This summer, Camp Newman deepened a partnership with Adamah SF to bring campers something they can’t get in a bunk, a chadar ochel, or even on a typical hike: the chance to let Jewish tradition and the natural world teach each other. Through this collaboration, our Rishonim (8th and 9th grade) and Avodah (11th grade, summer-long program) campers spent time on the land, hiking, weaving, carving, building campfires and praying, in ways designed to open up wonder, connection, and a little bit of holy discomfort.

Here’s a look at what these campers experienced on the ground and in the wild.

The Enchanted Forest: There and Back Again

As part of an enhanced overnight trip on site, Rishonim campers set out on the Enchanted Forest trail. They walked it twice, and it meant something different each time.

On the way out, camp staff and Adamah SF guides had set up six stations along the trail. Each one was designed to help campers pause, notice, and become aware of the transitions they were moving through: thresholds in the most literal and figurative sense. Campers moved through the forest at a slower pace than usual, practicing what it feels like to actually arrivesomewhere.
On the way back, the group walked the exact same trail, but this time the stations followed the flow of shacharit, the morning prayer service. Same stops, same forest, but now layered with Jewish wisdom, using the trees and the trail itself as the classroom.

That doubling was intentional. As one staff member put it, everything on the trip was challenge by choice; nobody was forced into anything. But there’s something about leaning into a challenge and moving through it that leaves the mind open to wonder. The idea was to let Jewish prayers and practices sit quietly “in campers’ pockets,” ready to surface naturally and emergently in the pauses that nature creates.

Beyond the hike, Rishonim campers also learned to weave rope and tied their own tzitzit, helped prepare dinner as a group, and spent a night camping on Micah Mountain, capped off with a sunrise hike, a fitting way to close out a session built around thresholds and new beginnings.

Redwoods, Campfires, and Finding the Trail Within

For our Avodah campers, 11th graders who spend the whole summer at Camp Newman, the partnership with Adamah SF took shape on an off-camp trip that staff describe as “genuinely powerful”.

The trip opened with intentional group-building, followed by a tefilat haderech, the traditional prayer for travelers. Campers offered this version straight from the heart, blessing their own journey in their own words. As the hike began, a few campers proclaimed: “This trail has been blessed by the Jews!”

At the Pomo Canyon Campground in Sonoma Coast State park, campers learned to whittle and carve, shaping their own sticks, which they later used to roast marshmallows over the fire they’d built themselves. That evening, guided by staff, campers were invited to practice hitbodedut: walking alone, in silence, in the gathering twilight, away from the group and its distractions, simply listening. For many, it was the first time all summer they’d had that kind of quiet. On the way back, some campers chose to remove their shoes (the practice of grounding) as they walked back to the campsite in the dark.

The next morning, they set out on a six-mile hike that ended at one of the most beautiful spots on the map: the place where the Russian River meets the Pacific Ocean. As one staff leader described the goal behind all of it: “We’re hoping to foster a connection to nature, feeling at home in nature, and we’re doing it with the wisdom of Jewish tradition.”

A Growing Partnership

What Camp Newman and Adamah SF are building together is an approach where nature and tradition genuinely inform each other. Prayer becomes something discovered on a trail. A hike becomes a threshold. A campfire becomes a place to practice patience, and a silent walk becomes a chance to actually hear yourself think.

For campers, that adds up to something lasting: a felt sense that Judaism can live and breathe out in the world, and that the outdoors can become a place to truly belong. We’re grateful to our partners at Adamah SF for helping make these moments possible, and we can’t wait to see where the trail leads next.