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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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Hungary is poised to topple an authoritarian leader. American Jews have something to learn
An aspiring authoritarian, who has spent more than a decade shaping his country through a political project of popularist grievance and personal enrichment, may soon meet his electoral end.
That elected leader is not President Donald Trump, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has ruled Hungary consecutively since 2010 (and who previously served as prime minister between 1998 and 2002). Hungarians will go to the polls on April 12, and Orbán’s Fidesz party is polling well behind the conservative, pro-European Tisza. That Trump, who is closely allied with Orbán, this week dispatched Vice President JD Vance to Budapest to campaign for Orbán may not be enough. (While there, Vance baselessly claimed EU interference in Hungary’s elections, turning back to the same old Trump playbook.)
There is much that Americans can learn from the Hungarian experience of years spent under the governance of someone accused of dismantling rule of law, a person whose inner circle has grown rich during his time in office. But American Jews in particular should pay attention. Because Orbán’s administration has used antisemitism as a political tool throughout his time in power, and is desperately turning to this hatred once again on its way, possibly, out the electoral door.
Examining the different purposes for which Orbán has employed antisemitism is instructive. The essential lesson: Antisemitism deployed by powerful people is often an attempt to evade accountability for their own bad actions.
The Orbán administration has tried to rewrite history so as to paint Hungary as a perpetual victim or victor — never a country responsible for misdeeds like, say, allying with Nazi Germany prior to being occupied by it. Orbán, like other politicians interested in historical revisionism, has tried to make adherence to his specific retelling of Hungarian history synonymous with being a true Hungarian. Anyone who challenges his vision is, in it, an enemy of the state.
For no one has that been more true than Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros. In past elections, Orbán has inflated Soros to the status of a political adversary, campaigning against a spectral version of him instead of his actual political opponents. This approach, rife with antisemitic dog whistles, has been alarmingly effective.
“We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world,” he said of Soros in the 2018 campaign, invoking any number of longstanding antisemitic tropes.
When Orbán’s authoritarian efforts extended to cracking down on liberal institutions and civil society, he turned again to antisemitism in the form of Soros conspiracy theories.
Under attack by Orbán, Central European University, the university that Soros founded, has mostly been pushed out of its original home of Budapest. When the Hungarian government passed legislation to criminalize helping those who wanted to claim asylum in the country, it was called “Stop Soros” legislation. NGOs in Hungary have long been smeared for receiving money from Soros’ Open Society Foundations, accused of being proxies through which Soros is “targeting” Hungary.
Recently, Orbán has pivoted, making Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the new scapegoat of his antisemitic conspiracy theories.
He has charged that support for Ukraine is expensive and even dangerous, and pushed the idea that Orbán and Fidesz are all that prevents such support from leading Hungary to disaster. Orbán and Fidesz have erected billboards showing Zelenskyy smirking with an outstretched hand, in a pose reminiscent of the antisemitic “happy merchant” meme. Perhaps most tellingly and menacingly, Fidesz has put up posters with Zelenskyy’s face, blazoned with nearly the same words that, almost a decade ago, accompanied campaign posters with Soros’s visage on them: “Let’s not let Zelenskyy have the last laugh.”
As Hungarians are asking what, exactly, the last decade and a half of autocracy have accomplished for them, their governing party appears to be suggesting that it is the only thing standing between them and the machinations of a nefarious Jew. Antisemitism can be many things, but in Hungary, again and again, it has been an attempt to trick citizens out of asking what good Orbán’s government has done for them.
This playbook has clear resonances in that deployed by Trump.
When threatened, Trump and his allies repeatedly turn to blaming Soros. They have used the idea of Soros as a sort of universal bogeyman to try to explain away Trump’s felony charges and to justify violence against citizens protesting ICE. The Department of Justice has tried to find ways to push for prosecutions of Soros and his allies, on far-fetched charges possibly including material support of terrorism.
