Category: Wilderness Parsha

  • Family Purity and the Outdoors

    Family Purity and the Outdoors

    This week’s parsha, Tazria (Leviticus 12:1–13:59) continues the exposition of our purity laws. In this portion, there’s purity after pregnancy, and tzaarat, which is often mistranslated as “leprosy,” handing during, and purity in the wake of.

    For many people, these aren’t exciting portions, and they may even be challenging to those who see these things as anachronistic. Many don’t like the stigma of uncleanliness associate with a new mother. Others may find sending someone with tzaarat outside of the city to be troubling.

    In The Kosher Backpacker, I reluctantly discuss purity laws, because for observant Jewish women, this can be one of the barriers for a deep and enriching outdoor experience. Why should a woman be denied the enjoyment of a multi-day paddling trip?

    As in many instances of Jewish life, mikveh immersion is one of those practices that has taken on a life of its own. We’re far from the Midrash annotating the component of Adam’s t’shuvah, by sitting in a river flowing from the Garden of Eden. At The Kosher Backpacker, we do encourage an entrepreneurial and informed DIY approach to wilderness Judaism, and we can put you in touch with a rabbi or yoetzet prior to your trip.

    On the East Coast, the ocean always can be a substitute for a mikveh, as can any river that doesn’t originate from rainwater. Most authorities agree that even if a river is swollen with rainwater, it still can be used as a mikveh, though we recommend finding a part of the water that is not moving.
    Here in Maine, leeches might be a dealbreaker.

    At a mikveh, you will have a shomeret or balanit, usually a woman who can help you. On a wilderness trip, you might not have a Jewish woman over the age of 12 to help you. In those cases, some authorities permit a husband to help you. The Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Deah 198:40) says “…and if she has no one to watch her, or if it is night, she should tie her hair to her head with woolen threads or with the band that is on her head.” So while the halachah for most would be that a Jewish woman should observe immersion, there is an option for when there is no one available.

    In Israel, it is also now the law that women may be allowed to immerse alone upon request.

    We have more about this in the book, The Kosher Backpacker. We plan on producing helpful apps for the Apple Watch and for iPhone/Android phones that will help you remember your day counts for niddah.

    On a less religious note, here’s some good news: bears in North America are not attracted to the smell of menstrual blood.

  • Burnt Offerings

    Burnt Offerings

    The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Command Aaron and his sons thus: This is the ritual of the burnt offering: The burnt offering itself shall remain where it is burned upon the altar all night until morning, while the fire on the altar is kept going on it. – Parashat Tzav

    It’s spring, and that usually kicks off the season of controlled burns.  We’re not really going to talk about burnt offerings here, but there’s an analogy between what we offer up to the Divine and what we do to preserve our wilderness.

    Judaism places particular emphasis on trees.  In Midrash, when G-d shows Adam and Eve the Garden, they are specifically shown the trees as representing creation.  In additional parts of the Midrash, trees are continually emphasized as the key component of creation.

     

    Calvin Mattheis/News Sentinel

    During February, in Cades Cove, within Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a prescribed burn reduced shrub and tree intrusion, helped reduce exotic plants. 440 acres of burn will help keep meadows open for the habitat of wildlife.

    In a sense, the “burnt offering” of prescribed fires is necessary for trees to thrive. Longleaf pine and wiregrass habitats are vital for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker. Fire burns the shrub that grows beneath trees and affords predators access to nests.

    Wiregrass itself requires fire for it to flower, and trees, including many pine species, actually require fire to germinate successfully.

    Here in Maine, we’ll see prescribed burns to help with habitats for bobolinks, savannah sparrows, and meadowlarks. We also burn to keep out invasive species like Japanese barberry and autumn olive. Burns also open space for milkweed, very important for monarch butterfly larvae.

    For the backpacker, it does mean trail closures and detours, but this is a small price to pay for a key component of effective wilderness management.

  • A Half-Shekel For the Environment

    A Half-Shekel For the Environment

    This coming Shabbos brings us the first of the arba parashot—the four Torah portions that come before Pesach—Shabbat Shekalim. Shekalim is the plural form of shekel.

    This all starts with Shemot 30:14-16, “Everyone who is entered in the records, from the age of twenty up, will give the L-rd’s offering.” In this case, the rich and poor alike give a half-shekel to the cause.

