One of my best friends lived in Australia for six months and while he was there he became a big surfing aficianado. Whenever I talked to him it was all this talk about how awesome the waves were, how he was getting really good at cresting, and how surfing just felt so amazing. He’s always been kind of a touchy-feely type (something I put up with only because he’s my oldest friend) and it didn’t surprise me when he told me that surfing was kind of like davening to him. He said it felt spiritual. Apparently he wasn’t alone in this feeling, because there is a now a Jewish surfing summer camp in California. Called Joe V Surf Camp, and located in SoCal, it combines Torah study with surfing lessons, hiking, sports, and chevruta. The camp is Glatt kosher, and caters to a Modern Orthodox clientele, although all are welcome.
I discovered Joe V Surf Camp from this article from one of the Jewish papers in LA. It mentions a number of summer programs for observant Jewish teens that aren’t just the typical tours of the US or Israel. You can now munch on kosher food and daven three times a day while hiking across South America or Australia. The creator of Joe V, a guy named Ari Shoshstain, says, “There's no reason you can't mix tradition with extreme sports. Kids need to be occupied. Torah is a great way, but a lot of kids are not into the standard way of learning and teaching. If you use those activities to show them the spiritual end of it, I definitely think it will bring balance to everything they're doing." Which is, I think, EXACTLY right. Observant Jewish kids have always been pushed into really conventional learning settings, well into a time when we know that not everyone learns best in the Beit Mitdrash. I am so glad programming is finally catching up with kids. I’m not knocking any of the old school bus trips and Israel adventures that have been around forever, because I think they’re fantastic. As an alum of two such programs I can attest to how fun and spiritual they can be. But even when I went on USY on Wheels, I wished we could be doing something that was more specifically interesting to me. I think a lot of this cool new programming is coming out of a new understanding of teenagers. As drugs and violence become bigger and more common problems for Jewish groups, there’s lots of concern that Jewish teens will abandon religious life, or, as they say in frum-speak “go off the derech.” It’s great to see that instead of just stuffing kids in yeshivas there are actual avenues for observant kids to explore the outside world without being called apikorsim. Finally. In other surfing news, observant Muslim women can now safe and protect their modesty at the same time, thanks to the Burkini. Also, I’m too far from an ocean to surf, but I’m dying to try this. There have got to be some big sand dunes someplace close to Nashville, right? Finally, Christian surfers are way ahead of us. They even have their own Bible.
Just to let you know, this content appears a little bit weird from my smart phone. Who knows maybe it is just my mobile phone. Great article by the way.
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