Jewish philanthropists launch climate initiative with $18 million for advocacy in U.S. and Israel

A new Jewish climate initiative says it has secured $18 million in philanthropic commitments for grantmaking and advocacy work in the United States and Israel. 

The idea behind the Jewish Climate Trust is that the American Jewish community has a responsibility to do more on climate, especially under a new president who is hostile to the issue, according to the group’s founding CEO Nigel Savage. 

In his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump has frozen federal funding for clean energy and withdrawn the United States from global climate accords, reneging on commitments to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“The actions of the new administration on climate… will do great damage,” Savage said. “But the actions and inactions of the U.S. government cannot preclude us from acting. As a Jewish community, we need to raise our game on climate.”

To some degree, Jewish philanthropists and communal groups have already started focusing on climate in recent years after long neglecting the issue. Hundreds of Jewish institutions have published climate action plans, several have pledged to divest their endowments from fossil fuels, and the Schusterman Foundation, which was built on oil wealth, recently made its first grant to a climate group. 

The Jewish Climate Trust represents the largest initiative of this wave so far. 

Launched on Thursday to coincide with Tu Bishvat — a holiday celebrating the renewal of nature, the planting of trees and the Jewish connection to the environment — the group has announced two sets of grants.

The environmental group Adamah will receive $3 million over three years to support its climate advocacy within the Jewish community, bolster its interfaith work, and create a networking and community-building effort for Jewish green business leaders. (Savage is the founder of Hazon, one of the two nonprofits that merged to create Adamah in 2021.) 

Another $3 million will go toward Israeli environmental nonprofits to promote sustainability principles in the rebuilding of communities near Gaza that were targeted in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. 

“We aim to harness the strength and ingenuity of Jewish people around the world and the State of Israel to address the climate crisis,” Stephen Bronfman and Michael Sonnenfeldt, the two philanthropists behind the initiative, said in a joint statement. 

Bronfman is the son of Birthright Israel founder and Seagram magnate Charles Bronfman, and works as a close adviser of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In 2023, he and his sister pledged $9 million to Birthright in honor of their father’s 90th birthday, designating some of the money to make the program more environmentally friendly. Sonnenfeldt is the founder of the Israel Policy Forum, a think tank promoting the two-state solution, and head of Tiger 21, a network for high-net-worth investors with $6 billion in cryptocurrency holdings. He recently donated $20 million to Ben-Gurion University. 

The money pledged to the Jewish Climate Trust includes personal donations from Bronfman and Sonnenfeldt, who are the group’s founding co-chairs, as well as commitments from other donors such as the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation.