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Jewish institutions awaken to climate crisis, with hundreds pledging action
(JTA) — For a decade starting in 2002, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi devoted herself to pro-Israel advocacy. After that, the Jewish philanthropist and activist from Annapolis, Maryland, went all in to fight for disability rights, working in the field for the next decade. Now, Mizrahi is focused on climate change.
“Let me put it this way: In 2021, we donated to one climate organization, and in 2022, we donated to 17 of them,” Mizrahi said, referring to the small charity fund she runs with her husband, tech entrepreneur Victor Mizrahi. This year, the couple made their largest climate-related donation yet, sending a group of nine climate reporters to Israel to meet tech startups working on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mizrahi and her husband have also begun commercially investing in such startups.
“I was hoping other people would solve it,” she said. “But the pace of the change is not nearly meeting the demand at the moment. I felt that even though I don’t know the subject, I’m just going to have to do it because I have kids and I don’t want this world to fall apart.”
Climate change has long ranked at or near the top of a list of issues concerning Jews in the United States, according to multiple surveys, and Jews have been heavily involved in the wider climate movement. But until recently, the issue had a marginal place on the agendas of Jewish communal organizations, which neglected climate even as the subject took on importance in the activism and policies of other religious communities and in the larger philanthropic world.
Mizrahi’s newfound emphasis on climate is an early example of a larger shift that is underway in Jewish philanthropy, a multibillion-dollar world made up of thousands of individual donors, charitable foundations and nonprofit organizations.
“It’s the beginning of what will become a more widespread focus among Jewish groups,” said Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, the founder and CEO of the Jewish climate group Dayenu. “We’re seeing an awakening to this as a profoundly Jewish issue, and awakening to the role that the Jewish community has to play in addressing the climate crisis.”
Scientists say that decisions regarding carbon emissions made in the next few years will affect life on Earth for thousands of years to come. The most recent warning came in March, when leading global experts with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a new report, stating that “there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”
The large Jewish populations living in the coastal United States are vulnerable to extreme storms, sea-level rise, severe heat and other weather disruptions — a situation dramatized in the recent Apple television series “Extrapolations,” in which a rabbi contends with rising sea waters infiltrating his Florida synagogue. Meanwhile, Israel is experiencing a slew of impacts from drought and floods to security threats tied regional climate-related instability.
A flooded road after heavy rainfall in the central Israeli city of Lod, Jan. 16, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
Israeli officials visit the site where a road collapsed into a large sinkhole at Mineral Beach in the Dead Sea on December 7, 2017. Many facilities and beaches have been closed or shut down in recent years following the increase in sinkholes caused by ever-declining sea levels, as climate change strains the country’s water resources. (Mark Neyman/GPO)
The last few months have seen a flurry of new initiatives aimed at both greening Jewish institutions and directing collective action on climate.
In December, for example, Rosenn’s group published a report calculating that endowments of Jewish organizations, from family foundations to local federations, are invested in the fossil fuel industry to the tune of at least $3 billion. The report launched an ongoing campaign called All Our Might that urges Jewish leaders to withdraw these investments and put the money toward clean energy instead.
Meanwhile, many of the most prominent Jewish organizations in the country — representing local federations, Hillel chapters, summer camps, community centers, day schools and nearly every religious denomination — had already joined a new green coalition organized by another Jewish environmental group and were preparing to unveil pledges to do more in the fight against climate change.
The unveiling of the climate pledges happened in March, under the leadership of Adamah, a nonprofit created through the merger of two stalwarts of Jewish environmentalism, Hazon and the Pearlstone Center.
“Climate and sustainability have not been on the list of priorities for the vast majority of Jewish organizations; this coalition and these climate action plans reflect a deep paradigm shift and culture change moving forward,” Adamah CEO Jakir Mandela said at the time.
The commitments made by members of Adamah’s Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition include sending youth leaders to global climate summits, reducing emissions of buildings and vehicles and lobbying the federal government to pass climate policies.
More than 300 congregations and nonprofits have joined. For Earth Day, Adamah announced a million-dollar fund offering interest-free loans and matching grants to Jewish groups for projects to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
If any single event can be said to mark the debut of the climate issue as a top Jewish communal priority, it is probably the recent annual conference of the Jewish Funders Network, which took place in March in Phoenix, bringing together thousands of donors and charity executives.
