Jewish Youth Unite for Climate Action
The author is a high school senior in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a Director for YEPT.
When Izzy Kanefsky applied for Adamah’s Jewish Youth Climate Movement National Leadership Board as a sophomore in high school, she didn’t anticipate how formative the experience would be. Now a second-year student at Colby College, her work at JYCM inspired her to pursue a dual-degree in environmental science and Jewish studies. She remains involved as an Adamah Campus Student Leader, interning to help build the next generation of Jewish leaders through Jewish environmental education, climate action, leadership development, and community building. Kanefsky is just one of the countless young people empowered by Adamah, and thanks to her many contributions to the movement, she will be far from the last.
The Jewish Youth Climate Movement (JYCM), founded in 2020, is dedicated to empowering a joyful, resilient generation of Jewish environmental leaders and encouraging Jewish youth to take climate action. The program’s many activities and efforts are facilitated by the 20-30 annual members of the National Leadership Board, supported by staff and alumni like Kanefsky. Much of JYCM’s work takes place on the local level, where individual Kvutzot (Hebrew for “groups”) carry out projects and programming including phonebanking; Tu B’Shvat Seders (ceremonial meals celebrating the Jewish “new year of the trees”); composting projects in their school gardens; speaking at their synagogues; joining climate protests with partner organizations; and attending Adamah’s immersive retreats, all grounded in and inspired by Jewish tradition.
Within Adamah and JYCM’s advocacy work, one effort is on individual “campaigns,” or roughly year-long projects with specific goals. Currently, the teen leaders are working on a campaign called Underwrite Earth, designed to put pressure on insurance companies who insure and therefore support fossil fuel infrastructure.
The Jewish Youth Climate Movement (JYCM), founded in 2020, is dedicated to empowering a joyful, resilient generation of Jewish environmental leaders and encouraging Jewish youth to take climate action. Submitted photo.
Alex Miller, a junior at Boulder High School in Colorado and fourth-year member of JYCM’s Leadership Board, is one of the teens working on kicking off the project, nothing that, “Fossil fuel extraction and pipelines need insurance.” Miller adds that the Underwrite Earth Campaign is a way for interested teens to advocate for insurance company executives to stop investing in fossil fuels. They do this through writing letters, sending postcards, lobbying, and signing petitions. Miller hopes that those in charge of these companies "underwrite the earth" and not fossil fuel projects.
Miller feels particularly inspired by taking collective action through JYCM. “Everything I’d heard about the climate crisis before was ‘you have to recycle or else you personally are responsible for the climate crisis’ and that narrative didn’t sit with me,” Miller says. “Yes, we all have a responsibility to pick up the trash we see and do good and recycle... but we also have the responsibility to make sure legislatures do good.”
Miller believes that’s actually the reason that participating in youth grassroots efforts through programs like JYCM is so important. Giving youth an outlet through which they can take effective action can flip the script both for the world and the youth themselves. One way Miller helps illustrate the power youth hold is with the metaphor of a triangle.
“Typically, we think about power as a triangle,” Miller says. They describe authority figures as traditionally being at the top of the triangle, with progressively less dominant groups until the base, which is made up of normal laypeople with no obvious weight. “That’s not the entire story of power, though.”
For example, when students walk out of school, that changes the power balance teachers and principals have over students. When citizens vote in elections, it becomes clear the fate of the candidates, however high-profile they are, ultimately rests in the voters’ hands. In that way, the metaphorical triangle of power can be flipped through collective, organized, and strategic action.
Although this more political side of JYCM is one of the program's primary facets, JYCM takes a unique approach to climate action. The program features different modalities or opportunities to engage, including movement building through the arts, Jewish green business and working towards nature-based solutions, Jewish wisdom and nature connection, and thought leadership. This is possible because JYCM is powered by Adamah, the largest Jewish environmental organization in the country.
JYCM teen leaders seek to embody Jewish ideas like tikkun olam (repairing the world) and tzedek, tzedek, tirdof (a famous quote from Jewish scripture decreeing “justice, justice shall you pursue”). Through the leadership of these teens, the Jewish community is compelled to get involved in major issues of our time through the application of Jewish values. That’s a big part of what Izzy Kanefsky loves about JYCM.
“One goal of JYCM is to be able to make Judaism a model of how we can fight against climate change and fight against a lot of injustice,” Kanefsky says. On top of activism, JYCM also provides a space for young Jews to find community with like-minded individuals. Since JYCM is a totally pluralistic space, people from every type of Jewish background come together to build one diverse yet united team. The Leadership Board uses Jewish holidays and writings to learn about their agricultural roots, build community and spiritual resilience, take action through a Jewish lens, and bring modern twists to ancient traditions.
“There’s a lot of really beautiful coexistence happening among denominations where we can see people of all different Jewish faith backgrounds coming together towards this unified Jewish goal,” Kanefsky says. “I find that really beautiful, and my hope is that we can have more people so that we can have more backgrounds, so that we can have ultimately more perspectives that help us make a wider idea of how to make this goal happen.”
Growth is a common theme in JYCM’s goals. The program’s reach has grown dramatically since its founding, including Adamah launching Adamah on Campus in response to requests from JYCM alumni. As Adamah continues to expand, there’s potential for increasingly large-scale engagement of the Jewish community and interdenominational change in the environmental world.
Miller, Kanefsky, and the rest of JYCM are optimistic for the future, as they look ahead to new opportunities to engage more people with diverse interests and backgrounds and continue building community. Kanefsky believes that making true headway against the climate crisis is impossible without this kind of youth involvement. “Rallying teens who are very passionate and building this movement is really fundamental,” she says. “Youth are ultimately the bringers of change.”
Jewish Youth Unite for Climate Action © 2025 by Youth Environmental Press Team is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visithttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
