OCCIDENTAL, Calif. (RNS) — On an unseasonably warm Friday evening in March, 40 people gathered for a Kabbalat Shabbat service in a grove of redwoods and California live oaks, about an hour and a half drive north of San Francisco. A group of musicians led the Jewish congregation in singing Hebrew psalms as an owl made its presence known from somewhere above.
For the silent Amidah prayer, the rabbi invited the congregants — dressed in jeans, hats and hiking shoes — to venture further into the forest for several minutes of private reflection.
“With your eyes, with your heart, please take a moment to greet the trees,” the rabbi said. “Shalom.”
Later, the group sat on picnic tables and shared a vegetarian potluck meal in semidarkness.
The service was part of Makom Shalom, a forest synagogue that launched during the High Holidays last year and has grown to 83 adult members. Rabbi Zelig Golden, a former environmental lawyer and nonprofit director, leads the nondenominational congregation in rural West Sonoma County. It’s a new iteration of an earth-based Judaism movement where Bay Area Jews are finding their spiritual home outside a traditional synagogue and with environmental and feminist ideals at the congregation’s center.
“The Jewish soul comes alive when we’re in the natural world,” Golden, 52, said in an interview a few days before the service. “I get quite a bit of feedback from people who say, ‘Although I loved the synagogue of my upbringing, I’m not ready or able to go into a building to pray anymore.’ They simply want t …
