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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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Jewish Groups Blast Mamdani for Vetoing Bill to Limit Protests Near Schools
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, as a major winter storm spreads across a large swath of the United States, in Brooklyn, New York City, US, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan
Major Jewish organizations are sharply criticizing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after he vetoed a bill aimed at limiting protests near schools, condemning the mayor for what they argue is a failure to protect Jewish students at a time of rising antisemitism.
The legislation, which passed the City Council with bipartisan support, would have created buffer zones around educational institutions to prevent obstruction, intimidation, and disruption during demonstrations. Supporters said the measure was a direct response to recent protests outside Jewish schools and community spaces that have left students feeling unsafe.
In statements following the veto, several Jewish advocacy groups said the mayor’s decision sends the wrong message amid a surge in antisemitic incidents across the city. They warned that without additional safeguards, Jewish students could remain vulnerable to harassment and disruption near their schools.
A group of leading Jewish organizations subsequently released a statement condemning the veto, saying they were “deeply disappointed” with the decision.
“This legislation represented a crucial step toward ensuring that every school and community institution can be better protected,” read the statement from UJA-Federation of New York, ADL New York/New Jersey, AJC New York, Conference of Presidents, JCRC-NY, New York Board of Rabbis, Orthodox Union, The Rabbinical Assembly, StandWithUs, Teach NYS, and the Union for Reform Judaism.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin condemned Mamdani’s veto.
“Ensuring students can enter and exit their schools without fear of harassment or intimidation should not be controversial,” Menin said.
New York City Councilmember Eric Dinowitz similarly criticized Mamdani, saying in a statement that the mayor had undercut his campaign promise to ensure the safety of Jewish New Yorkers.
“The mayor promised to keep New Yorkers safe and increase police transparency,” Dinowitz said. “By vetoing this bill, he is breaking yet another campaign promise.”
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a far-left and fringe anti-Zionist group, released a statement framing Mamdani’s veto as a victory for free speech rights.
The group wrote that Mamdani “further demonstrated his commitment to protecting New Yorkers’ First Amendment rights, and his refusal to endorse what is quite simply bad policy.”
“The ‘buffer zone’ bills are not about keeping New Yorkers safe. They are about silencing our voices,” the organization continued. “That they do so under the auspices of combating antisemitism doesn’t just add insult to injury; it actively endangers Jews. At best, these bills change little. At worst, they divide and silence New Yorkers and contribute to the broader political climate targeting protestors.”
Mamdani defended his decision, arguing that the bill’s language was overly broad and could infringe on constitutionally protected protest rights. He said the definition of educational institutions could extend beyond K-12 schools to include universities, museums, and other public-facing institutions, potentially restricting a wide range of demonstrations unrelated to antisemitism.
“As the bill is written, everywhere from universities to museums to teaching hospitals could face restrictions,” Mamdani said. “This could impact workers protesting ICE [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement], or college students demanding their school divest from fossil fuels, or demonstrating in support of Palestinian rights.”
The mayor also pointed to existing laws that already prohibit harassment, threats, and obstruction, suggesting the proposed measure was unnecessary and legally vulnerable.
Still, critics say those protections are insufficient in the current climate. They argue that recent demonstrations, particularly those tied to tensions over the Israel-Hamas war, have at times crossed into intimidation, and that clearer boundaries are needed to ensure student safety.
The backlash has put Mamdani at odds with some Democratic lawmakers and community leaders who had supported the bill. While he allowed a separate measure strengthening protections around houses of worship to become law, opponents say excluding schools from similar safeguards leaves a critical gap.
Skeptics also claim that the veto undercuts Mamdani’s previous vow to protect the local Jewish community amid a surge in antisemitic hate crimes in the Big Apple.
Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and anti-Zionist, is an avid supporter of boycotting all Israeli-tied entities who has been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. He has repeatedly accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; refused to recognize the country’s right to exist as a Jewish state; and refused to explicitly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been associated with calls for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Leading members of the Jewish community in New York have expressed alarm about Mamdani’s victory, fearing what may come in a city already experiencing a surge in antisemitic hate crimes.
The City Council could attempt to override the veto, though it would need to secure additional votes to reach a two-thirds majority.
The dispute highlights a broader national debate over how to respond to rising antisemitism while preserving First Amendment protections, as protests tied to global conflicts continue to unfold across the United States. For many Jewish leaders, however, the issue in New York is immediate and personal, and they say the mayor’s decision falls short of the moment.
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Hezbollah Embeds Terror Apparatus in Lebanon’s Health System
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, Lebanon. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Hezbollah is exploiting Lebanon’s health-care system as a shielded pillar of its terrorist infrastructure, embedding its operatives within ambulances and medical facilities while expanding its operational reach — as fragile negotiations between Beirut and Jerusalem continue.
On Monday, the Alma Research and Education Center, which focuses on Israel’s security challenges along its northern border with Lebanon, released a study exposing how Hezbollah’s health system — while presented as civilian and humanitarian in nature — operates in practice as a central pillar of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group’s military apparatus.
As Israel stepped up its offensive campaign against Hezbollah, international media outlets have repeatedly accused the Israeli government of deliberately targeting medical personnel, ambulances, and hospitals over the course of the conflict.
However, the newly released report shows that Hezbollah’s health organizations are part of a coordinated system in which civilian sectors — education, welfare, and health-care — are mobilized to support and advance military operations.
Under this framework, health-care personnel are systematically embedded within the group’s military apparatus, at times operating alongside its forces and even taking part in operations.
Functioning as Hezbollah’s de facto Ministry of Health, the Islamic Health Organization sits at the center of the terrorist group’s medical network, running hospitals, clinics, and emergency services that fill the void left by Lebanon’s collapsing public system.
However, beyond their civilian appearance, these medical bodies also serve clear military roles, operating as Hezbollah’s integrated medical corps embedded with its forces.
Like much of the country’s medical infrastructure, ambulances and facilities have also been used to transport operatives and weapons, and at times to store arms or function as mobile command posts.
The report explains that this overlap is deliberate, part of a broader system designed to enable operational flexibility while exploiting the protected status of medical actors.
This “human shield” tactic — in which military assets are placed within civilian environments — is meant to complicate strikes, raise political costs, and undermine the legitimacy of Israeli action.
Under international law, medical facilities and personnel retain protected status only so long as they are not engaged in military activity.
Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the terrorist group opened fire in support of Iran two days after the start of the joint US-Israeli military campaign against the Iranian regime.
Since then, Israeli forces have established a “buffer zone” extending 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) into Lebanese territory, which officials say is meant to shield northern residents from Hezbollah attacks amid thousands of rockets and drones fired throughout the war.
Earlier this month, the United States brokered a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. The deal was separate from Washington’s efforts to de-escalate tensions with Iran, though Tehran had pushed for Lebanon to be included in any broader framework for stopping hostilities.
Last week, US President Donald Trump announced a three-week extension of the truce to allow more time for negotiations and diplomatic efforts.
Even though the US-backed ceasefire has sharply reduced violence, negotiations and prospects for lasting peace remain fragile, with Israeli forces still launching strikes while positioned in southern Lebanon to maintain its buffer zone and dismantle Hezbollah infrastructure.
For its part, the Iranian proxy has repeatedly said it has “the right to resist” what it calls occupying forces, while rejecting direct negotiations between Beirut and Jerusalem and any resulting agreements. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has kept up its drone and rocket attacks against northern Israel as well as Israeli troops in Lebanon.
On Monday, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem reiterated that the group will not give up its weapons and opposes Israel-Lebanon peace talks, reaffirming its stance despite international pressure.
“These direct negotiations and their outcomes are as if they do not exist for us, and they do not concern us in the slightest,” the terrorist leader said in a statement.
