The Kosher Backpacker

By Brian Kresge

Our public lands are a vast treasure for backpackers, and for a variety of reasons, observant Jews do not take to the "long trail." This guide will help the observant Jew approach wilderness backpacking and thru-hiking.

Does your sleeping bag have to be checked for shatnez? How do you keep kosher on a one-burner stove? Can I use a lake as a mikveh? Are there corollaries to the Leave No Trace Ethic in Jewish Law?

Whether you're an observant or secular Jew, this guide can help you make your way to the wild.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9780359038992

Book preview

henceforth.

PART 1

THE WANDERING JEW

CHAPTER 1: WHY GET INTO THE WOODS?

AS JEWS, WE VERY often talk about the connection to the land, specifically our land, Eretz Yisroel. We have so much poetry about Jerusalem, about the land of Israel, and about the natural beauty of what was promised to us.

When I've stood at the base of Denali, next to a trunk of a giant sequoia, in the Mojave desert, along the Delaware coast, or just about anyplace wild that your feet can take you, I've felt the same thing I've felt at the Kotel--the Divine presence.

Though it's discouraged throughout the commentaries we'll talk about in this book, try davening shacharit on the summit of a mountain at sunrise.  Wake up in your tent on a chol chamoed day of Pesach, make matzah brei on your camp stove.

Kavanah takes on a whole new dimension.  The crux of this book is not to wax ecstatic about the esoteric components of faith in the wilderness, but it's there.  The supernal splendor of the night sky in the wilderness always makes me feel connected to our people as they left Egypt, and what they must have felt.

A number of years ago we met a rabbi who said he doesn't always remember the blessing for various things, like rainbows.  He averred that just saying wow pretty much covers it.

Stand at the top of the mountain.  See the double rainbows.  Trace the lighting from sky to ground.  Listen to the thunder, the sound of falling rain.  Wonder if our people felt the same isolation as they stood at the foot of Sinai, the same apprehension, the same sense of awe.  Say wow. (But also say the correct bracha.)

It's not just spiritual.  It's a physical boon, as well.  Torah-observant Jews, according to British Doctor Joseph Spitzer¹, value good health.  In spite of some aspects of our approach to medicine being similar to other insular religious communities (higher birth rates, lower immunization rates), we are not isolated from medical health.  Quite the contrary!

But to look at us, there's still a concern.  Around the minyan, waistlines are expanded.  Ashkenazi foods in particular aren't the healthiest.

Israel reports that there is a high risk of obesity in the Orthodox community.  The focus on study and the dinner table, coupled with poverty, leads to poor diets.  In the U.S., where we don't track health data by religion, it's harder, but anecdotally, think about the people in your minyan.  How many report obesity-related health issues, like type 2 diabetes, or getting out of breath going up and down stairs?

According to Rav Kook, exercise could be a mitzvah².

For my part, more than 20 years in the military inculcated a love of fitness, but even without that, I suspect my love of the outdoors would keep me usefully active.  In my 40s, I'm certainly not in the same shape as when I was an 18-year-old parachute infantryman, but I still pass my regular Army physical fitness tests handily.  I attribute this not only to my commitment to working out, but the fact that I frequently haunt the woods with a backpack.

Each year for several years now, the 28th Infantry Division on Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, hosts a 28-mile foot march to raise funds for Gold Star families or the Wounded Warrior Project, and to honor those from our Division who have died in the Global War on Terror.  Among those are two of my close friends, and many other comrades and former brothers-in-arms.  Soldiers undertake the march with a 35 pound load in their backpacks.  I've done it a few times, now, and aside from the fist-sized boulders along the mountain ridge that makes up a good portion of the route, it's no different to me than a long day on the trail.  And at the high point of the ridge, I've looked to the ridge to the north and thought, hey, over there is the Appalachian Trail.

While one of the beauties of backpacking is that anyone can do it, the experience is enhanced when a minor incline doesn't leave you gasping for breath.  You'll appreciate the difference that being in shape means when you're not foot sore after a few measly miles, but after a high mileage day on a long trail.

People that regularly hike are statistically healthier.

The very best reason to get out there is because it's there, waiting for you.  The outdoors are the working material for the Psalmists.

The last light of a Pacific Sunset on the Lost Coast trail.

Sunrise on a peak in the Adirondacks.

The glow of foxfire in the Smokeys.

The hum of cicadas in South Carolina.

The bear that looks at you from the woods on the trail in Virginia.

The alpenglow striking the peaks of the Chugach Mountains in pink and orange hues.

The clouds clearing from a high vista in the Sierras, revealing a spectacular vision of Ansel Adams country.

These are things, sure, you might see from a car.  There are things you might see in a number of ways.  You can watch them in a documentary.

Or you can live them.  You can allow nature to pour over your senses, to inundate your sense of being.

The experience of seeing them from the door of your tent is unlike anything you've ever experienced.  You are vulnerable, exposed, with nothing but the Divine to protect you.  There's a level of raw intimacy with the land that I believe we all innately long for, going back to Gan Eden.

CHAPTER 2: BUT HALACHAH SAYS I CAN'T BACKPACK ON SHABBOS

WHEN TALKING ABOUT THIS subject with the reluctant, I frequently hear t'chum Shabbos in protest. It's impossible to backpack on Shabbos.

And I agree, it is impossible to physically backpack on Shabbos.  Because of land ownership, the spirit of the day, meleches hotzah, and more, there are a variety of activities that would proscribe backpacking on Shabbos.

But there's nothing that indicates you can't be in the woods, at your camp, on Shabbos.  This is what I do; pitch my tent prior to Shabbos, and spend the day at a site enjoying nature.

On the long trails, this turns into a zero day.

By definition, it's difficult to discern what category of domains a trail, campsite, or trail shelter falls under, which is important for hotzah.

Is a trail reshus harabim m'doraisa (public domain)?  It's not a street, and using even the narrowest rabbinical definition for an amah (18.9 inches), most trails are not 16 amot wide.  And if you hold with some opinions that if 600,000 people don't pass through a day, it's not reshus harabim, even at crowded Springer Mountain, Georgia, in March, this definition doesn't work.

Even if land is under private ownership, as it relates to backpacking, reshus hayachid