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Hot and bothered: Young Jews are demanding action on climate change
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — On an unusually warm February day, approximately 200 Jews gathered at the Hebrew Educational Alliance in Denver, Colorado for the inaugural Colorado Jewish Climate Summit, which coincided with Tu Bishvat, the new year of the trees.
Among the attendees were about 20 teens, who filed into the sanctuary, past tables stacked with brochures on sustainability and vibrant tapestries portraying Torah stories. They clustered into wooden pews, discussing the climate workshops they would attend — or lead.
“In the Jewish community, we talk about being collective in our efforts. And climate change is the same way — it’s not what one of us does, it’s what many of us do,” said Noah Shurz, a 16-year-old from Denver who helped plan the summit.
As the climate crisis and the global response to it intensifies, many Jewish teens are utilizing the intersections of Jewish and environmentalist teachings as impetus for activism. Through participating in groups like Jewish Youth Climate Movement, Dayenu and Jewish Climate Action Network, teens are strengthening their connection to Judaism and deepening their sense of community. Values like Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof (“justice, justice you shall pursue”), Tikkun Olam (“repairing the world”) and L’Dor V’Dor (“from generation to generation”) fuel their activism. These activists bring a unique perspective to the movement, combining the fervor of young changemakers with the tradition of the Jewish people.
Event attendees sign up for lunch orders from the sustainable food trucks provided during the Colorado Jewish Climate Summit. (Courtesy of Colorado Jewish Climate Action).
“My Judaism and my desire to fight against climate change go hand in hand,” said Rivka Schafer, a Modern Orthodox 18-year-old from Teaneck, New Jersey who uses they/them pronouns. In their role as co-director for Jewish Youth Climate Movement, a youth organization founded in 2019 that has about 450 members, Schafer acts as the bridge between youth leaders and adult staff.
Schafer described participating in climate action as almost a religious obligation. “When I go into nature, I feel inherently connected to God,” said Schafer. “To see that loss of our natural world to me resembles a loss of spirituality as well.”
Schafer became a climate activist at age 12 after seeing bleached coral reefs firsthand during an underwater dive. “For the first time, it hit me, the destruction we are causing our world,” they said. “I decided that if the government wasn’t doing anything to fix the world, and if the adults weren’t doing enough, then it was up to me to bear that responsibility of healing our planet.”
Schafer’s co-director, Amber Marcus-Blank, 18, from Sharon, Massachusetts, shares this connection to the natural world. “There is a very similar feeling that I get when I’m reading Jewish prayers and when I’m in nature,” said Marcus-Blank.
In the past, Jewish Youth Climate Movement has pushed for banks to divest from fossil fuels, participated in and led climate protests and sent youth representatives to the U.N COP27 climate conference. More recently, as smoke from wildfires engulfed the eastern U.S, causing alarmingly poor air quality, JYCM teens connected the Biblical concept of neshama (both “breath” and “soul”) to the climate fight. The organization challenged their Instagram followers to “fight to protect the sanctity of our breath and the right for all communities to breathe safe and clean air,” suggesting actions like calling representatives to pass climate legislation like the NY HEAT Act.
The organization works with local Jewish institutions to create change within Jewish communities. Institutions “can look at implementing recycling/compost…can encourage transit usage by trying to get a bus stop next to them, or having bike parking and reducing car space: things to get people to see what they could also do in their household… and advocating for [climate action] bills,” said Shurz. JYCM teens lead sustainability trainings at Jewish institutions, build resources, run the social media accounts, and organize demonstrations; a few adult staff handle behind the scenes work.
Jewish activists use similar tactics to other groups — such as divestment campaigns or changes to unsustainable infrastructure — but their actions are by, about, and for Jews. Groups like JYCM make helping synagogues or day schools become more sustainable, a top priority.
For example, many synagogues, with assistance from Adamah (previously Hazon), are moving towards greener energy. The organization provides energy audits, educational resources, and institutional partnerships via their Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition (with more than 30 institutions across the country). Youth activists help educate Jewish communities as to the necessity of the program.
Rabbi Jennie Rosenn speaks at the Colorado Jewish Climate Summit about the importance, history and impact of Jewish climate action. (Courtesy of Colorado Jewish Climate Action)
Some teens interviewed say they were previously engaged in non-denominational climate action, but that Jewish activism serves their needs better. “As an Orthodox Jew, I keep Shabbos, I keep kosher,” said Schafer. “I wanted to be in a place where people would understand me and be respectful of my religious observances, so it just didn’t make sense for me to join [a climate] organization that wasn’t Jewish.”
