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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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Doctors Without Borders Admits Gaza Hospital Used by Militants, Halts Operations
People walk at the site of Israeli strikes on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip in this still image taken from video, Aug. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders has publicly acknowledged that armed individuals — many of them masked — were present inside the large compound of Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, citing intimidation of patients, arbitrary arrests, and suspected weapons movement as reasons for halting some of its work there.
The admission, buried in a rarely referenced FAQ page on the group’s website published last month, lends factual support to claims long asserted by Israeli authorities about the use of medical facilities by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists during the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which is French for Doctors Without Borders, said it has suspended all “non-critical medical operations” at Nasser Hospital as of Jan. 20, 2026, citing “concerns regarding the management of the structure, the safeguarding of its neutrality, and security breaches.”
MSF’s admission was first reported by independent analyst Salo Aizenberg.
In describing those “security breaches,” MSF stated that patients and its own personnel observed “armed men, some masked, in different areas of the large hospital compound … not in areas where MSF has activities.” It added that since the most recent ceasefire in Gaza, teams have reported a “pattern of unacceptable acts,” including the presence of armed men, intimidation, arbitrary arrests of patients, and “a recent situation of suspicion of movement of weapons.” The group said such conditions posed “serious security threats to our teams and patients.”
The hospital in Khan Younis — one of Gaza’s largest and, until recently, few functioning referral centers in the densely populated territory — has been a flashpoint in the Israel-Hamas war since early 2024. After intense battles and an Israeli military operation that searched for hostages inside the complex, the hospital was rendered non-functional and later reopened.
For months, the Israeli government and military have claimed that Hamas and other armed groups used hospitals — including Nasser — as shelter and operational bases, allegations that Palestinian authorities and many humanitarian organizations have rejected. In February 2024, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesman Daniel Hagari said the military had “credible intelligence” that Hamas held Israeli hostages at Nasser Hospital at one point and that there may have been bodies of hostages currently hidden there.
The Algemeiner has previously documented claims acknowledged by the Palestinian Authority that Hamas summoned Gazans to the Nasser compound for interrogations and that militants threatened hospital staff.
Terrorists from both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allied group in Gaza, have confessed that they took over hospitals across the enclave, using the medical facilities to hide military activities, launch attacks, and hold hostages kidnapped during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
In the FAQ disclosure, MSF did not explicitly identify the armed men or link them to specific groups. But by reporting the presence of masked fighters, intimidation of civilians, and suspicion of weapons movement within the hospital compound, MSF’s account aligns with Israeli officials’ long-standing narrative that medical facilities have not been strictly neutral zones.
MSF said it formally expressed concern to “relevant authorities” and stressed that hospitals “must remain neutral, civilian spaces, free from military presence or activity” to ensure the safe delivery of care.
The new disclosure comes amid broader tensions between MSF and the Israeli government over registration and operations in Gaza, including Israel’s decision to bar dozens of aid groups, including MSF, from registering to operate in the territory after March 2026.
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Ireland Confirms It Will Face Israel in Nations League After Calling for Ban From UEFA
Soccer Football – UEFA Nations League Draw – Brussels Expo, Brussels, Belgium – Feb. 12, 2026, General view during the draw. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Ireland has agreed to play against Israel this fall in the UEFA Nations League mere months after pushing for the Jewish state to be banned from international soccer competitions because of its war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
The UEFA announced on Thursday in Brussels all the matchups for the 2026-27 Nations League, and Ireland was drawn to go head-to-head against Israel, as well as Austria and Kosovo, in Group B3. Ireland is set to play its away game against the Jewish state on Sept. 27 and will then host Israel in Dublin on Oct. 4.
The Israel Football Association said it hopes to host the Sept. 27 match in Israel, but a formal decision will reportedly be made in June. Israel has not hosted UEFA matches since October 2023 because of the war in Gaza with Hamas.
After the fixtures were announced on Thursday, the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) confirmed in a released statement that the Irish men’s national team will indeed compete against Israel in both matches because they risk “potential disqualification” if they do not. The statement also addressed the motion the FAI approved in November 2025 to have Israel banned from UEFA competitions because of the country’s war in Gaza. The motions were ultimately rejected.
“In 2025, a motion was proposed by members of the FAI General Assembly to vote on issuing a formal request to the UEFA executive committee for the immediate suspension of the Israel Football Association from UEFA competitions for a breach of UEFA statutes,” the FAI said. “Members then voted in favor to submit the motion to UEFA, which the association did in November 2025. While consultation has taken place with UEFA officials, the association does recognize that UEFA regulations outline that if an association refuses to play a match then that fixture will be forfeited and further disciplinary measures may follow — including potential disqualification from the competition.”
FIFA President Gianni Infantino previously announced that no action will be taken against Israel and that FIFA “should actually never ban any country” from playing soccer “because of the acts of their political leaders.”