    This is further codified for a post-Temple Jewish world by the Mishnah in Shekalim 1:1: “On the first day of Adar they give warning of the dues. On the 15th of Adar, they read the Megillah in cities, and repair the roads in and out of the city, repair the mikvaot, take care of public need, mark graves, and remove forbidden mixed plantings from the field.”

    In this blog’s goal to make everything about wilderness, though our primary obligation should be to our Jewish communities, this is a good time of the year to consider your commitments to environmental enterprises.

    Consider volunteering for trail maintenance. Consider environmental activism, as your conscience allows. Look to perhaps financially support land conservation trusts. Join a trail association, or a watershed protection group.

    This year, Shabbat Shekalim overlaps with Parsha Vayakhel, which talks about the artisanal creation of the Mishkan. We can’t always be compelled to torture a wilderness allegory out of every reading; nor should we. In this case, the confluence is a broader case – just as we give our half-shekel and put our best effort into the places we commune with the Divine, we can remember that our care for Creation itself should mirror that.

    Shabbat shalom!

  • Re’eh: Gratitude for Trail Magic

    Re’eh: Gratitude for Trail Magic

    For there will never cease to be needy within the land. Therefore, I command you, saying, you shall surely open your hand to your brother, to your poor one, and to your needy one in your land. כִּ֛י לֹֽא־יֶחְדַּ֥ל אֶבְי֖וֹן מִקֶּ֣רֶב הָאָ֑רֶץ עַל־כֵּ֞ן אָֽנֹכִ֤י מְצַוְּךָ֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר פָּ֠תֹ֠חַ תִּפְתַּ֨ח אֶת־יָֽדְךָ֜ לְאָחִ֧יךָ לַּֽעֲנִיֶּ֛ךָ וּלְאֶבְיֹֽנְךָ֖ בְּאַרְצֶֽךָ:

    For there will never cease to be hungry hikers on the trail.

    Every class of thru-hikers on any of our long trails comes with stories of how the “trail will provide.”  The majority of those instances come from simple human kindness of fellow hikers (day, section, or thru) or people along the route.

    A ride, a favor, a cooler of water at an intersection with a road.

    Hikers usually seem poor and needy.  But we lose things, or we forgot to pack something, or we missed buying something vital at our resupply.

    If you ever want to see an astonishing level of human kindness, undertake a thru-hike.

  • Matot-Masei: Promises

    Matot-Masei: Promises

    This parsha contains the most voluminous treatment of vows in Torah.

    In common parlance, we think of a vow (in the Hebrew, neder) as a commitment made using G-d’s name.  We ascribe it the same importance as adherence to Jewish law.  It can be a commitment to do something or a commitment to not do something.  In Judaism, we further define it as a verbal declaration.  An internalized vow to G-d is not binding.

    There are conditions and ways that we can annul these kinds of vows.  In Judaism in general, making these kinds of vows really isn’t part of our religious life anymore, most especially the vows of a Nazirite.  Yom Kippur, with Kol Nidre, gives us an opportunity to undo unwitting vows.  Some of us will, when making promises to others, will add b’li neder (without a vow), to make sure we’re careful not to elevate something we might break to the status of a neder.

    It got to me thinking about backpacking, as most everything does.  We make so many personal commitments about our hikes, the shape we’re in, how many times we’ll hike a year.

    Next year, I’ll do that thru-hike.

    Next year, I’ll lose so much weight hiking.

    While these aren’t “vows” by how they’re defined in this parsha, they’re still commitments we often find ourselves breaking.

    Every Appalachian Trail thru-hiker, and I know this from experience, makes those commitments on the approach to Springer.  We make them as we meticulously pore over our gear lists.  We make them when we hit Fontana Dam.  We do it at the base of a mountain, steeling ourselves for the ascent ahead.

    We start confronting the weight of our resolve once we hit the unbearable crop of blisters, the trick knee, the weariness of the trail, the aggravation of groups in shelters and campsites, and the unyielding weather.

    For me, my commitment to continue was tested when I was less than 45 minutes from home on the Pennsylvania section.  Now, since moving to Maine, my next thru-hike will be easier to commit to.  I’m walking home!

    I wonder sometimes if making hiking goal-oriented isn’t foolhardy.  “I’m going to get to Katahdin,” we tell ourselves.  HYOH people say.  I don’t know about making those kinds of commitments anymore.  With every hike, I try to take the approach that I am going for a walk.  I’ll have a general sense of how far I want to go, and if I don’t, I don’t.