Their co-director, Marcus-Blank, said that the intersectional nature of JYCM — Jewish, youth, climate — provides space for all her interests. “It allows me to be my full self in a way that I can’t really be in any other space.” She felt limited by other organizations: struggling with not discussing Judaism in secular climate spaces or climate in Jewish spaces, and sometimes, given her age, being ignored in both spaces.
“Being Jewish is what led me to [climate activism],” said Marcus-Blank. Being taught tikkun olam, surrounded by Jews who took action for the things they believed in, contributed to her desire to pursue environmental activism.
Not only can Jewish values like Tikkun Olam be connected to environmentalist principles, but many of those principles are explicitly found in Jewish teachings. Judaism regards human beings as the “guardians of the earth.” It dictates that God created the universe and it is the duty of humans to protect it (stewardship). Nature is woven into much of Judaism — from environmentally related holidays such as Sukkot or Tu Bishvat, to the Tree of Life, a metaphor for the Torah. Jewish tradition also supports modern sustainability concepts such as regenerative agriculture and low waste living.
Nevertheless, the Jewish presence in the climate movement is relatively recent. The first official Jewish-environmentalist organization, named Shomrei Adamah (for the Hebrew phrase “keepers of the earth”) was created in 1988 by Rabbi Ellen Bernstein. The organization’s mission was to “illuminate and make accessible the ecological roots of Jewish tradition and to inspire Jewish individuals and institutions to care for the earth and act on her behalf.” It has since been joined by other groups, such as Adamah (the parent organization of JYCM), which formed with the merger of Hazon and Pearlstone.
Recently, the field of faith-based activism has become more diverse, with interfaith organizations such as Greenfaith gaining prominence. Jewish climate activism also has been increasing as more Jews learn of the scale and speed of the threat.
Through JYCM, teens also learn more about Judaism. Marcus-Blank learned about nigun, a form of sung prayer, at a retreat with JYCM in 2022. During Dayenu’s 2022 “All Our Might”campaign, JYCM youth activist Lexie Miller brought matzah to the leader of a Wells Fargo bank as symbolism for the limited time remaining to fight the climate crisis – just as the Jews had limited time for the matzah to rise.
JYCM also conducts trainings relating Jewish persecution and perseverance to climate action. Miller, who serves on the JYCM national youth leadership board, helps to create ‘equity and inclusion’ resources explaining to youth that now is a time that Jews must fight for survival, just as in the past. “I perceive the threat of climate change very similar to how I felt people in the Torah must have felt when their homes were threatened,” said the 13-year-old from Boulder, Colorado. The concept of justice for Jews and other marginalized groups plays a large role in JYCM’s philosophy. “All of our Jewish teachings tell us to stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves and to care for the world. That’s why climate activism and [equity and inclusion] is rooted so much in Jewish history,” said Miller.
Attendees paint a protest banner during the Colorado Jewish Climate Summit. (Shira Nathan)
For the Colorado Jewish Climate summit, the teens planned with adult organizers for months. The event was similar to others that Jewish teens are coordinating across the country. The summit came to fruition under the direction of Colorado Jewish Climate Action, and included Rabbi Jenni Rosen of Dayenu and a message from U.S senator Michael Bennet. Colorado Jewish Climate Action hopes to collaborate further with the youth activists; in the future, the Denver kvutzah will serve as a youth outreach partner.
Many teens choose Jewish-based climate action because it fosters community. “[The other teens] inherently understand some of the biggest components of my identity and the things I value,” said Schafer.
Taking action in these groups can also alleviate burnout, a common phenomenon experienced in climate activism. “In this line of work, where you’re facing an existential crisis, it’s not a tangible goal that you’re reaching for. And so it can be really easy to get burned out and be disappointed by the lack of action,” said Marcus-Blank. “JYCM is what kept me going, because these people have so much hope and optimism.”
These teens combine the ideals of youth and deep-seated values of Judaism as fuel for continued engagement in the climate movement; especially l’dor v’dor, “from generation to generation,” the value of preserving/protecting Jewish faith and livelihood in the face of adversity in order for future Jews to benefit,
“There’s a certain urgency that comes with young people, because we are starting to see the effects of climate change in real time. My Jewish values project that urgency because I’m really in tune to wanting to help people,” said Marcus-Blank. “And the persecution of Jews has always created changemakers. So both of those things go hand in hand.”
