques for walking and studying, or bring their prayer books along with them to read and discuss.

"Anybody can go out in the woods and do the same service they would have done back home. I'm trying for much more than that," said Rabbi Comins, who has to get permission from the appropriate authorities and follow lots of regulations for each site where a trip is held.

Now that TorahTrek has been formed, the rabbi has been spreading the word about it, and business is slowly growing. Last year he had one scholar-in-residence weekend; between now and the summer, he has five such weekends planned. For 2002, three public trips are scheduled and several private ones are in the works.

"This is my life's calling. This is what I was born to do," Rabbi Comins said. "People almost always say they feel a sense of awe in nature. I try to make that connection in Judaism."