    It doesn’t always work.  A fixed distance hike with limited camping means, yes, I’m adhering to a set of goals for that hike.  But next time I start off from Springer, I don’t need to visualize and commit to summiting Katahdin.  There are over 2000 miles to cover before making good.  There are so many reasons, with few of them being wrong, to get off the trail, that making such a commitment only compounds the sense of disappointment when one has to quit.

    You’re not failing yourself.  You’re not failing the Divine.  You simply found a compelling reason not to carry forward.

    This portion, to me, has always underscored with its comprehensive treatment of vows, the importance of being calculated in what we sign ourselves up for.  Goals that are nebulous or distant in achieving are especially difficult to live up to.

    Before you start your next hike, consider what you’re committing to.  Is it completing a trail, or is it something more esoteric you’re seeking?  Depending on your answer, consider not holding yourself to anything more than communion with nature.

     

  • Daughters of Tzelafchad: Women’s Voice in the Wilderness

    Daughters of Tzelafchad: Women’s Voice in the Wilderness

    This week’s parsha is Pinchas, Numbers 25:10 – 30:1

    There is a candidate for a state house race here in Maine, she’s what I’d call a “super Christian.”  Along with that comes, for good or for ill, a profound ignorance of other faiths, possibly even within her Christian fold.  I noted one of her (incidentally) anti-Semitic social media posts was that Judaism was “terrible for women” until Jesus Christ came along.  Naturally, I disagreed, but I checked with my wife first, to see if I did really disagree.

    My true response is a snort, and a pointing finger at Parsha Pinchas, specifically the Daughters of Tzelafchad.  A census is taken, counting only the men, and the daughters of Tzelafchad, who didn’t join Korach’s rebellion, stand before the tent, and petition Moses (and subsequently, G-d), to allow them to inherit their father’s portion, rather than divvy it up among their clan and tribe.  The law of inheritance is modified, by G-d, to allow women to inherit their father’s land if he has no sons.

    I always love this parsha for two reasons:  Divine law is mutable, and divine justice is available to anyone, even in our own sometimes male-dominated tradition.

    There is a chassidic tradition that each generation of Jews relives (I found this here) a measure of the Israelite time in the wilderness on the way to inheriting the land. The daughters of Tzelafchad make their plea in Moab, right after Balak retains Bilaam to curse Israel, right before they come into the land. Accordingly, they believe this will be one of the last stages on the way to messianic redemption…is the explosion of female rabbis in all denominations, and the increasing presence of learned women in Orthodox Judaism a messianic portent?

    This is a hiking website, so we’re not going to delve into that here.  It’s just fascinating to me, personally.

    Instead, I’d like to focus on a recent obituary (long in coming) that appeared in the New York times about the pioneering early thru hiker of the Appalachian Trail, Emma Gatewood.  This was a woman that survived abuse, and humbly but firmly staked her claim on the Appalachian Trail, just as the daughters of Tzelafchad did.  The shame of it is, many of us knew of Gatewood first as the veteran voice, channeled to disapprove of overly geared thru-hikers.  What we find out is that like the daughters in Parsha Pinchas, Gatewood emerged from out from under an androcentric 1950s world to assert her role; and it’s still shaping perceptions of the Appalachian Trail to this day.

    One thing I’ve observed since the 1990s, from the Appalachian trail to the Alaskan backcountry, women are starting to take up their wilderness inheritance as well.  There are setbacks.  Geraldine Largay’s wrong turn, the double homicide of Julie Williams and Lollie Winans (still unsolved), or the murder of Rebecca Wight, to name a few.  These things easily happen to men as well, but there is often an undercurrent of sexualized violence against women when it occurs, and a greater sense of urgency to lost female hikers.

    Today, at least 25% of thru hikers on the Appalachian Trail are women.  I didn’t research statistics for the Continental Divide Trail or Pacific Crest Trail, but based off video diaries and travel blogs, my sense is they’re on the rise on those trails as well.

    Emma Gatewood slept under a shower curtain.  Women are breaking thru-hike speed records.  I’m seeing groups of women on trails.

    In the Jewish world, just as we’re seeing spaces for women opening in scholarly pursuits, just as we’re seeing female infantry units in Israel, we also need to ensure we’re creating the space for frum Jewish women in the woods.  We face challenges (some of which we talk about in our book, The Kosher Backpacker), but they can be overcome.

    We must strive to add Jewish women’s voices to our American wilderness inheritance.