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The post Hot and bothered: Young Jews are demanding action on climate change appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘The Jewish Spirit’: Holocaust Survivors, Freed Israeli Hostages Gather at Auschwitz for ‘March of the Living’
Holocaust survivors, relatives of Israeli hostages, and survivors of Hamas captivity marched together at Auschwitz for the annual March of the Living on April 24, 2025. Photo: Chen Schimmel
Oswiecim, Poland — Holocaust survivors, relatives of Israeli hostages, and survivors of Hamas captivity marched together at Auschwitz, the infamous former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, for the first time on Thursday, joining Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the annual March of the Living.
The march from Auschwitz I to Auschwitz II-Birkenau — the Nazis’ largest death camp where 1 million Jews were murdered during World War II — took place on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and included 80 Holocaust survivors, many of whom were also death march survivors, to mark 80 years since the liberation of the camps.
March of the Living president Phyllis Greenberg Heideman addressed the survivors, who were seated next to the gate bearing the notorious inscription, “Work sets you free.”
“It’s a strange thing to say, but we welcome you to Auschwitz,” she said. “You are the true heroes. We will treasure your legacy forever.”
Almog Meir Jan and his mother Orit. Almog was rescued by the IDF on June 5 during the Arnon Mission. Photo: Chen Schimmel
Standing outside the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz I, recently released hostage Eli Sharabi said, “The Holocaust was unlike anything else — we will never forget and never forgive.”
“But our presence here is the triumph of the Jewish spirit. The Jewish people sanctify life, not death. I endured horrors in enemy captivity, but I chose life. That gives me hope to get up each morning and begin rebuilding,” he added.
Sharabi, whose wife and daughters were murdered during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, was released in February after nearly 500 days in captivity. His emaciated appearance as he was paraded through Gaza on his release led to comparisons with concentration camp survivors.
Pro-Israel influencer Shiraz Shukran broke down after seeing Sharabi. The two embraced for several minutes. “Seeing him in real life, in this place, just made it all suddenly seem very close. This is no longer something that happened 80 years ago; it’s continuing until this day,” Shukran told The Algemeiner.
Pro-Israel influencer Shiraz Shukran embracing former hostage Eli Sharabi. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner
In remarks to reporters prior to the march, Herzog called the return of the hostages a “universal human imperative.”
“With a broken heart, I remind us all that although after the Holocaust we vowed, ‘Never again,’ today, even as we stand here, the souls of dozens of Jews again ‘yearn within a cage,’ ‘thirsting for water and for freedom,’ as 59 of our brothers and sisters are held by terrorist murderers in Gaza, in a horrific crime against humanity,” Herzog said, referring to the hostages kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion who remain in captivity.
His Polish counterpart, President Andrzej Duda, said the march was “a dramatic call of ‘never again.’ No more hatred, no more discrimination, no more antisemitism.”
He called for “all wars in the Middle East to end,” and for a two-state solution, which he said was the “most rational solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] that gives hope for achieving stable and lasting peace.”
The two leaders signed the visitors’ book and laid a wreath at Auschwitz’s Black Wall, where the Nazis executed prisoners.
At the march’s opening ceremony, the head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks, lit one of six candles — representing the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis — and addressed rising antisemitism in the world.
“Jews all over the world fear walking streets with a kippah and it’s unacceptable. College students are being attacked verbally and physically,” he told The Algemeiner.
He praised US President Donald Trump for “combating this scourge.”
“There’s a new sheriff in town. It’s my hope the rest of the world can look to him to see how to support and defend the Jewish community against these vile attacks,” he said.
Matt Brooks, chief executive officer of the Republican Jewish Coalition, with Malcolm Hoenlein, vice chairman emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner
In Block 5, where thousands of victims’ eyeglasses are displayed behind glass, Laly Dery told a delegation of Israeli teenagers from the national civil service about her son, Sgt. First Class (res.) Saadia, who fell in battle in Gaza in June.
“Just like my son, who served the country with every fiber of his being, you have earned the enormous privilege of serving the state of Israel,” Dery said.
Derai’s words resonated with Sara Bisan, the only member of the national service delegation not wearing an Israeli flag. Instead, Bisan wore the distinctive multi-colored flag of the Druze community to which she belongs.
“I feel her pain, and it hurts,” Bisan said, reflecting on the death of her own friend from the northern Druze village of Kfar Yarka, who was also killed in Gaza.
“But our people, the Druze and the Jews, share a lot, including a love of Israel. I also feel that serving the state of Israel is a privilege,” she added.
Sara Bisan. Photo: Debbie Weiss / The Algemeiner
Twelve thousand participants marched the 1.7 miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau for the main ceremony, which was cut short this year due to heavy rain.