In October 2025, Republic of Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrimsson called on Israel to be banned from international competition just like Russia was after its invasion of Ukraine. “I don’t see a difference between FIFA and UEFA banning Russia and not Israel. I don’t see the difference,” Hallgrimssson said at the time. “I am not speaking on behalf of the FAI – I just don’t see the difference.”
He said on Thursday he stands by those comments and will respect any player’s decision not to compete against Israel in the Nations League.
“It’s obviously every player’s decision to play for the national team or not. So, it’s going to be whatever reason that is. It’s every player’s decision if they want to play for the national team or not,” he said, as quoted by the Irish Mirror. “But it’s not my decision if you play or not against them or what decision is taken on a higher level. I am the head coach. I need to focus on the football thing. I hope when we play them, the supporters will support Ireland and support us to do good when we play against them.”
Joanna Byrne, chairperson of Ireland’s soccer club Drogheda United, criticized the FAI for agreeing to play against Israel in the Nations League.
“In November, the FAI voted to submit a motion to UEFA to ban Israel from its European club and international competitions. That was the correct moral and principled position to take,” she said, as reported by the Irish Mirror. “Therefore, I am extremely angry and dismayed that the FAI have confirmed they will play against Israel.”
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Trump Tells Soldiers ‘Fear’ Is Powerful Motivator in Iran Talks as US Moves Second Carrier to Middle East
US President Donald Trump speaks during a visit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, US, Feb. 13, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
President Donald Trump told US troops on Friday that Iran has been “difficult” in nuclear negotiations and suggested that instilling fear in Tehran may be necessary to resolve the standoff peacefully.
“They’ve been difficult to make a deal,” Trump said of the Iranians before an audience of active-duty soldiers at Fort Bragg Army base in North Carolina after US officials said they were sending a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East.
“Sometimes you have to have fear. That’s the only thing that really will get the situation taken care of.”
During his address Trump also referenced the US bombing of Iran‘s nuclear sites last June.
Earlier, he said the deployment of the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the United States’ newest and the world’s largest, was being made so “we’ll have it ready” should negotiations with Iran fail.
Oman facilitated talks between Iran and the US last week, which a spokesperson for Iran‘s foreign ministry said had allowed Tehran to gauge Washington’s seriousness and showed enough consensus for diplomacy to continue. The date and venue of the next round of US-Iran talks have yet to be announced.
The president traveled to Fort Bragg to meet special forces troops involved in the audacious Jan. 3 operation to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro, who faces narco-terrorism and drug trafficking charges in US court, denies wrongdoing and maintains he is the rightful leader of Venezuela. In the weeks since the Venezuelan leader’s capture, Trump has worked with Maduro’s interim successor Delcy Rodriguez and sought broad control over the country’s oil industry.
Fort Bragg is home to some 50,000 active-duty soldiers. It also sits in one of the country’s more competitive political states.
Trump’s comments came as the Pentagon moved to send an aircraft carrier from the Caribbean to the Middle East, US officials said on Friday, a move that will put two carriers in the region as tensions soar between the United States and Iran.
The Gerald R. Ford carrier has been operating in the Caribbean with its escort ships and took part in the operations in Venezuela earlier this year.
Asked why a second aircraft carrier was headed to the Middle East, Trump said: “In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it … if we need it, we’ll have it ready.”
One of the officials, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said the carrier would take at least a week to reach the Middle East.
The Gerald R. Ford will join the Abraham Lincoln carrier, several guided-missile destroyers, fighter jets, and surveillance aircraft that have been moved to the Middle East in recent weeks.
The United States most recently had two aircraft carriers in the area last year, when it carried out strikes against Iranian nuclear sites in June.
With only 11 aircraft carriers in the US military’s arsenal, they are a scarce resource and their schedules are usually set well in advance.
In a statement, US Southern Command, which oversees US military operations in Latin America, said it would continue to stay focused on countering “illicit activities and malign actors in the Western Hemisphere.”
Trump had said this week he was considering sending a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East if a deal is not reached with Iran.
On Friday he told reporters he thought that talks with Iran would be successful but warned that “if they’re not, it’s going to be a bad day for Iran.”
The Ford has essentially been at sea since June 2025. It was supposed to be operating in Europe before it was abruptly moved to the Caribbean in November.
While deployments for carriers usually last nine months, it is not uncommon for them to be extended during periods of increased US military activity.
Navy officials have long warned that long deployments at sea can damage morale on ships.
Officials said the administration had looked at sending a separate carrier, the Bush, to the Middle East, but it was undergoing certification and would take over a month to reach the Middle East.
The Ford, which has a nuclear reactor on board, can hold more than 75 military aircraft, including fighter aircraft like the F-18 Super Hornet jets and the E-2 Hawkeye, which can act as an early warning system.
The Ford also includes sophisticated radar that can help control air traffic and navigation.
The supporting ships, such as the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser Normandy, Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers Thomas Hudner, Ramage, Carney, and Roosevelt, include surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and anti-submarine warfare capabilities.