For the gathering’s first event, before the formal opening of the conference, a group of participants went on a field trip to downtown Phoenix to learn about the local effects of the climate crisis. Far more people signed up than organizers anticipated, and with about 55 passengers, the tour bus chartered for the occasion reached capacity. Mizrahi, who was among the participants, said the trip was helpful as a networking opportunity for like-minded philanthropists.
“We wanted to expose them to how the existential threats posed by climate change are not long term, but are already here,” Yanklowitz said. “People down in the Zone are dying every summer from heat exhaustion and dehydration.”
Based on his debrief with the group afterward, Yanklowitz feels the trip left an impact on participants.
“I didn’t hear anyone say, ‘Oh, I’m changing my commitments.’ But I did get the sense that climate change was kind of abstract for many people, and that now it really hit home,” Yanklowitz said.
The rest of the conference featured multiple talks and gatherings dedicated to climate, including on the main stage, and an announcement that Birthright, which offers free trips to Israel for young Jews, was increasing its own climate activism with the help of a new donation.
In an interview, Ellen Bronfman Hauptman and Stephen Bronfman, children of Birthright founder Charles Bronfman, said their $9 million gift is meant to honor their father on the occasion of his 90th birthday, while also bringing Birthright more in line with the values of a new generation that is environmentally-minded.
Birthright organizers will use the funding to develop programming focused on climate that could, for example, expose participants to Israel’s clean tech scene. The money is also intended to help Birthright lower its own carbon footprint, potentially by switching to electric buses or adding more vegetarian meals.
The Bronfmans hope that Birthright’s significant purchasing power in Israeli tourism will nudge the industry toward more ecologically sustainable practices.
“To me, Birthright is like Walmart — everyone wants to do business with them,” Stephen Bronfman said. “They have the power to dictate terms to their service providers and affect the supply chain.”
The widespread interest in climate mobilization among Jewish groups comes after years in which the issue languished outside the mainstream. Rosenn, the head of Dayenu, who has attended about 15 conferences of the Jewish Funder Network, noticed a change this year.
“There used to be half a dozen people at a breakfast before the program talking about climate. And it wasn’t even climate, necessarily — it was the environment writ large,” she said.
The Jewish world is, in many ways, still lagging behind the larger climate movement. Divesting endowment funds from the fossil fuel industry, for example, is seen as a bold step among Jewish groups even though at least 1,590 institutions representing nearly $41 trillion in assets have already publicly committed to doing so, according to a website tracking such pledges. About a third of the groups on the list are defined as faith-based organizations, but only three are Jewish: Kolot Chayeinu, a congregation in Park Slope, Brooklyn; the Reform movement’s pension system; and the American Jewish World Service, a global justice group.
Rabbi Laura Bellows, now Dayenu’s director of spiritual activism and education, waves matzah as she encourages major financial organizations to divest from fossil fuels at a rally in Washington, D.C., April 20, 2022. (Bora Chung | Survival Media Agency / Courtesy of Dayenu)
Adamah’s own climate plan doesn’t include a pledge to divest but only a promise that it will investigate the option of doing so for its endowment and employee retirement funds. Instead, the plan touts the group’s education and advocacy efforts, and focuses on reducing emissions at its retreat centers.
Adamah’s chief climate officer, Risa Alyson Cooper, acknowledged that Jewish community institutions have been “largely absent” from the divestment movement and said her group regards divestment as one of several required tools for addressing the climate crisis.
She said the Jewish community hit a milestone when 12 of the 20 founding members of Adamah’s climate coalition said in their climate plans that they would consider amending their financial practices. That was significant, she said, in light of the organizations’ complex and deliberate governing structures, which can make executing such changes onerous.
“While the Jewish community may have lagged behind in years past, we are catching up quickly,” Cooper said.
Such a shift would mark not only a milestone for Jewish climate activism but also a departure from how the Jewish community has historically done philanthropy, said Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, executive vice president of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.
She said wielding financial holdings for social impact has been a hallmark of advocacy by Christian groups. Last year, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) opted to divest from fossil fuels in light of the climate crisis.
The Jewish community, meanwhile, has tended to act primarily through charitable donations. One of the reasons for the difference, she said, is that the Jewish community is much less centralized with communal assets spread across many endowments, making the actions of any single group relatively less impactful.
