SCOUTING OUT THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Troops hike and learn about religions, Ten Commandments

STACEY M. EWERT
Staff Writer

At the same time, 60 boy and girl scouts of different religions were trekking six miles together from church to church to synagogue, discovering what religions are all about.

The "Ten Commandment Hike," sponsored by the Interfaith Religious Recognition Committee of The Grand Canyon Council of the Boy Scouts of America, consisted of visiting 10 local houses of worship. At each church or synagogue, a clergy member or lay person discussed his or her denomination's beliefs and then spoke about one of the Ten Commandments.

Hike Chair Lee Shedroff said the scouts and their leaders and parents had many interesting questions to ask the speakers.

The Boy Scout troops are mostly mixed denominationally. For example, the troop that Shedroff's son Jeff belongs to is sponsored by Trinity United Methodist Church in Phoenix. The troop leader is Catholic and the members are Methodist, Baptist, Catholic and Jewish.

The group started at 8 a.m. at the Church of the Beatitudes in Central Phoenix, where hikers said a prayer for good weather. It had been raining earlier in the morning, causing about half of the troops that had registered to cancel. Although it was cool and cloudy, they had no rain during the hike.

The group travelled east to First Baptist Church. The scheduled speaker could not be there, so Shedroff led a discussion on the church steps about the second commandment, which he said the kids readily knew to be "You shall have no other Gods before Me."

Then they headed south to All Saints Episcopal Church, Valley Cathedral, North Phoenix Baptist Church, First United Methodist Church and St. Francis Xavier. After a lunch break they proceeded northwest to Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church, the Latter Day Saints Institute for Religion and Temple Beth Israel.

At Temple Beth Israel, the scouts learned about Judaism from Hazzan Howard Tabaknek.

Tabaknek, a former scout himself, is planning to start a Cub Scout pack at Temple Beth Israel when the congregation is settled in its new location next year.

While at Temple Beth Israel, the group toured the Sylvia Plotkin Judaica Museum, where they saw a Czechoslavakian Torah that was a gift to the museum from the Jewish Committee on Scouting.

Boy Scouts who completed the hike received a patch that reads "scouting bridges us in faith."

Shedroff got the idea for the hike from an article in Scouting magazine about similar events in Miami and Orlando, Fla. He contacted the scout leaders there and put together this event.

A letter to Shedroff from Cub Scout Pack #526 reads: "I hope it was the first annual hike."

According to Shedroff, it will be. He and others on the committee have already begun to plan next year's event, which he hopes will consist of three simultaneous hikes in the Valley including one in the North Phoenix area, one in Glendale and another around the Arizona State University campus in Tempe.

He says that since he must order a minimum of 300 scout patches in advance, doing three hikes at once makes financial sense and also allows more scouts to participate.

Next year's hike will also be on the day after Thanksgiving— as the scouts again seek a more lasting gift to show for their sore feet than the shop-till-you-droppers.