Budding climate fund seeks to guide Jewish response to era’s greatest threat

A Jewish fund launching next month will be the first of its kind to focus specifically on climate, hoping to engage more Jewish leaders in the fight against climate change and unite Israeli and Diaspora communities to send a powerful message of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, internationally.

The organization, called the Jewish Climate Trust, is planning its debut while US President Donald Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords and taken an axe to federal environmental funding and staff. Meanwhile, Israel, a climate hotspot where temperatures are rising faster than the global average, lags well behind other developed nations in cutting emissions and preparing for heatwaves and other expected dire consequences. Unlike many other countries that have legislated concrete commitments to reduce carbon emissions, Israel has been unable to pass a climate law.

Due to go public at the Jewish Funders Network conference in Nashville on March 24, the JCT already has nearly $18 million in initial pledges.

It is the brainchild of Stephen Bronfman, who is working with British environmental activist and founder of the US Jewish environmental nonprofit Hazon Nigel Savage.

The former, a longtime environmental advocate, is the son of billionaire philanthropist Charles Bronfman and grandson of Samuel Bronfman, who established the Seagram alcohol empire. Bronfman co-chairs the new organization with US-based investor and philanthropist Michael Sonnenfeldt.

Savage, born in the UK and now based in Israel and the US, will be JCT’s CEO. Savage ran Hazon between 2000 and 2021, turning it into North America’s largest Jewish environmental body and helping oversee Hazon’s merger with the Pearlstone Center, an outdoor educational retreat outside of Baltimore, into what is now Adamah.

After Savage stepped down from Hazon, Bronfman engaged him to help Birthright Israel — which Bronfman’s father co-founded — go green, and to help develop a new project to get the Jewish world more involved in the environment and climate, which eventually evolved into the JCT.

The trust wants to provide a one-stop-shop for messaging, information, and networking opportunities for all interested groups and individuals in the Jewish community.

During the short and medium term, it will fund existing projects.

In Israel, JCT aims to help green organizations that currently focus on different pieces of the environmental puzzle — such as nature, legislation, or marine issues — to develop an overarching strategy and single voice on climate to more effectively influence policy.

It is partnering with PAI, an Israeli philanthropic initiative that has already given millions of shekels to Israeli solutions that have the potential to cut the human-generated carbon emissions that primarily drive climate change. PAI focuses on electricity, transportation, construction, industry, and agriculture.

In the longer term, JCT plans to seed new high-impact initiatives. This echoes the work of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, which closed in 2016, having launched 11 independent organizations, including Birthright Israel.

JCT’s board includes well-known philanthropists — some dipping their toes into climate issues for the first time, others long involved. The latter include David Cogut, whose firm Pegasus Capital was the first US private equity investment firm accredited by the Green Climate Fund set up by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Jeff Hart, initiator of the annual Climate Solutions prizes in Israel and Quebec.

The board, which has met twice so far, has discussed future high-impact initiatives including climate-related Middle East regional cooperation; long-term planning to prepare Israel for the consequences of climate change, such as extreme heat and sea level rise; and climate-based interfaith work in North America.

As a first shot in the latter’s direction and the biggest donation for the climate to date by the American Jewish community, the trust has made a $3 million grant over three years to Adamah.

According to Adamah’s CEO, Jakir Manela, this will finance the development of a national strategy and timeline for lowering North American Jewry’s carbon footprint. A roadmap will include steps toward cutting energy consumption by transitioning communal buildings and homes to renewable energy, reducing food waste, decarbonizing private transportation, and more, with an eye to using Israeli climate technology.

The trust’s idea is not only to have the Jewish community lead on this issue but to create a model for other religious groups.

Environmental advocate for decades

Based in Montreal, Stephen Bronfman, 61, has been an environmental advocate for decades. In a Zoom conversation with The Times of Israel, Bronfman — the executive chairman of a private equity firm — credited Yuval Peled for helping to spark his interest in the environment. Peled, now retired, was then responsible at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority for the southern Israeli region of Eilat. Charles Bronfman put a young Stephen in his charge during a Passover vacation.

“It really opened up my eyes to the massive role of nature and how much we learn from nature,” said Bronfman.

Bronfman said he reviewed his life’s work with the environment and the Jewish community when he turned 60 last year. Realizing that “people of my age who are running [family] foundations are interested in the environment but don’t know where to go,” he resolved to get more Jewish families involved in the climate crisis.

He expressed particular interest in using climate to build bridges in the Middle East. “So much rebuilding will be needed in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, and maybe we can affect how these large projects are looked upon,” he said.

Real estate businessman, climate tech investor, and philanthropist Michael Sonnenfeldt became interested in climate largely through exposure to the effects of climate change on the developing world.

During the 1990s, he focused his philanthropy on conflict and peacekeeping, co-founding and chairing the Israel Policy Forum, visiting dozens of Arab and Muslim capitals, and, under the United Nations, visiting 28 warzones served by UN peacekeepers.

Following 9/11, his attention shifted to national security.

“I went to dozens of countries where I could see how fragile economies and societies were,” he told The Times of Israel. “As climate change started drying up deserts, you could see the early signs of how it will force billions of people to relocate.”

Sonnenfeldt, who has a long association with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and donated $20 million with his wife Katja Goldman to create the school’s Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, served on the advisory board for the Birthright Israel “greening” project.

He said when Stephen Bronfman approached him about the Jewish Climate Trust, “It hit me like a bolt of lightning that my work in climate change had been quite political but had never connected me directly to my Jewish roots. My rabbi talks about taking the Torah onto the streets. You can’t address great challenges without rolling up your shirtsleeves and giving all you have to an important cause. It’s not enough to write a check.”

What’s Jewish about climate?

Sonnenfeldt said, “Stephen had the brilliant idea to create the JCT. But for me, the moniker of a Jewish response to climate helped frame what was so amazing about his idea.”

He cited several key reasons why he thought the Jewish people could make a specific contribution to the climate battle.

The Jews had a rich history of punching above their weight in many fields, and could do so in climate, Sonnenfeldt said.

On a personal level, he wanted to bring his understanding of the climate-national security connection to the attention of Israel’s leaders.

Israel’s climate know-how and technology could contribute to the world and better relations with Middle Eastern neighbors, Sonnenfeldt added.

Furthermore, with Jews having faced more existential issues than any other people throughout history, Jewish thinkers could provide guidance on many moral issues related to climate work. One example of this is considering how to balance helping people already impacted by climate change today with reducing the factors that will negatively affect future generations.

Since Hamas’s murderous rampage through southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in Gaza, some Jewish funders of non-Jewish climate organizations were feeling discomfort in progressive spaces, Sonnenfeldt added, saying he was surprised by the interest expressed in the Jewish Climate Trust by people looking for a climate framework devoid of antisemitism.

Sonnenfeldt said the initial $18 million reflected “an idea and the good reputation of the founding stakeholders.” The next round of funding would be driven by the quality of the trust’s work that would “hopefully distinguish JCT as an extraordinary startup with an incredible vision and a team to match,” he said.

Savage said he believed that by working together more strategically, Israel’s environmental organizations could wield more influence on climate-related policy and pass a climate bill “with teeth” through the Knesset. He voiced “huge respect” for those involved and said the trust would act “slowly, thoughtfully, and in partnership” with a range of people.

“We want to learn,” he said. “We are not diving in and saying we have all the answers, but believe these issues are vitally important, and we want to put our shoulders to the wheel.”