“Adamah had done some really important work to change individual behavior and grow people’s connections to the environment, but the bigger piece of bold collective action to fight the climate crisis was missing,” Kahn-Troster said. “The overall community is late to respond to the urgency of the problem. But I do think that the work of these organizations is very significant, so I’m excited to see it.”
Kahn-Troster’s historical view is informed by the legacy of her father, Rabbi Lawrence Troster, an environmental activist who had pushed for communal Jewish action on climate, and by the passion for climate justice displayed by her 15-year-old, Liora Pelavin, a member of the Jewish Youth Climate Movement, an arm of Adamah.
“Finding a meaningful Jewish space to do grassroots-level climate advocacy that many young people are demanding has been really important to Liora,” Kahn-Troster said.
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Her daughter left the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration just before the shooting, then asked, ‘Mommy, why do they hate us so much?’
The daughter of an American expatriate living about two miles from the mass killing at a Hanukkah celebration in suburban Sydney, Australia, escaped the carnage by coming home to change clothes, her mother said.
“She’d been there earlier that afternoon, on the bridge where they were shooting. She came home, changed her clothes, and was getting ready to go again,” said Michelle Stein-Evers, a former Los Angeles resident and a co-founder of the Alliance of Black Jews in 1995.
“She and her friends were on their way back to Bondi to go to the party and have something to eat, and they were stopped by the police,” Stein-Evers said. “She found out why, and she started calling everyone to let us know. Her best friend’s cousin was killed. Another best friend’s cousin was shot in the leg.”
Her daughter, who is 22, had previously locked down her Facebook account out of privacy concerns and requested that her name not be used. As the massacre unfolded Sunday, she turned to social media to search for information.
“‘Oh my God, there’s bodies everywhere,’” Stein-Evers said her daughter told her.
She also asked where her father was, amid rumors — later proven untrue — that the neighborhood where he had gone to play tennis was also affected.
Stein-Evers said the events were unfolding within minutes of their home, where she was alone after her daughter headed back toward the beach.
“It was scary. It was nothing but sirens — sirens and sirens — and helicopters,” she said.
Stein-Evers said she knew the first victim publicly identified among the dead, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who helped organize the celebration.
“He was, by consensus, one of the nicest guys in the Jewish community in Sydney,” she said.
Antisemitic incidents have been rising in Sydney and across Australia since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Stein-Evers said, adding that her daughter stopped attending the prestigious University of Sydney because of campus protests.
“She was constantly being heckled, asked, ‘Where are you from? Are you Jewish? Are you an Arab? Why aren’t you with us?’” Stein-Evers said. Her daughter would not respond to the questions and eventually enrolled in distance learning through a college in Melbourne.
Stein-Evers, who has lived in the Middle East — including in Muslim-majority countries — as well as Europe and the United States, said she now has concerns about her own safety.
“I was never scared to be a Jew in America. I was never scared in Germany,” she said — a fear she said is now shared by her daughter.
“When she came home last night, she was in tears,” Stein-Evers said. “‘Mommy, why do they hate us so much?’”
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Will laying tefillin make a difference? A rabbi responds to his cousin’s murder in Australia attack
The first thing I did when I heard news of the attack at Bondi Beach — at what must have been midnight Australian time — was to call my dear friend Michelle.
No response, though that’s not atypical: an American expatriate who’s lived in Sydney for a generation, she usually doesn’t get back to me for a day or two. Then I worked social media, searching for her and anyone else I might be connected to via Jewish geography — which often means a friend-of-a-friend among Facebook users.
While searching, the enormity of the horror set in. Fifteen people dead, about 40 wounded, hundreds under fire on the beach where the Chabad of Bondi, near Sydney, held its “Chanukah by the Sea” event.
If there were people I knew — one survivor had previously written for the Forward — the names of those killed weren’t released yet, except for Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who organized the celebration. His death was confirmed by his cousin, Rabbi Zalman Lewis of Brighton, England.
“My dear cousin, Rabbi Eli Schlanger was murdered in today’s terrorist attack in Sydney. He leaves behind his wife & young children, as well as my uncle & aunt & siblings,” Lewis posted on Facebook.
Lewis turned quickly from his cousin – “More about Eli later in the week” – to what to do next.