“We will continue our defensive resistance for Lebanon and its people. No matter how much the enemy threatens, we will not back down, we will not bow down, and we will not be defeated,” Qassem continued.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun seemingly lashed out at Hezbollah’s continued defiance of his government, indirectly calling the group “traitors.”
“What we are doing is not treason. Traitors are those who drag their country into war to serve foreign interests,” the Lebanese leader said in a statement.
“My goal is to bring an end to the war with Israel, similar to the ceasefire agreement. I will not agree to reach a humiliating agreement,” Aoun continued.
The Lebanese government agreed to disarm Hezbollah as part of a previous US-brokered ceasefire with Israel. However, Israeli leaders have expressed frustration with Beirut’s inability to follow through, in part over fear of igniting a civil war inside Lebanon, arguing Israel’s military will do the job by force if necessary.
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New York shouldn’t divest from Israel Bonds — and voters should be wary of politicizing pensions
At the Passover Seder, we sing dayenu — “it would have been enough.” Each verse names a gift given by God to the Jewish people: the exodus, the parting of the sea, manna in the desert, the Torah. We sing the song to cultivate gratitude, and to remind ourselves that while just one of these miracles would have been sufficient, together, they are overwhelming. The point is to recognize that we have been blessed and that we carry an obligation — to remember, to protect and to stand with those who are still in danger.
Drew Warshaw, a candidate who is challenging Tom DiNapoli in the Democratic primary for New York state comptroller, recently published an op-ed in these pages calling on New York to divest its pension fund from Israel Bonds. He reinterpreted the Seder’s recitation of dayenu not as a prayer of gratitude but rather as a reminder of a personal reckoning — “enough is enough!” he wrote — suggesting it is time to withdraw the United States’ support from Israel.
This beautiful tradition deserves better than to be weaponized against a financial instrument, Israel bonds, that has served New York State pensioners — including school administrators, sanitation workers, court officers, and first responders — well for many years.
So, as a member of the Israel Bonds national board of directors, let me offer my own dayenu:
- If Israel bonds had simply never defaulted or had never been late on a single payment since 1951 — through wars, recessions, and regional upheaval — dayenu. It would have been enough.
- If Israel bonds had only delivered consistent, strong investment returns to the police officers and firefighters who rely on New York State’s pension fund — dayenu.
- If Israel bonds had only helped build a democratic nation from the ground up, the only stable democracy in a deeply unstable region — dayenu.
- If Israel bonds had done all of this while the state of Israel endured wars, fought terrorism and weathered the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023 — dayenu.
These facts present strong reasons to maintain or expand the investment. In contrast, the case for divestment is weak. That’s especially true given that Israel bonds represent far less than one percent of the nearly $300 billion held by the New York state common retirement fund. This is not a portfolio-defining position. It is a rounding error being treated as a moral crisis.
Warshaw is right that our tradition demands moral courage. But the story of the exodus is not only a story about the courage to leave; it is also a story about the courage required to build.
For Israel, sovereign bonds are part of that building. The proceeds from Israel bonds have been used to build every part of Israel’s economy. To treat an Israel bond as nothing more than a political statement is to collapse a complex financial instrument into a bumper sticker.
The New York State comptroller has one overriding obligation: to make investment decisions based on financial evidence guided by economics, not a personal political agenda.
State-level divestment from Israel would set a troubling precedent, telling voters that New York’s pension fund can be redirected not by financial best practice but by ideological pressure, its investment decisions subject to the political winds of any given election cycle. That is a slippery slope to travel.
The New Yorkers whose savings are at stake deserve better, and so does the tradition Warshaw has invoked. It teaches us that the hardest work is not, in fact, leaving. It is, instead, building something worth staying for.
The post New York shouldn’t divest from Israel Bonds — and voters should be wary of politicizing pensions appeared first on The Forward.