Jewish voters care deeply about climate change. In 2020, prior to the United States presidential elections, 80% of Jewish voters told pollsters that climate change was a major concern. In fact, climate change was Jewish voters’ No. 2 issue, just below the coronavirus pandemic. Since vaccines have become available, climate change has replaced COVID-19 as the issue that matters most to them.
That level of concern shows up in Jewish philanthropy, as well. There is a large and growing ecosystem of Jewish donors prioritizing climate change, motivated by a combination of care for their communities, concerns over inequality and suffering, and any number of other core Jewish values. And those involved see it as a critical cause that others should be taking up, one in which Jewish voices have a unique role to play.
Rabbi Jennie Rosenn is founder and CEO of Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action. She established Dayenu (Hebrew for “enough”) in 2020 with almost $1 million in seed money. Rosenn said Dayenu’s mission “is to create a just, livable and sustainable world for all people, for generations to come, by building a multi-generational Jewish climate movement that’s confronting the climate crisis with spiritual audacity and bold political action.”
Dayenu’s funders include the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, the Righteous Persons Fund, the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation, and the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund. Early on, said Rosenn, Dayenu’s funders were all Jewish. But recently, Dayenu has begun to attract the attention of secular funders, as well.
Jewish values such as tikkun olam (repairing the world) or shomrei adamah (protecting the Earth) inspire many Jews to become involved in climate action. But Rosenn, previously vice president for community engagement at HIAS and the former director of the Jewish Life and Values Program at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, also pointed to relevant Jewish values such as bacharta b’chayim (choosing life); bal tashcit (do not destroy); living l’dor v’dor (from generation to generation); tirdof tzedek (pursue justice) and shomer ger yatom v’almanah (protecting the vulnerable).
“There’s a role for faith voices, and in this moment, it’s important both for the organizing power and also for the moral voice. Because this is not only a political issue; it’s also an issue of the soul,” Rosenn said.
She believes that, like other Jews, Jewish philanthropists are waking up to the crisis of climate change. At the same time, that doesn’t necessarily mean that funders are explicit about their support for work on climate.
“Most of our funders don’t have climate articulated as a bucket or portfolio,” said Rosenn. One exception is the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund, which has an environment program that prioritizes, in part, to “reduce local sources of greenhouse gas emissions and help prepare for the impacts of climate change on Bay Area ecosystems.”
Rosenn said that climate change philanthropy may feel like new territory to some donors, but in many instances, it relates directly to funding they’re already engaged in. This sentiment echoes what we’re hearing from many philanthropies that wouldn’t necessarily describe themselves as climate funders, but find themselves reckoning with the issue out of necessity. Community foundations, for example, are increasingly weaving climate change mitigation and adaptation into their place-based giving.
One entry point for Jewish funders is the fact that the climate crisis exacerbates inequities, said Rosenn. “On the one hand, it affects everyone, but it also impacts Black, brown, Indigenous, poor and marginalized communities much more. Whether it’s poverty or healthcare or racial justice, climate change philanthropy doesn’t have to be totally divorced from your current work.”
Gil Yaacov, an Israel-based environmental consultant with the Jewish Funders Network’s Green Funders Forum, concurred.
“Philanthropy has a unique angle in that it usually tends to support those in need and deals with social gaps and poverty and education and more,” Yaacov said. “But it all intersects with climate change. I mean, we can’t be working on developing employment for those in need without thinking about the future of employment in a low-carbon economy.”
Yaacov recommended that philanthropists and activists “put the climate lens” on all their decisions and social justice activities.
“If we want to influence the governments of the world, then philanthropy can sometimes create leverage with governments and also support NGOs on the ground,” he said. Climate-friendly investing and divesting from corporations that exacerbate climate change are also powerful tools, said Yaacov. “We don’t want to support the NGOs fighting climate change on one hand and on the other hand, support the polluting industry.”
Divesting from harmful investments not only “creates a big shift in the money, but also sets an example for the government and the business sector per se to do the same,” said Yaacov.
It’s critical, added Rosenn, that “philanthropists think about climate strategically in the same way that they think strategically about change-making in education or healthcare.”
She believes the way forward is based on four levers for change — policy, mobilization of the community, elections and political advocacy, and “keeping fossil fuel in the ground. That is partly about the infrastructure itself, and partly about the financing of fossil fuel by the banks and asset managers,” Rosenn said.
When it comes to finding solutions, faith communities, she said, also have an important role to play in the national conversation.