“Do a Mitzvah today,” he wrote. “Send pictures wearing Tefillin, saying a prayer, giving extra charity, lighting Chanukah candles.”
The suggestion instantly reminded me of another by a Chabad rabbi, in answer to a question by CNN’s Jake Tapper two weeks after the Oct. 7 attack. In the face of Hamas’s evil, that rabbi said, “Every Jewish woman should please before the Sabbath and before sundown light the Shabbat candles.”
I recall seeing Tapper’s baffled expression. It’s similar to what I’m sure many who saw Rabbi Lewis’s message must be thinking: There’s a major attack on Jews and all you can say is put on tefillin? How about kill all the terrorists?
At the other extreme are those cheering on the attackers — including one friend-of-a-friend (Jewish, I’m all but certain) who posted, “At this point, these random attacks are the only way to stop Israel. It should’ve never gotten this far but unfortunately the Zionists have brought us all here.”
I have to believe — or hope — the latter is an extreme minority opinion, and I’ll spare the poster’s name lest it incite any reciprocal violent reaction.
As for the former, kill-them-all reactions immediately run into the reality that it isn’t so easy to do, illustrated disastrously by the Gaza war. Measured purely in casualties and carnage, it was a military victory. Politically and morally, it was a public-relations disaster for Israel.
That reality has led some Jews to question the wisdom of celebrating Hanukkah as a Maccabean victory. Instead, many are accentuating Gemara rabbis who argued the holiday is more about the miracle of the oil than military might.
That doesn’t mean their successors have evolved into pacifists, but Chabad rabbis are largely speaking to Jews, about being Jewish, and, as they see it, things Jews can do themselves to repair the world.
“Let’s flood the world with goodness. As Jews, we know, as difficult as it might seem, that light & good will always win,” Rabbi Lewis wrote.
You don’t have to walk into a Chabad house to hear that. My own Reconstructionist rabbi in Duluth, Minnesota, said essentially the same thing, writing to congregants on Sunday, “Let us not succumb to fear or despair but rather embrace our faith that much more resolutely.”
Maybe some prayers are answered. Hours after my calls and messages — but much sooner than her usual replies — Michelle finally responded.
“Physically, we’re fine,” she said.
So she is safe. But too many others were not. And if faith prevents a similar fate for even a single human being, pray away.
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New York Jewish leaders at menorah lighting call for solidarity and pride after Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack
(New York Jewish Week) — Rivkah Rothschild was on her way to a public menorah lighting in New York City on Sunday evening when she decided to recite a specific Jewish prayer to herself.
“I actually said Shema Yisrael, which is the prayer that we say before passing away, just in the taxi coming over, just in case there were any terrorists here,” said Rothschild just after the event.
An attorney in Midtown East, Rothschild was planning to skip the menorah lighting at Carl Schurz Park until Rabbi Ben Tzion Krasnianski, the executive director of the Chabad Lubavitch of the Upper East Side, asked her and her fellow community members to come out following the deadly shooting at a Chabad Hanukkah party in Sydney, Australia.
“I think we all are very shaken. We’re devastated by the news of what happened today in Sydney, Australia. All our hearts are all broken for the people that are suffering what they’ve experienced there,” said Rothschild. “I was fearful when I made the decision that I’m coming.”
The menorah lighting just outside of Gracie Mansion, which was hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York, Chabad of the Upper East Side and Kehilath Jeshurun, was one of dozens that took place across New York city to mark the first night of Hanukkah.
Hundreds of people crowded together on the ice-covered promenade of the park, enjoying sufganiyot and latkes, as sorrow and determination hung in the air.
“It was a very unified spirit and a strong energy, a resolute energy, an energy of conviction, determination,” said Rothschild following the event. “In my study of history, when Jews are in danger, we usually do three things. None of them work. We appease, we flee and we ignore. We’re not doing any of that now.”
Despite the attack, which killed 15 people and injured dozens more, Chabad officials and Jewish leaders across the country urged for planned Hanukkah celebrations to move ahead with added security measures.
“Out of an abundance of caution, the NYPD has significantly increased security around Hanukkah celebrations, menorah lightings, and Jewish houses of worship across all five boroughs,” wrote NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch in a post on X. “New Yorkers will see an enhanced uniformed presence, specialized patrols, counterterrorism resources, and additional protective measures deployed where appropriate.”