As thunder echoed overhead, released hostage Agam Berger played the theme from “Schindler’s List” on a 150-year-old violin rescued during the Holocaust. Daniel Weiss, a survivor from Kibbutz Be’eri whose father was murdered on Oct. 7 and whose mother was abducted and later killed in Gaza, performed a musical rendition of the psalm Shir Lamaalot alongside her.
“The Lord will guard you from all evil; He will guard your soul,” Weiss sang, his voice quavering.
The post ‘The Jewish Spirit’: Holocaust Survivors, Freed Israeli Hostages Gather at Auschwitz for ‘March of the Living’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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French Far-Left Party Calls for Ban on Israeli Pop Star Eyal Golan’s Paris Concert
Eyal Golan. Photo: Screenshot
France’s leading far-left party has called for the cancellation of Israeli pop star Eyal Golan’s upcoming concert in Paris, describing him as “a true mouthpiece for supporters of genocide” in Gaza.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the La France Insoumise party (LFI — “France Unbowed”), led by leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, urged the National Assembly — the lower house of the French Parliament — to ban Golan’s upcoming concert, claiming that he “should not come to sing the praises of genocide in Paris.”
“We call for a broad mobilization to prevent this event from taking place,” LFI lawmakers wrote in the statement, referring to Golan’s concert scheduled for May 20. “We ask the prefect to ban it immediately.”
“No one should come to Paris to sing hymns to the genocide of the Palestinian people,” the statement continued.
According to the party, the 54-year-old singer called for “the extermination of the Palestinian people” in a social media post the day after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which he wrote, “Leave no soul alive.”
LFI also said that Golan “repeated the statement a week later, before receiving support from far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir,” who serves as Israel’s national security minister.
In their statement, LFI lawmakers claimed that Golan’s concert, expected to gather more than 4,500 people, “constitutes a real voice for genocide supporters.”
“France cannot tolerate such an unnecessary insult to the thousands of Gaza victims and their loved ones,” the statement read.
In response to these accusations, Liam Productions, the event organizer, denounced the push to cancel Golan’s concert as antisemitic and expressed their eagerness to meet the Jewish community in France, promising a “unifying and special evening.”
“On Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we remember the consequences of staying silent in the face of hate, far-left parties in France seek to boycott an Israeli artist simply because he is Israeli,” the statement read.
“This is not freedom of expression — it is antisemitism disguised as morality. The people of Israel will not be silent, will not apologize, and will not stop singing.”
Mélenchon and his party have a long history of pushing anti-Israel policies and, according to Jewish leaders, of making antisemitic comments — such as suggesting that Jews killed Jesus, echoing a false claim that was used to justify antisemitic violence and discrimination throughout the Middle Ages in Europe.
The French diplomat has been criticized by French Jews as a threat to their community, as well as to those who support Israel.
Mélenchon has previously described the French Jewish community as “an arrogant minority that lectures to the rest.” He has also urged the French government to recognize a “Palestinian state.”
In the wake of the Hamas onslaught on Israel, Mélenchon and his party issued a statement calling the attacks “an armed offensive by Palestinian forces” in response to the ongoing Israeli “occupation.”
Last year, Mélenchon openly expressed support for Hezbollah on social media, as the Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon continued to clash with Israel.
“Mass killing in Lebanon by Netanyahu’s invading army,” Melenchon wrote in a post on X, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The toll is getting worse by the hour. Full support for the national resistance of the Lebanese.”
France has experienced a disturbing surge in antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 atrocities, with 1,570 anti-Jewish hate crimes recorded last year.
The total number of antisemitic outrages last year was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) — the main representative body of French Jews.
“LFI has given antisemitism a political endorsement,” CRIF president Yonathan Arfi told the French publication Le Point last year. “We observe this toxic porosity between criticism of Israel and the ostracization of French Jews. The Palestinian cause becomes a license to hate.”
In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent in France, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.
The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.
The post French Far-Left Party Calls for Ban on Israeli Pop Star Eyal Golan’s Paris Concert first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Signs Seismic Executive Order on Foreign Funding in Higher Education
US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon shakes hands with Annette Albright next to US President Donald Trump during an event to sign executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 23, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect.
US President Donald Trump has signed a seismic executive order to strengthen federal law which colleges and universities have long circumvented to avoid reporting donations they receive from illiberal foreign governments and individuals.
