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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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Sister of pro-Israel stalwart Lindsey Graham secures GOP Senate nomination
(JTA) — South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham defeated U.S. House Rep. Ralph Norman in a special primary runoff on Tuesday, putting her in a dominant position to win the Senate seat left vacant with the death in July of her older brother, the pro-Israel stalwart Lindsey Graham.
The Associated Press called the race two hours after polls closed at 9:01pm. By the time 99% of votes were tallied, Darline Graham had secured 52.3% of the votes to Norman’s 47.7%.
“Tonight is a great victory, but it’s not the finish line,” Graham told her supporters on Tuesday night. “In fact, it is the starting line for an even bigger fight, which lies ahead.”
If Darline Graham goes on to win November’s general election against Democrat Annie Andrews, she will have big shoes to fill. Her brother served 23 years in the Senate and eight in the U.S. House. He traveled to Israel about a dozen times between Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on the Jewish state and his death at age 71.
Heading into the primaries, analysts expressed no doubt that Darline Graham would be pro-Israel. But matching Lindsey Graham’s level of foreign policy activity, they warned, would be a formidable task. Meanwhile, her campaign to date has largely avoided discussion of international affairs. Instead, she has focused on domestic concerns like reducing spending, securing borders and promoting Trump-backed policies.
During a debate aired on C-SPAN last week, Graham struggled to respond to a foreign policy question about Taiwan and the South China Sea, ultimately admitting that she’s “not that informed on national security.”
“I’m not a polished politician up here,” she said. “National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise.”
Later addressing issues of affordability, Graham linked the domestic economic situation to the war in Iran and said she trusts President Donald Trump “to get the Strait of Hormuz open.” She also voiced her preference for financial sanctions over putting troops on the ground.
Asked about the country’s relationship with Israel, Graham described the Jewish state as “one of our strongest allies.” Recognizing her brother’s close relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, she added that during a recent meeting with the Israeli premier, she vowed to “continue supporting Israel in any way” she can.
“We have to stand with Israel,” Graham said.
At their previous face-off, Graham had secured 33% of the vote, while Norman came in second place, at 25%, against eight fellow Republicans. But South Carolina requires primary winners to earn a majority of votes in order to avoid a two-candidate runoff. In the November general election, Graham will contend with Democrat Annie Andrews, a pediatrician who is unlikely to prevail in the solidly Republican state.
Tuesday’s runoff marked the third time in two months that South Carolina Republicans came to the polls to select a Senate candidate. Lindsey Graham, won the first primary in June but died suddenly the next month from an aortic dissection.
A few days later, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, appointed Darline Graham to finish her brother’s term. Though she only had minimal policy experience, including a leadership role at the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, she earned President Donald Trump’s endorsement and declared her candidacy in the full race.
Trump celebrated Graham’s nomination in a Tuesday night Truth Social post, writing that “Darline Graham rides Trump endorsement to win GOP nomination for brother’s South Carolina seat.”
Graham thanked Trump profusely during her Tuesday night acceptance speech, recognizing the president as one of her brother’s “closest friends” and crediting him for helping her secure a victory.
Norman, meanwhile, thanked his supporters on Tuesday night for their “prayer crusade of a campaign,” stressing that he “did not prepare a concession speech.” He accused “outside PACs” of spending $8 million opposing him and blamed the Democrats for this situation, adding that “they got what they wanted.”
He recognized Trump’s role in the race as a supporter of Graham, noting that he “never understood why he got involved” but that it is the president’s prerogative to do so. Nonetheless, Norman pledged that there “won’t be any tears” and that he planned to back Graham.
“I’m not supporting a Democrat, so I will support her, Darline, as best I can,” he added. “We’ll live to fight another day.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Sister of pro-Israel stalwart Lindsey Graham secures GOP Senate nomination appeared first on The Forward.
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Progressive politics notches another deep-red win in Oklahoma race, bolstered by anti-AIPAC messaging
(JTA) — Oklahoma nurse and activist N’kiyla Jasmine Thomas, who ran a campaign with anti-AIPAC messaging, defeated centrist Jim Priest in a Democratic Senate primary runoff on Tuesday that marked the latest victory for a progressive politician in a solidly conservative state.
The Associated Press called Tuesday’s race, a sequel to the state’s June primary, less than an hour after polls closed. By the time 80% of votes were tallied, Thomas had accrued 59.9% of the votes to Priest’s 40.1%.
Like many progressives in the current election cycle, she repeatedly vowed during her campaign to reject funds from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobby.
Although AIPAC has not participated in this race, Thomas posted a social media reel in November that showed her pulling a giant red trash bin, labeled “AIPAC Funds” and “Corporate PAC Funds.” Adjacent to the reel is a caption that reads, “Just taking out the trash.”
“I am a sole grassroots candidate,” she said in the reel. “And we are not accepting AIPAC or corporate PAC funds. It’s garbage.”