Indeed, over a dozen New York police officers and members of Chevra Hatzalah, the New York-based Jewish ambulance service, could be seen on the outskirts of the crowd as Hanukkah songs blared over the speakers.
Prior to the lighting of the menorah, which sat raised above the crowd, several rabbis, Jewish leaders and city officials gave speeches where they urged the crowd to counter the attack in Sydney by being proudly Jewish.
The incoming comptroller of New York, Mark Levine, who urged Jewish New Yorkers to attend menorah lightings earlier in the day, told the crowd that none of the public Hanukkah events throughout the city had been cancelled and that “turnout has been off the charts.”
“We are aspiring now to be modern-day Maccabees, this is who we are in New York City,” said Levine. “To those who hate us, know that we are not going anywhere. We will not let you intimidate us, not here in this park, not in front of Park East Synagogue, not in our schools, not in our subways, nowhere.”
Julie Menin, a Jewish politician who declared victory last month in the race for City Council speaker, told the children in the audience that “this too shall pass and things will be brighter.”
“This is an incredibly difficult day for the Jewish community, and it is really only by coming together and celebrating the fact that we are Jewish, that we are lighting the menorah tonight, that we are lighting the candles in the darkness, that we are going to heal, and it is only through education that we are going to fight antisemitism,” said Menin.
Throughout the speeches, many leaders also took aim at the increase in antisemitic rhetoric that has proliferated around the globe over the course of the war in Gaza.
Some also specifically decried the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a common pro-Palestinian slogan that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani declined to condemn during his campaign. He later said he would discourage its use.
“We are shocked and heartbroken about what happened, but we’re not surprised,” said Hindy Poupko, the senior vice president of community organizing and external relations at UJA-Federation of New York. “After two years of people shouting on our streets ‘Globalize the intifada’ from New York to Sydney, words have consequences. The violent rhetoric must end, and we call on all of our leaders and our elected officials to condemn that rhetoric.”
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, the leader of the Orthodox Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side, also directed his commentary to the use of the phrase.
“I need to make this very clear, because some don’t understand it. Globalizing the intifada is not an unfortunate phrase, it’s not something to be discouraged, globalizing the intifada is a call to murder,” said Steinmetz. “It’s time for us to tell the truth that this anti-Zionism has led to the death of Jews in Boulder, in Washington D.C., in Leeds and in Sydney. It’s time to say that anti-Zionism kills Jews.”
The alleged attackers in Sydney may have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, according to news reports out of Australia. No reports have suggested that they made any specific comments during the attack.
In an extensive post on X Sunday, Mamdani condemned the attack and reiterated his commitment to “work every day to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe.”
“This attack is merely the latest, most horrifying iteration in a growing pattern of violence targeted at Jewish people across the world,” wrote Mamdani. “Too many no longer feel safe to be themselves, to express their faith publicly, to worship in their synagogues without armed security stationed outside.”
Also on the stage at Carl Schurz Park Sunday night was Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a scholar in residence and rabbi for the UJA-Federation of New York whose brother-in-law, Arsen Ostrovsky, was shot during the attack in Sydney.
“I asked him just an hour ago, what should I say to your sisters and brothers in New York as your brother? He said, darkness will never triumph. We will prevail,” said Creditor. “We have a long history of doing better than surviving, friends. We have come back from so much darkness.”
Ben Axelrod, a 30-year-old Jewish resident of the Upper East Side who was in the crowd Sunday night, said he had cried that morning when he learned the news of the attack, but did not feel deterred from coming to the menorah lighting.
“Because at the end of the day, this is not new, it is scary, but we have to keep moving for all those who passed, and we can honor their memory by continuing to be proud Jews,” said Axelrod.
Rena Tobey, a 66-year-old Jewish resident of the Upper East Side, said that she had not planned to come but decided to attend the menorah lighting after learning of the attack.
“This is about light increasing every night, and we have to know that candles are temporary, but we have to carry that light with us no matter what the darkness is in the world,” said Tobey.
Another Jewish attendee of the menorah lighting, who identified himself by his first name, Steven, said that he was not afraid to come to the event despite the attack.
“We’re a strong, vibrant community, and we’re proud of who we are, and it shows how strong and proud we are given the weather conditions that we all came out,” said Steven. “Once we start to feel fear, you’re giving in, and we don’t give in.”
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