There are Jews hanging from mountaintops all over Colorado. Others are lighting Shabbat candles on sailboats or discovering their spirituality on the ski slopes.
These Jewish adventure enthusiasts not only make an effort to do the hobbies they love with other Jews, but they do so looking for religious or spiritual meaning.
A growing cadre of adrenaline seekers is building a new definition of what it means to do, or be, Jewish.
For some groups, like the local Arizona Adventurers, the goal is to build community, getting together for activities with other people in their 20s and 30s who identify themselves as Jewish. (Visit www.arizonaadventurers.org.)
For others, the outdoors is a grand synagogue. Take Rabbi Jamie Korngold.
When Korngold realized that the Reform Jews she was trying to reach in Boulder, Colo., were more interested in skiing than sitting in synagogue on Saturday mornings, she strapped on a pair of snow boots and headed up the mountain.
"For 30 percent of us, synagogue life is working really well, but the other 70 percent, we need new ways of reaching those people," she explains.
"There are so many people whose religion is the outdoors, who really experience their spirituality outside of the synagogue," continues Korngold, who has biked from New York to San Francisco and competed in a 100-mile trail run. "So what I do is say, 'You're going to be outdoors, you say it's a spiritual experience. Let me show you how it's Jewish.'"
Korngold's "Adventure Rabbi" program challenges participants to discuss Torah passages, as well as Judaism's relationship to nature, during Mountain Minyan hikes, backpacking treks through the desert and Rosh Hashanah retreats to a ranch in the Rockies.
Rabbi Howard Cohen, a Reconstructionist rabbi who runs the Vermont-based Burning Bush Adventures organization, also talks about the need to build bridges between Judaism and the outdoors.
"People want to be engaged Jewishly in different ways," he says. "We're adding quality to the experience."
The Chicago-based Steppin' Out Adventures uses the community-building effect of such activities as a vehicle for matchmaking, allowing Jewish singles to schmooze while biking in Ireland or climbing the Inca Trail in Peru.
Robin Richman, director and one of the co-founders of the organization, described the bonding that takes place as "amazing."
She cited a weekend getaway to Wisconsin where, due to three straight days of rain, the group wound up eating lunch in their underwear.
"It definitely brought the trip close together very quickly," she laughed.
