Above the entryway in Rabbi Jamie Korngold’s home in South Boulder hangs a large, framed picture of the Grand Canyon. It is situated perfectly to remind Korngold of her rabbinic journey.

Rabbi Jamie Korngold

“This is where it all started,” she says.

Pivot only a few feet toward the front door and Korngold faces the mountains, which appear so close they seem tantalizingly within reach.

It is a perfect backdrop for the “Adventure Rabbi.’

“I like being outside,” she says.

Korngold has led her Adventure Judaism congregation since 2001, a long way from the initial part of her life journey. Growing up in Westchester, NY, Korngold graduated from Cornell University in 1987 and then promptly, as she says, “put my brain on hold.”

Jamie spent seven years chasing her passion, racing on the Telemark Ski Racing tour. She did everything — driving a taxi in Alaska, performing as a street musician in Japan, working as a mountain guide — to support her skiing career.

Then, the competitive ski window closed.

“Telemark skiing became an Olympic sport,” Korngold says, “and the sport then got flooded with a different caliber of athletes. I went from being ranked fourth in the nation to not being able to compete.

“I also became aware that all of the people in my social circle were very content with their lives. I realized that the trajectory I was on was not the correct trajectory for myself.”

By then, Korngold already had an affinity for the Colorado slopes. She became a lay cantor at B’nai Vail in Vail, which planted the seed for her new path.

“This coincided with the time in which I was looking at doing something else,” she says.

So in 1993 Korngold packed up her mountain bike (little skiing in Israel) and started rabbinic school in Jerusalem. She was ordained from Hebrew Union College in 1998. She got her first pulpit in Calgary, and moved to Boulder in 2001.

Now, about that photo of the Grand Canyon: 
“I was asked to lead a baby naming and conversion ceremony for a friend of mine, in the base of the Grand Canyon,” Korngold remembers.

“I did the ceremony combining the wisdom of the canyon with Jewish wisdom,” Korngold says. A group of students from Williams College was part of the experience.

“It was very moving for the students, and we ended up spending the week backpacking around the base of the Grand Canyon, talking about Judaism as I knew it.

“That’s when they came up with the name Adventure Rabbi.”

From her new moniker came the name of her congregation, Adventure Judaism. Korngold and six other rabbis and educators weave adventure sports — skiing, mountain biking, roller blading and kayaking — into the combined rabbinate.

“The people who belong to my congregation are not people who want to come to services every Friday, but their Judaism is important to them,” says Korngold.

“They want some touchstones for Judaism. They want Passover, they want holidays, and maybe a couple of Friday night services in a year. Most Saturday mornings they’re going skiing.”

Korngold organizes three Friday night Shabbat services throughout the year from June to August, usually at Sunrise Amphitheater on Flagstaff Mountain, attracting over 100 congregants.

Then come the real adventures. Separate retreats for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at Camp Granite Lake in Greeley, and Pesach at Moab, Utah.

“During the first weekend of Passover, we’ve had as many as 350 people in Moab,” Korngold says. “We take the sefer Torah to the top of a canyon, and we read the story of Exodus.

“It’s very interactive.”

The religious school usually convenes outdoors, under tents, in a program called Adventure Class. Every month the students embark on a different expedition.

“They climb a mountain peak, they go snowshoeing, they go camping,” says Korngold.

“What they did just last weekend is they learned how to change car tires, learned how to jumpstart cars, learned how to change diapers, learned how to write a polite thank you note and email, and find out what that all has to do with G-d.”

Adventure Judaism oversees about 55 B’nai Mitzvah a year, and they are anywhere. On one occasion, outside of Yellowstone National Park, on horseback. Two in Switzerland. Once in Sydney, Australia; in Bangkok, Thailand; and in the Netherlands.

Closer to home, there are central themes to youth classes.

“We’re giving a very experiential lesson,” says Korngold. “When they climb a peak, they’re learning about responsibility, for themselves, for their community, and for nature. But they’re learning it in an experiential manner.

“We do a cooking competition, and we call it the Iron Chef Shabbat Showdown. We teach them how to make challah and matzo ball soup.

“The philosophy is that if you want to teach a kid to be a solid Jewish teenager, you can’t just teach them Hebrew. Hebrew’s important, but that’s not enough.

“They should know about their responsibility to the planet, to their community.

“And the most important thing is they have to love it. They have to love being Jewish. If they love being Jewish, then when they’re in college and their brains are more developed, there’s a higher likelihood that they will take a course on Judaism.”

In all of these Judaic adventures, Korngold and her brigade of rabbis share a foundation of three principles and attributes that they write on the cover of students’ binders: compassionate, courageous, and confident.

“I think of my job as shaping teenagers,” says Korngold. “I am attempting to instill that we share the planet and give to the planet, too. Our kids have so little control over these terrible things that happen, so I try to teach them those three things to help empower them for the task that’s ahead of them.

“I just happen to use Judaism as my tool.”

By now, no doubt, you are wondering how a Torah scroll – as small as 12”, in the case of this congregation — can make it through outdoor excursions under Korngold’s umbrella.

“It goes in a dry bag,” reveals Korngold. “We have a backpacking Torah, and it’s breaking a bit after 20 years of putting it in backpacks and hauling it up and down mountains.”

In one case, it was a 14,000 ft. peak in Rocky Mountain National Park for a wedding ceremony.

That’s certainly one way of being closer to G-d.

When she’s not coming up with exotic places for congregants to conduct life events, Korngold is on the Colorado ski slopes, sometimes four days a week. The other three days are not for loafers.

“I’m a huge mountain biker,” the rabbi says. “What I love is being in the woods and not having cars that can hit me.

“I love the endorphins from physical workouts, biking in the mountains. I love the flow of it.”

Korngold hints at retirement, knowing that would bring more personal time to build onto her lifelong adventure.

“I love my job,” Korngold says. “It’s been an amazing run. I feel like I have had a positive impact on thousands of people.

“So, I feel very satisfied.”

Lots of snow arrived last week in the Colorado mountains. Look out for the Adventure Rabbi on your right. She’s a bit faster when not holding onto her Torah scroll.

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