![Everyone goes "Xtreme" in Las Vegas, including counselor Hirschel Gourarie in the blue T-shirt, far left. (Photo: Bentzi Sasson/CTeen)](https://w2.chabad.org/media/images/808/QqET8088633.jpg?_i=_n32DD4A5CE5B405756B86D11830CBE5B1 "Everyone goes "Xtreme" in Las Vegas, including counselor Hirschel Gourarie in the blue T-shirt, far left. (Photo: Bentzi Sasson/CTeen)")
Where can you go rappelling with a rabbi, pray Shacharit in the shadow of the Grand Canyon and belt out Chassidic songs on a bus barreling across the Nevada desert?
Now in its second year, the CTeen Xtreme travel camp takes Jewish teens, ages 15-18, on a two-week adventure across the southwestern United States.
Founded in 2008, CTeen is a network of programming and resources aimed at engaging Jewish youth around the world. The group’s annual Shabbaton in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., took place recently, drawing 1,000 teenagers together for Jewish learning, inspiration and entertainment.
CTeen director Rabbi Shimon Rivkin says the seeds for CTeen Xtreme were planted by Shabbaton participants, who lamented that the experience, lasting just three days, was too short.
In response, Rivkin—together with Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, executive director of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch Suite 302, which oversees the CTeen program, and Rabbi Zalman Notik—began organizing a pilot program for a summer travel camp. Their goal was to create a trip that combined adventure and camaraderie with Jewish learning and pride, set against the backdrop of the sweeping beauty of the American Southwest.
Last year’s program was open to boys in ninth through 12th grades; this year, CTeen Xtreme is organizing a girls’ trip as well.
In late July last year, 40 boys from across the United States and Europe convened in Denver. Joined by four counselors and two rabbis, they loaded onto the bus that would take them on a 13-day journey—directed by Notik—across Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and California.
Rivkin acknowledges that the logistical details of a running a camp with no fixed location were daunting. With dozens of activities, different lodgings each night, the challenge of preparing kosher food on the road and more than 1,000 miles to cover, there were many moving parts to keep track of over the course of the journey.
Rivkin says the key to the camp’s smooth operation was the efforts of the staff of rabbis, counselors, cooks and organizers. The team had to coordinate transporting luggage and enough food for 40 hungry campers (they enjoyed freshly prepared kosher food, often cooked on a traveling grill), in addition to ferrying the teens to activities and sights along the route.
‘A Very Positive Vibe’
Camper Archie Weindruch, 17, credits the counselors with keeping enthusiasm high and building camaraderie throughout the trip. “The whole thing had a very positive vibe, even when there were down times. Everyone was growing and building off one another.”
Hirschel Gourarie, a rabbinical student in Brooklyn, worked as a counselor on the trip. “It was definitely two of the best weeks of my life,” he says.
Days were long and filled with activity, typically beginning with breakfast and Shacharit, the morning prayer service. This was followed by a learning session in which campers split into groups to study the basics of Jewish observance, such as Shabbat, keeping kosher and davening (prayer).
The camp drew teens from diverse Jewish backgrounds, with many coming from families not traditionally observant. The learning sessions aimed to acquaint campers with basic Jewish concepts and give them tools to participate in Jewish life; at the same time, they fostered inquiry and open discussion.
But Jewish learning wasn’t confined to these designated study sessions. The majestic Colorado Rockies, red-painted mesas of Utah and sagebrush-dotted vistas of Arizona served as their own sources of inspiration and reflection.
“One of the basic roots of the program is v’ahavta et Hashem elokecha—the mitzvah to love … G‑d,” explains CTeen Xtreme director, Rabbi Nachman Rivkin. “The actual mitzvah is an emotion. Seeing the wonders of creation is one of the ways that we are called on to love G‑d.”
Campers trekked through painted deserts in Sedona, Ariz.; scaled ladders to explore Native American cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, Colo.; rode on horseback through verdant valleys ringed by the Rocky Mountains; and enjoyed surf and sand on the beaches of Southern California.
Joining them as chaperones and mentors were Rabbi Moshe Rapoport, program director of the Peltz Center for Jewish Life in Mequon, Wis.; and Rabbi Shmuel Tietchtel, co-director of the Rohr Chabad Center at Arizona State University.
Friendships and Bonding
The camp offered many hands-on ways for campers to explore Judaism. They spent a Shabbat together at Rabbi Mendy and Shterna Deitsch’s Chabad house in Chandler, Ariz., where campers enjoyed meals together with the local community, participated in services, rested and played games.
Weindruch says the counselors and rabbis help create a sense of Jewish pride that permeated the trip: “The counselors were constantly expressing Jewish pride, and would be singing and dancing, even in public places.”
During a stroll along Las Vegas’s famous strip, campers and counselors helped Jewish passersby participate in the mitzvah of tefillin. “We said were we transforming ‘Sin City’ into ‘Mitzvah City,’ ” says Gourarie.
As for Rabbi Rapoport, the camp helped him grow in unexpected ways as well, he says. During a mountaineering activity, for example, he had to face a fear of heights.
“I was thoroughly terrified; my knees were shaking. But the kids kept saying, ‘Come on, Moish! You gotta do it.’ ” After Rapoport rappelled down the 140-foot drop, the air seemed practically jubilant. “There was a tremendous bond that happened with the kids. It wasn’t like I did it. It was we did it.”
Campers and staff alike cite new friendships and bonding as highlights of the experience.
Though he enjoyed the hikes and outdoor activities, Weindruch says a favorite memory was one evening when he, Rapoport and a group of campers reclined on the banks of a lake, chatting until late into the night.
Many campers and staff remain in touch. Gourarie says he studies regularly with several campers over Skype, and Weindruch spent a Shabbat at Rapoport’s Chabad House in Mequon.
This year, the session for boys runs from June 29-July 10, and a girls’ session takes place from July 13-24. The itinerary includes visits to Vail, Colo.; Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah; and activities like cave-touring, mountain-biking and surfing.
Information and registration for the camp is available at www.cteenxtreme.com .
Rapoport reflects on the different nature of this trip: “I think this is one of the most important projects you can do for a kid today. When you go out to an amusement park or the Grand Canyon and the kids are proud to be Jewish, that shows them being Jewish isn’t just something that’s confined to the synagogue.”
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