Zelig Golden

Maggid Zelig Golden is co-founder and co-director of Wilderness Torah.

A community maggid, wilderness guide, youth mentor, environmental educator, and attorney, Zelig Golden brings over a decade of visionary leadership to the Jewish environmental movement. To help connect people and community to their highest purpose, Zelig develops and guides programs such as the Jewish Vision Quest, B’naiture, and Wilderness Torah’s annual cycle of land-based pilgrimage festivals. A former member of the Hazon board of directors, he co-chaired Hazon’s 2008 Food Conference.

Zelig derives much inspiration from his 2006 season farming, teaching, and pickling at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center’s Adamah program, as well as his years as a Colorado Outward Bound instructor, an Alaskan back-country park ranger, and a lifelong explorer of wild places. Until recently, he worked as an environmental attorney for the Center for Food Safety to protect our food and farms.

Zelig holds a BS in ecology from the University of Washington and a JD.from the Berkeley School of Law. He received smicha from Reb Zalman Schacter-Shalomi as maggid, gabbai, and mentor of Torah on Lag B’Omer 5771. He teaches at his home congregation, Chochmat HaLev, in Berkeley, CA.

Wilderness Torah

Faith and Practice

A Critical Time for Jewish Youth: Rethinking the Bar and Bat Mitzvah

By Sarai Shapiro and Zelig Golden

Tweens need more. A look at one approach to making Judaism relevant, meaningful and transformative and giving youth a Jewish compass to navigate their lives ahead. Naturally.

Faith and Practice

Earth Based Judaism – Reclaiming Our Roots, Reconnecting to Nature

By Zelig Golden

The Jewish tradition provides us with a built-in operating system that connects us to the earth by connecting us to the cycles of nature.