I founded Wilderness Torah with a vision for thriving, earth-based Jewish traditions that bring healing, belonging and resilience to people and communities. From 2007 to 2025, I invoked mentorship, ritual facilitation, and thought leadership to create and guide a annual cycle of land-based festivals (e.g. Passover in the Desert), nature-based rites of passage (e.g. B’naiture), nature-based adult ceremony (e.g. Solo Wilderness Encounter), and mentorship for emerging leaders.

Prior to founding Wilderness Torah, I lived and worked at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, in Falls Village, CT, as an Adamah Fellow, then as the “pickle man,” where I launched their pickling operation after being inspired by a cucumber bumper crop. I served as Hazon’s first Bay Area board member helping bring their work to the west coast, and co-chaired the first Hazon Food Conference on the west coast.

In Seattle, WA, soon after college, I helped found and run the first programs of the Northwest Jewish Environmental Project (1998).

I was ordained Maggid by Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi zt”l. I received rabbinic ordination from ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, supported by the Wexner Graduate Fellowship. I earned a Masters degree in Jewish Studies from the Graduate Theological Union, supported by the Berkeley-Jerusalem Fellowship. I was ordained Mashpiah Ruchani (Spiritual Director) from the ALEPH Hashpa’ah, Spiritual Direction Training program.  

During rabbinical school, I dreamt of training rabbis in earth-based Judaism. After ordination, I helped found the ALEPH Earth-Based Judaism certification program, as the original Creative Director.

I feel deeply indebted to my teachers and mentors who have supported me over the years. In particular, Rabbi Dan Goldblatt has walked with me for over a decade as my primary rabbinic mentor. It was one of my greatest joys to have Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, zt”l, as an elder, mentor, and teacher, and to be able to support him as a shomer during his elder years.

From an early age, I have been drawn to learning from indigenous people and about earth-based cultures and ceremonies. I first encountered intact indigenous people when I lived in a Shipibo village in the Peruvian Amazon. There I experienced how people and nature are inextricably interconnected. I was later mentored by John Young, Mark Morey, and the 8 Shields Institute, exploring how to heal culture and regenerate holistic, nature-centered, multi-generational community. With them I studied the 8-Shield model which synthesized indigenous knowledge systems from across the planet to create frameworks to help colonized communities heal and remember their right relationship with people and planet.

The multi-day wilderness prayer fast (aka ‘vision quest’) has become a pivotal ceremonial path for critical turning points in my life. I went on my first prayer fast with Rites of Passage in 2007, guided by my mentor Mike Bodkin. This ceremony helped me coalesce a vision for cultivating an earth-based Judaism movement through Wilderness Torah. I was subsequently trained by Mike Bodkin in a year-long vision quest guides training program (where I met my beloved wife Rachel!). I have been trained and blessed into Lakota ceremonial ways, including engaging in four years of traditional vision quest with the Arawaka community in New Mexico. Praying in these ways have have been profoundly healing for me and have helped me open to my rabbinic path and earth-based leadership in the most profound and synchronistic ways.

Prior to founding Wilderness Torah, I graduated from Berkeley Law and fought as an environmental lawyer on the front lines of the organic food movement. I worked as a staff attorney with the Center for Food Safety helping to protect food and farms - especially focused on challenging the GMO industry through litigation, legislation, and public education. My lawyer swansong was a U.S. Supreme Court victory against Monsanto and the United States Department of Agriculture, which made history protecting organic farmers and organic seeds. (Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farm, 2010).

I have spent many years living and working in the wilderness. My first job out of college was as a backcountry park ranger and biologist for Kenai Fjords National Park, where I communed with orca whales, black bears, and delicate populations of harbor seals and bald eagles, conducting post-Exxon Valdez oil spill research and rescuing sea kayakers in the icy Alaska waters. I worked as a Colorado Outward Bound instructor, guiding teens in the Colorado Rockies in the 21-day alpine mountain course.

My first love is alpine skiing. In college I was a ski instructor at Ski Acres in the Snoqualmie Pass and I later worked as a ski patrol for Steven’s Pass in the North Cascades of Washington.

I studied botany, ecology, and conservation biology receiving my B.S. from the University of Washington. While living in Seattle in college I worked at the original REI store on Capitol Hill as a camping and climbing specialist, and met my alpine climbing partners who I ventured into the mountains. In my 20s I was an avid rock climber and alpine (mixed rock, ice, glaciers) climber, scaling many rock spires of the North Cascades in Washington and virtually all of the glaciated volcanoes in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.

In my adult life, I have guided many individuals and groups into the wilderness for adventure and ceremony.

I grew up in Spokane, Washington, raised Jewishly in the conservative synagogue, Temple Beth Shalom, where I led my local USY chapter. I was famed for hosting Pinwheel region’s annual USY conference “The Spirituality of Sexuality.” I graduated from Lewis and Clark High School, played tons of soccer, and enjoyed my first love — powder skiing in the Selkirk Mountains of northern Idaho.