What Orbán and Trump have both bet on is that dog whistling about all-powerful Jews will distract enough voters from noticing while they help themselves to their country’s rights and riches. If Orbán is defeated on Sunday, his loss will send an essential message to Americans: that strategy can only sustain a leader for so long.
Flailing about and sowing the seeds of antisemitic conspiracies cannot change the stubborn fact that neither Soros nor Zelenskyy is in charge in Hungary: Orbán is. Hungarians seem to see, now, that all that talk about Soros didn’t make their lives any better. Neither will going after Zelenskyy.
We can hope Hungarians remember that as they go to the polls. We, American Jews, should remind others, and ourselves, of it here, too. We often focus on trying to communicate that antisemitism is hateful and unfair toward American Jews. Perhaps, in addition, we should try to point out that Trump’s antisemitism, like Orbán’s, is not only hateful, but a hateful deflection.
The post Hungary is poised to topple an authoritarian leader. American Jews have something to learn appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel Expels Spain From US-Backed Gaza Coordination Center as Diplomatic Rift Deepens
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks during a press conference after attending a special summit of European Union leaders to discuss transatlantic relations, in Brussels, Belgium, Jan. 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel has expelled Spain from the United States’ Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in Kiryat Gat, a hub established to coordinate humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip, marking a sharp escalation in an already deteriorating diplomatic rift between the two countries.
On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Spain’s expulsion from the CMCC, framing the move as a response to Madrid’s increasingly anti-Israel stance and what he described as continued hostility toward the Jewish state.
“Spain has defamed our heroes, the soldiers of the [Israel Defense Forces], the soldiers of the most moral army in the world,” Netanyahu said during a press conference. “Anyone who attacks the State of Israel instead of the terrorist regimes … will not be our partner in the future of the region.”
“I am not willing to tolerate this hypocrisy and this hostility,” the Israeli leader continued. “I do not intend to allow any country to wage a diplomatic war against us without paying an immediate price for it.”
In a press release, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar confirmed that the United States had been informed ahead of time, adding that the decision followed Spain’s serious harm to the interests of both Jerusalem and Washington.
The Spanish government has also been informed of the decision, though it has yet to issue any public statement or official response.
“Spain’s obsessive anti-Israel bias under [Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez]’s leadership is so egregious that it has lost all capability to serve a constructive role in implementing US President Donald Trump’s peace plan and the center operating under it,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.
For a long time, the government of Spain under @sanchezcastejon has been operating against the State of Israel in every way possible. Sánchez and his ministers level false blood libels against Israel and its army, defame and incite against Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu. The…
— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 10, 2026
Established in October 2025 as part of US Central Command, the CMCC was set up to coordinate and manage the flow of humanitarian, logistical, and security assistance from the international community into Gaza under Trump’s peace plan for the enclave.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, and increasingly amid the war with Iran and broader regional escalation, Spain has launched a fierce anti-Israel campaign aimed at undermining and isolating the Jewish state on the international stage.
Earlier this week, Sánchez publicly condemned Israeli strikes in Lebanon and the widening regional escalation tied to the Iran conflict, renewing calls for the European Union to suspend its association agreement with Israel and urging an end to “impunity for [Israel’s] criminal actions.”
The Spanish leader also accused Netanyahu of breaching basic humanitarian norms, saying his “contempt for life and international law is intolerable.”
Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares has also publicly condemned Israel’s military campaign, describing the conflict as “the greatest assault on the civilization built upon the humanist ideals of reason, peace, understanding, and universal law over the abuse of power, brute force, and arbitrariness.”
In a phone call with his Spanish counterpart on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi praised Spain’s “principled and honorable” stance on what he called “US-Israeli aggression against Iran,” urging countries to take a firmer stand against what he described as war crimes.
“Spain’s valuable stances in defending international law and human values have been noted and praised by the Iranian nation and the international community, and will never be forgotten,” the top Iranian diplomat said.
Even though Spain welcomed the recently announced US–Iran ceasefire, Albares said, “Madrid will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket to put out that fire.”
