Staff
Zelig Golden is Founding Co-Director of Wilderness Torah. Zelig’s greatest passion is connecting people to their highest purpose through facilitating their connections to Nature and Spirit. A community Maggid, vision quest guide, and environmental educator and attorney, Zelig brings ten years of visionary leadership to the Jewish environmental community. He brings earth-based Jewish spirituality to the Bay Area by developing and guiding programs such as the Jewish Vision Quest, the B’nai Mitzvah Nature-Mentoring program, and Wilderness Torah’s annual cycle of land-based pilgrimage festivals. To help build the national Jewish Food Movement, Zelig is a member of the Hazon Board of Directors and co-chaired Hazon’s 2008 Food Conference. He is also active in the Jewish farm movement as an adviser and educator for the Jewish Farm School. 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 backcountry park ranger and a life-long explorer of wild places. Zelig got his start in the Jewish environmental movement in 1998 as the first program director of the COEJL-affiliated Northwest Jewish Environmental Project. Until recently, he worked as an environmental attorney for the Center for Food Safety to protect our food and farms.
Julie Wolk is Founding Co-Director of Wilderness Torah. Julie’s passion lies in creating experiences for people to connect, learn, grow, and shine. She’s a born organizer and event planner, manages Wilderness Torah’s finances and operations, and coordinates the Pilgrimage Festivals — Sukkot on the Farm, Passover in the Desert and Shavuot on the Mountain. Julie worked as an organizer, campaign director, media specialist, and lobbyist in the environmental and social justice advocacy world for nearly ten years before dedicating herself to helping uncover Judaism’s earth-based traditions and create opportunities to bring these teachings to a broader audience. Julie has a long history of outdoor Jewish experiences from years of Jewish summer camp to working at a plant nursery on a kibbutz in northern Israel. Julie studied ecology and environmental policy at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. She’s traveled from Costa Rica to Vietnam hiking and exploring, but is most excited about getting to know her California home through hiking and identifying plants in the East Bay hills. She practices and teaches yoga (mostly at Wilderness Torah festivals!). Because of her own connection to Judaism and a desire to make it relevant, inclusive, and alive, and her deep love for the natural world, she is extremely committed to creating experiences where people can reconnect with Judaism and the Earth.
Co-Founders
Adam Edell is Co-Founder of Wilderness Torah and an alum of Adamah, the Jewish Environmental Fellowship at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center. It was there that he was convinced by Adamahniks like Zelig Golden to move to the Bay Area after their fellowship ended in the summer of 2006. Shortly after moving to Oakland that year, he started the Chochmat HaLev site of Hazon’s national CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program which eventually became a springboard for the first Sukkot on the Farm. As a garden-based nutrition educator, Adam teaches elementary school children all the way up to adults the principles of ecological awareness, healthy eating, self-reliance, and community economics. Adam’s profound joys come from witnessing the connections people make to themselves, each other, and the Earth, as they constantly seek new meaning in Jewish ritual. Adam was also the chair of the Sukkot on the Farm Festival planning committee in 2009.
Dr. Jonathan Rosenfield is Co-Founder of Wilderness Torah and works to protect aquatic ecosystems, endangered species, and freshwater sources as a Conservation Biologist for The Bay Institute of San Francisco and as a co-founder of the SalmonAID foundation. He is a Wilderness First Responder and a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School’s Outdoor Educator training program. He integrates his passion for wilderness and living systems with his evolving spiritual practice. Jon helped to found and define Wilderness Torah and for two years played an integral role in creating and executing Wilderness Torah’s pilgrimage festivals and visioning the organization’s future development. He is also on Wilderness Torah’s Advisory Board.
Advisory Board
Heidi Winig has been involved personally and professionally in the Jewish Community for as long as she can remember! Heidi is a skilled Jewish educator, facilitator and group leader. She has developed and led Jewish Service Learning Programs for American Jewish World Service in Africa and Central America since 2000, and guided Israel trips for most of her 20s. Through her work with AJWS she has had the opportunity to examine crucial Jewish social justice, service learning and poverty reduction issues such as community empowerment vs. top down approaches, understanding power and privilege, and designing projects for long term sustainability and community capacity building. She holds Masters degrees in Public Health and in Education. As a health educator, Heidi specializes in adolescent and reproductive health and has worked both internationally and domestically to educate young people about their bodies and staying healthy physically and emotionally.
Lisa Schachter-Brooks has been directing Costa Rican Adventures, an educational eco-tour operator for students, families and groups since 1998. After spending two years guiding groups, collaborating with local organizations and projects on the Southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and founding the Punta Mona Center for Sustainable Living and Education with brother Stephen, she moved her base of operations to the SF Bay Area. She is particularly excited about programs that combine the richness of environmental education in the lush yet fragile environments of the tropical rainforests with the cultural and spiritual richness of Judaism.
Adam Berman served for seven years as the Executive Director of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, a spiritually vibrant, socially progressive, multigenerational retreat center and community in the Connecticut Berkshires. Adam is also founded ADAMAH: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship, a three month leadership training program for Jewish young adults that integrates Jewish learning and living with sustainable agriculture, green living skills, teaching and contemplative spiritual practice. For three years, Adam served as the Director of the Teva Learning Center. He holds an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A in Environmental Studies from Brown University.
Michael Bodkin, M.S. has been the Executive Director of Rites of Passage since 1987. His first Vision Quest was with Steven and Meredith Foster, then the co-directors of Rites of Passage, in March 1980. Trained by the Fosters and certified as a Vision Quest Guide in 1982, he shortly thereafter led his first program for the organization. His leadership of Rites of Passage includes directing a training program for guide-trainees. Michael has been a California licensed Marriage and Family Therapist since 1978 and has over 30 years experience working with youth, couples and families in counseling and wilderness programs. A strong interest in men’s work has led to his guiding a number of men’s Vision Quests. He’s also served on the Advisory Council of the Wilderness Guides Council. In 1991 Michael moved to an intentional community in Northern California, where he practices his passions of organic gardening and bluegrass music, and continues to learn about the third part of the rite of passage, returning to your people.
Randy Goldstein has spent his entire career working in the fields of energy and the environment with a wide variety of energy sources and technologies – most recently,
he was a co-founder, Director and CEO of OptiSolar Inc. He has a BA in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a MS in Energy Management and Policy from the University of Pennsylvania. His first experience in local food was at Habonim Camp Tavor, where he participated in the growing of some of the camp’s food. He has also spent time in Kibbutzim in Israel. As a supporter of Hazon, he is an active participant in the Hazon’s Israel and California bike rides. He has a small garden in his backyard, and learned his lesson about Zucchinis the hard way this past summer. Randy is enjoying building community and reconnecting with nature in a more direct way though Wilderness Torah.
Adam Weisberg is Camp Tawonga’s executive director. Prior to joining the Tawonga community, Adam served as Berkeley Hillel’s executive director from 2000-2008. Additionally, Adam has worked in a variety of roles in the Jewish community including work with the Council of Jewish Federations in New York, the Jewish Agency in Israel and two years working with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Bulgaria. Prior to all that, Adam worked for seven summers as a counselor, kitchen steward, CIT advisor, and unit head at, you guessed it, Camp Tawonga. What goes around comes around, and in this case that has made Adam feel like one very lucky guy. Adam is married to Rachel Brodie. They have two daughters, Sophia and Ariella, truly lovely girls in just about every way. Word.
