MAUREEN BUNYAN: His name is Gershon Winkler. He's a rabbi. But you won't find him in the synagogue. Instead, look for Rabbi Winkler in the wilderness of New Mexico, a rabbi with a controversial past. The story behind Gershon Winkler's decision to go west is the story of how his crisis of faith led to a personal transformation.

Out for an afternoon horseback ride on his land in Cuba, New Mexico, Rabbi Gershon Winkler is a long way from the Orthodox close-knit community he left behind in Brooklyn, New York. In Brooklyn there were cars; now there are cattle. Then there were synagogues and crowded streets; now there are vistas and isolation.

(Footage of Winkler chanting)

Gershon Winkler, raised in an Orthodox home, was a widely respected rabbi in the Orthodox tradition.

Rabbi GERSHON WINKLER: I was hired by two yeshivas whose focus was to educate un-Orthodox Jewish adults, mostly who were really interested in becoming Orthodox, learning about Orthodoxy.

BUNYAN: However, it wasn't long before he began to question traditional interpretations of Jewish law, kalacha, the teachings he was supposed to pass on.

Rabbi WINKLER: Everything that I had been raised with in terms of how to live and how to believe and how to think and the kind of community that I was raised in, was becoming less and less in harmony with who I was evolving [into] and what was evolving inside of me. So, yes, it was scary, and I guess the scary part was the question that kept gnawing at me day and night was, "Maybe they're right."

Rabbi MEIR FUND (Brooklyn, New York): I think that people have the right to change their beliefs. I think the major objection that the community he used to be part of had to him was that he was trying to sort of keep the best of both worlds. He wanted to somehow be considered in good standing in the community he left and betrayed, even while he was out there having a good time breaking every kalacha he could get his hands on.

BUNYAN: So Rabbi Winkler expressed his new feelings in a book, a fictional children's book based on fact, he said. But to outraged critics in his community, a traitorous antikalachic tract.

Rabbi FUND: THEY CALLED HER REBBE, Rabbi Gershon Winkler's masterpiece, is, in my opinion and the opinion of many people here, the ultimate chutzpah. And, I would add, it's a pristine example of consumer fraud. What I object to and what many of us object to is the deceptiveness of Gershon Winkler in using the guise of being a writer of Jewish books, of Judaica for young Jewish children, and slipping into the pages of that book beliefs and attitudes that are totally antithetical to what these Jewish children would expect to find in such a book -- and their parents. Using the Maiden of Ludmir as his spokesperson to voice all of his anger and his wishes to downgrade the authority of rabbinic Judaism.

BUNYAN: His life in chaos, Rabbi Winkler left Brooklyn and headed west.

How is it that you were able to adjust so easily and so comfortably to this kind of environment?

Rabbi WINKLER: I guess this was always in my blood. I just didn't know it until I had my classical midlife crisis and went out to the woods to meditate on my life and realized, wow, being in the woods, living in the wilderness is my life. This felt at home, this felt comfortable, this felt me. So I stayed forever.