Beyond engagement from the perspective of one’s faith, finding solutions, especially technological solutions, is one of the areas in which Israelis have excelled, noted Sigal Yaniv Feller, executive director of Jewish Funders Network-Israel.
“Israel does bring innovative thinking, and Israel is the hub of a lot of the technological solutions. You look at California, and most of the solar technologies that are used there were developed in Israel. You look at desalinization technologies, many of them are Israel-based and they’re used around the world,” she said.
“These are solutions to climate change. These are technologies that can be in our service. So this connection of Jewish and Israel are intertwined with each other when we look at the climate and Jewish climate change movement.”
Philanthropist Marla Stein of the Stein Family Fund is the co-chair of the Jewish Funding Network’s Green Funders Forum. When she and her husband Dr. Gideon Stein became philanthropists seven years ago, they made a concerted decision to fund environmental causes in Israel through advocacy and by supporting the core organizations of the environmental movement to create and strengthen climate policy.
Stein, a Kansas City native with a background in public policy, grassroots organizing and development, emigrated to Israel in 1995. Her work as a tour guide in her adopted country has intensified her focus on climate change advocacy.
“I felt like [the climate crisis] was not only something that I feel and that I live. But I also saw that there was a funding gap; there are not a lot of funders in here, and as a new family foundation, it was also where I felt like I could make a difference,” said Stein. “Because I want to have a greater impact, I work really hard to raise awareness and try to bring others along so that our collective impact can be greater.”
Stein said she often experiences reluctance from fellow funders regarding climate change.
“They say, ‘Oh, I’m not interested in climate,’ or ‘I don’t even know where to start in climate,’ or ‘I don’t know what to do about climate.’ They separate it out rather than seeing that they [for example] are funding an economically disadvantaged area in Israel that happens to have the most highly polluting businesses in Israel. And they’re not seeing that the jobs that they’re trying to create should be more towards transitioning to green jobs.”
Canadian Jewish philanthropist Stephen Bronfman has been focused on environmental issues since his teens. Bronfman, who has an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion, is the son of Charles Bronfman and the grandson of Samuel Bronfman, founder of the Seagram Company, the largest distiller of alcohol in the world. He grew up watching scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki’s Canadian Broadcasting Corporation show “The Nature of Things.” Bronfman met Suzuki when he was in his 20s and soon began working with the David Suzuki Foundation. He has been a board member of the foundation for the past 20 years, and was instrumental in helping Canada to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
“I was always fascinated with nature, with the outdoors,” said Bronfman, executive chairman of Claridge Inc., a Montréal-based private holding company. He moves money through the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation, which supports the environment, culture, education, entrepreneurship and Jewish life. This year, the Bronfman Foundation plans to give 25% of its annual budget to climate change funding — namely, the Suzuki Foundation (with a focus on the Québec chapter) and the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
“I funded the David Suzuki Foundation climate team probably 20-some odd years ago, and that enabled people to sort of wake up. You know, the snowball effect often happens when you’re sort of the first person in. It’s almost like the venture world, right? It sort of kickstarts the momentum and people start to take notice.”
Bronfman says he sees positive movement around climate change. Yet he acknowledges it’s not happening quickly enough. A dire IPCC report in 2018 cautioned that humanity had a window of just 12 years (now eight years) remaining to make huge, unprecedented changes in order to avert severe climate catastrophe.
“We have to activate now,” Bronfman said. “I think the auto industry and the governments are understanding fossil fuel issues and the alternatives are coming slowly. But the lobbying groups are very, very difficult. So when it comes to funders and foundations, I think the most important thing is collaboration, because you’re really going up against big oil, against all these massive lobby groups. If we’re all stepping on each other’s toes and putting a couple million here, a couple of million there, and all of a sudden, big oil comes and rams $100 million down the throats of government, it’s all for naught. I think there is strength in numbers, collaboration, putting your ego outside the door and focusing on the issues at hand.”
With so little time to make significant change, Stein added that donors should focus on policy shifts and grantmaking. “Less than 2% globally is donated to climate change causes, leaving the nonprofits working in the field with insufficient funding. Shifting investments and technologies are important, but should not overshadow the core grantmaking.”
Rosenn appreciates the fact that climate change “is a big, gnarly, what some people call a wicked problem.” But that doesn’t mean we can afford to look away, she said.
“We’re in a moment where we need all hands on deck. We need every community. And that includes the Jewish community really standing in solidarity with other groups, many of whom are on the front lines of the impact. This is the existential crisis of our time. … I would encourage philanthropists to be discerning in thinking about what’s really going to move the needle in the short time frame that we have.”