Students and faculty at Lehigh took learning beyond the classroom on Tuesday and participated in a guided hike through South Mountain Trail Park. Throughout the hike, the group explored how walking trails connect to history, politics and national identity.
The event, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Walking,” was hosted by Lehigh’s Berman Center for Jewish studies and the environmental studies program. The hike was led by visiting professor Shay Rabineau, associate professor of Israel Studies and Department Chair of Judaic Studies at Binghamton University.
Rabineau visited Lehigh as part of a two-day series that included a discussion about his research, along with the trail hike event.
Rabineau was invited to Lehigh by the Center for Jewish Studies to give a series of talks on his trail research. He wrote his doctoral dissertation in Jewish Studies on hiking trails in Israel and their cultural significance.
During his discussions, he spoke about trails in Israel, Jordan and the West Bank, and how hiking can teach people about community. Rabineau said much of his research involves walking alongside the people who use and maintain trails to better understand the cultural and political significance of the land.
He said the hike at South Mountain offered students an opportunity to better understand how walking through a landscape can teach them about the history and experiences of the people who live there.
“For me, the big question is, what do we learn about people when we go out and walk through a place the way they walk, and the places where they walk,” Rabineau said.
Noa Avron Barak, an assistant Hebrew professor at Lehigh, said she first met Rabineau at an academic conference 10 years ago and recently reconnected with him.
After learning about Rabineau’s research on the Israel National Trail, Avron Barak said she wanted to introduce the professor’s work to students in her visual culture class to build a connection between Rabineau and Lehigh’s community.
“The goal is for the Lehigh community to know Shay as a scholar, and for Shay to know (the) Lehigh community (and) faculty,” she said.
Avron Barak said the hike provided an opportunity for students to apply concepts they’d been studying in class to the environment around them. She said she believes learning should extend beyond traditional classroom settings, allowing students to experience the subjects they study firsthand.
Beyond the academic experience, Avron Barak said she hoped the visit would introduce students and faculty to Rabineau’s research while increasing awareness of the opportunities available through the Berman Center.
Kiran Hauser, ‘27, said the hike gave her a new perspective on the relationship between hiking and culture.
She said it was an eye-opening experience where she was able to learn about hiking and how it relates to culture in a way that she never considered before.
Rabineau said the significance of hiking comes from understanding why people choose to travel through particular landscapes and what these choices reveal about their lives.
“For me, hiking is a way to understand the world around me,” he said. “When I’m out walking a trail, I’m walking on a thing that exists because people thought it was worth walking there.”
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