As part of its broader anti-Israel campaign, Spain had recently closed its airspace to aircraft involved in what officials described as a “reckless and illegal confrontation” – another move welcomed by Iran’s Islamist government.
In one of its most controversial recent moves, Madrid also announced this weej the reopening of its embassy in Tehran.
According to data from Spain’s Ministry of Trade reported by Servimedia, the Spanish government exported more than €1.3 million worth of dual-use materials to Iran in 2024 and the first half of 2025, including explosive components, laboratory reagents, and specialized control software.
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DNC Fails to Pass Resolutions Condemning AIPAC, Pushing for Conditioning Aid to Israel
Crews prepare the stage at the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC, March 6, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Brian Snyder
A panel at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Thursday voted down a resolution to condemn the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the foremost pro-Israel lobbying group in the US, in Democratic primary elections. The panel also deferred a decision on resolutions to push for conditioning military aid to Israel and to recognize a Palestinian state.
The resolutions, which were considered within the newly created Middle East Working Group, were introduced into the agenda by Florida DNC member Allison Minnerly, who saw it as an opportunity to bring those who have not been “seeing their party support Palestinian rights or stand against military conflict” back into the fold of the Democratic Party, she told The Intercept.
Minnerly’s effort comes as the gap continues to widen between the official stance of the Democratic Party, which has largely supported aid to Israel in recent decades, and the views of the Democratic base, which now has an overwhelmingly unfavorable view of Israel, according to recent polling.
In recent months, a number of potential Democratic presidential hopefuls — including some who were former donors and speakers at AIPAC conferences — have been distancing themselves from AIPAC, saying they would not take money from the bipartisan group in the future.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, for example, recently said he abandoned his support for AIPAC when it “began to lean much more to the right and much more pro-Trump.” Another prominent Democrat, US Sen. Cory Booker (NJ) told Politico in March that he is no longer going to receive funds from AIPAC.
Others who have made sure to have no association with AIPAC include California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel.
Aside from the fact that Israel is now seen less favorably by Democratic voters, AIPAC has also become a hot topic on the left as its allied super PACs have become increasingly influential in Democratic primaries, spending millions to back candidates aligned with their positions. Critics within the party argue that this influx of money, including donations from Republican-aligned contributors, risks distorting Democratic contests and elevating outside influence.
Even so, the resolutions specifically calling out AIPAC, aiming to condition aid to Israel, and pushing to recognize a Palestinian state did not pass. Meanwhile, a separate resolution calling out all dark money went through.
“Let’s be clear on what really happened: Today, the Resolutions Committee voted to pass a resolution condemning the corrosive influence of ALL dark money in Democratic primaries,” DNC chair Ken Martin posted on X. “We had various resolutions that focused on different industries and groups, and instead of going one-by-one, we passed a blanket repudiation.”
Meanwhile, Democratic Majority for Israel President & CEO Brian Romick said in a statement that the Democratic pro-Israel group was “pleased” with the outcome of the vote.
“We’re pleased that the DNC Rules Committee rejected a set of divisive, anti-Israel resolutions,” he said. “These measures would be a gift to Republicans, would further fracture our party, and do nothing to bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to peace.”
“DMFI will continue to stay engaged with the DNC and its Task Force on the Middle East as it relates to these harmful resolutions,” he added. “The DNC and party advocates need to keep focus where it belongs — on building a united Democratic Party that can win back Congress this November.”
AIPAC spokesperson Deryn Sousa said in a statement to Politico that the DNC “made clear today that all Democrats, including millions who are AIPAC members, have the right to participate fully in the democratic process. And we plan to do just that.”
Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America — an organization that aims to bring Jews into the Democratic Party — told Politico that the DNC “as a whole has not shifted from where it has been … which is an organization that is inclusive of Jewish Americans and is supportive of the US-Israel security relationship, as well as Israel’s future as a Jewish and Democratic state.”
She argues that “misconceptions” about this have been driven by “a vocal, far-left faction of our party.”
“But they are in no way leading here,” Soifer said.