“Protecting American educational, cultural, and national security interests requires transparency regarding foreign funds flowing to American higher education and research institutions,” Trump said in the order, which was signed in the Oval Office in the presence of the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on Wednesday. “It is the policy of my administration to end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions, protect the marketplace of ideas from propaganda sponsored by foreign governments, and safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.”
The executive order noted that during Trump’s first term in office, the Education Department launched investigations of 19 higher education institutions suspected of concealing foreign donations and any undue influence the immense sums may have gained the country from which they originated — inquiries that led to the disclosure of $6.5 billion worth of unreported gifts. The Biden administration, he said, “undid” that work, “hindering public access to information on foreign gifts and contracts.”
The remainder of the order enumerates enforcement duties delegated to McMahon, which include reversing Biden-era policies which countenanced lax observance of the law — Section 117 of the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 — updating the public on the department’s findings, and impounding federal funds appropriated to institutions that continue to shroud their foreign donations behind a veil of secrecy and corporate spin.
“Unfortunately, in the last four years, the Biden administration undermined the structures the president built to do this critical work, allowing nations like China and Qatar to funnel billions of dollars to US universities with little to no oversight,” McMahon said in a statement. “This financial infiltration enabled foreign governments to steal taxpayer-funded intellectual property and reshape how our elite campuses teach about Israel and the Middle East.”
Foreign money in higher education is an issue to which scholars and nonprofit groups have called attention for years, arguing that it is an instrument of hostile powers that aim to distort US foreign policy by exposing students to propaganda or other ideas which undermine faith in liberal values such as free markets, limited government, and freedom of the press. Some of it is used to rehabilitate the reputations of authoritarian governments, a tactic which, experts argue, effectively converts the openness of American society into a force of its own self-subversion.
For example, according to the 2017 National Association of Scholars (NAS) report “Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for years planted “Confucius Institutes” at universities across the US, teaching students that Taiwan is Chinese territory while censoring darker moments in the regime’s history, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre that killed thousands of Chinese citizens. The institutes, the report added, came with substantial financial benefits, such as extra funds for the University at Buffalo’s Asian studies department and “opera costumes and materials in the lobby of Binghamton University.”
At other times, the Confucius Institutes were allegedly used as bases from which to conduct espionage and theft of American research and intellectual property.
NAS president Peter Wood told The Algemeiner on Thursday that Trump’s executive order is the right move, but that higher education will “resist” complying with it.
“What is at stake here is not just compliance with a good accounting principle. What is really at stake is the contempt with which many college and university presidents regard America’s national interest,” Wood said. “Allowing our universities to become beholden to the Chinese Community Party endangers Americans. The National Association of Scholars has helped to track the theft of intellectual property, the duplicity of American researchers, and the diversion research programs all under the influence of Chinese funding. China is far from the only source of such subversive funding, but it is by far the largest source.”
He added, “President Trump’s forceful executive order will go a long way towards curing this problem. We can be under no illusion, however, that America’s colleges and universities will cheerfully comply. They have a long record of ignoring lawful requirements for such disclosure and they are now more eager than ever to demonstrate their defiance of America’s laws. In light of other executive orders against [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and other forms of academic malfeasance, dozens of prominent research universities are openly declaring that they intend to resist.”
NAS has recorded copious data on foreign funding of higher education, notably in the Foreign Donor Database it created in 2024 that led to the uncovering of vast sums the Qatari government had pumped into American universities — Cornell University received over $322 million, for example, from the Qatar National Research Fund between 2015 and 2018 — to promote pro-Hamas propaganda.
Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told The Algemeiner that Qatar has “given billions to universities, including to share their Middle East studies program which then in turn develop and disseminate K-12 curriculums which are dramatically anti-Israel, antisemitic, and pro-Islamist.”
The donation of billions of unreported dollars to US institutions of higher education is strongly correlated with an erosion of liberal democratic norms and increased antisemitism on college campuses, according to a 2023 report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) titled, “The Corruption of the American Mind.”
From 2015-2020, the report noted, schools that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had, on average, 300 percent more antisemitic incidents than schools that did not accept such donations. The largest donor it named is Qatar, which former US President Joe Biden described in 2022 as a “major non-NATO ally.” From 2014-2019, Qatar gave American universities a striking $2.7 billion in undocumented funds.
Additionally, students attending universities that received foreign funding witnessed antisemitism “significantly more often” than those attending schools that did not.
“A lack of transparency in funding reporting occurred in tandem with antidemocratic norms and antisemitism across American institutions of higher education,” the report said. “A massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry, and free expression.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Trump Signs Seismic Executive Order on Foreign Funding in Higher Education first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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