Asked about her rhetoric on AIPAC, Thomas told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a written statement that her “concerns [with AIPAC] have NEVER been about Jewish people, Judaism, or Israel’s existence,” adding that she instead prioritizes human rights, civilian lives and the accountability of all governments.
“When I discuss political influence or organizations, my focus is on the broader role of money, lobbying, and special interests in our political system, not on any one religion or community,” she added.
In their previous matchup, a five-candidate race, neither candidate had earned the majority required to secure a win. Thomas earned 45% of votes in June, while Priest, a lawyer and ordained minister, accrued 24%.
Heading into Tuesday’s runoff, it was already clear that both Thomas and Priest would be longshots this November in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in more than three decades. The Republican opponent, Rep. Kevin Hern, swept his primary and has the endorsement of President Donald Trump.
But Thomas’s win served as yet another litmus test on the potency of progressivism in a deep-red state, just a week after democratic socialist Angie Nixon knocked trounced a moderate candidate in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary.
Thomas, unlike Nixon, is not a member of Democratic Socialists of America, but she has openly identified with socialist policies. The 31-year-old is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation who says she represents “the next generation of leaders.” Among her priorities are women’s health and safety, civil rights and LGBTQIA+ protections.
During a debate this past Saturday, both Thomas and Priest described a “genocide” in Gaza. Priest linked the word to Israel, while Thomas connected it to the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
She emphasized that “we can be for our Jewish brothers and sisters, and we can be against Netanyahu and what he is doing.”
“He is committing genocide. He is absolutely murdering children,” Thomas said at the debate. “We have to stop providing funding for these wars.”
In her statement to JTA, Thomas expressed her commitment to a two-state solution, adding that “both Israelis and Palestinians deserve the opportunity to live in peace, security and self-determination.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Progressive politics notches another deep-red win in Oklahoma race, bolstered by anti-AIPAC messaging appeared first on The Forward.
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Montreal passes Palestinian solidarity motion after removing text on cutting ties with Israel
(JTA) — Montreal has passed a motion of solidarity with Palestinians after stripping a clause that called for severing institutional and diplomatic ties with Israel.
Montreal’s city council late Monday adopted the measure, which also removed earlier references to Israeli “apartheid” and “genocide,” after a contentious debate about the role of local government in denouncing conflicts abroad. The amended motion passed with 54 councillors voting in favor and six against.
The motion was introduced by Projet Montréal, a progressive, environmentalist municipal party that forms the opposition in the city council. An original version demanded the city “immediately suspend its institutional ties with the current government of Israel, its institutions, and its municipalities.” Major Canadian Jewish organizations pushed to discard that clause.
Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada clashed with progressive councillors during Monday’s debate. She argued that it was not the role of a city government to make determinations about international crises, saying that “recognizing the limits of our institution is not turning a blind eye to Gaza.” Changes to the final motion from Martinez Ferrada’s administration focused on diversity and inclusion in Montreal.
According to the original proposal by Projet Montréal, Israeli government representatives would no longer have been invited to Montreal City Hall until Israel “returns to its internationally recognized borders, ceases its violations of the rights of the Palestinian people and ends its violations of international law.”
The initial motion also stipulated that Montreal “recognizes and denounces the apartheid regime imposed in Palestine and the genocide perpetrated there,” citing definitions of “apartheid” and “genocide” that international human rights groups and scholars have used to describe Israel. Another clause condemned rising antisemitism and said “the Jewish communities of Montreal and elsewhere, as well as people of Israeli origin, cannot be held responsible for the actions of the State of Israel.”
The measure’s dilution comes after national Jewish organizations raised strong opposition to the initial language. B’nai Brith Canada said in an open letter to the city council earlier this month that it would be “inappropriate and exacerbate tensions between communities” if Montreal weighed in on the Middle East.
“It is deceitful and inflammatory to conflate Israel with Apartheid South Africa, and Canada has rejected the view that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid,” the group said. “No court of competent jurisdiction has found that a genocide has occurred.” B’nai Brith also linked the proposed policy with antisemitism, saying it would “further normalize the targeting of our Jewish community.”
After Monday’s vote, B’nai Brith Canada celebrated the motion’s transformation.
“We are pleased that the city council did not adopt the deceitful and distorted language contained in the original motion,” Paola Samuel, the regional director for Quebec and Atlantic Canada, said in a statement.
Rabbi Yehoshua Ellis, a member of the clergy at the Montreal-area synagogue Shaar Hashomayim, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the final motion resulted from Jews “mobilizing” in support of Israel.
Projet Montréal called the solidarity motion a “historic breakthrough,” but lamented the changes that “significantly weakened the scope of the original motion.”
“Palestine deserves the same solidarity as Montréal has expressed towards so many other peoples,” the party said in a social media statement. “Thousands of Montréalers have loved ones directly affected and we have the responsibility to stand by their side.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Montreal passes Palestinian solidarity motion after removing text on cutting ties with Israel appeared first on The Forward.
