In the California Desert, Wilderness Torah Takes Judaism Back to Nature

Founder Zelig Golden, an environmental lawyer turned rabbi-in-training, tries ‘to reconnect the Jewish people’ to the earth

By Merissa Nathan Gerson for Tablet Magazine

Shortly after he finished law school in 2007, Zelig Golden went on a “vision quest” in California’s White Mountains with Rites of Passage. Although it was “a religiously universal program,” Golden said, he had “what turned out to be a very powerful Jewish experience.”

It began as a 10-day group trip in the wilderness, at an altitude of 10,000 feet in the high desert, but the focus was on preparing for three days and nights Golden would spend alone afterward. “I was guided to go spend three days and three nights fasting and praying,” he recalled. He intended to reevaluate his “work in the world” because he’d decided that being an environmental lawyer wasn’t satisfying enough. “I came back with a very simple vision,” he said. “I wanted to connect my people to the earth.”

By “my people,” Golden meant the Jews. Two and a half months later, he turned his vision into reality, organizing the first “Sukkot on the Farm” in Dixon, Calif. “It was a little festival,” he said, “not so organized but well-intentioned.” A small, informal group of Bay Area Jews camped out at the edge of a vegetable field, where they prayed, built a sukkah, learned Torah, and toured the farm. Out of this festival, Wilderness Torah was eventually born—a Berkeley-based group Golden calls “a manifestation of this vision to reconnect the Jewish people to this thing we were once deeply connected to.”

Wilderness Torah has developed from a small gathering of campers to a full cycle of outdoor festivals tied to Jewish holidays—Sukkot, Passover, Shavuot, and Tu B’Shevat—as well as other back-to-nature wilderness quests for adults throughout the year. The group has also created a nature-mentorship b’nai mitzvah program called B’Naiture for 11-to-13 year-olds, and an outdoor-education program called B’Hootz that takes younger kids camping, hiking, and into the wilderness to learn Torah through outdoor experience with mentors.

Wilderness Torah’s numbers are rising. That first Sukkot on the Farm festival in 2007 drew 35 people; this year’s now-annual event drew 300 campers to Green Oaks Creek Farm in Pescadero, Calif., featuring organic kosher meals, a talk by tracker-author Jon Young, lessons from the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, music by the band Tevat Teva, kids’ activities, meditation, and more.

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