Goals

The Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest is a collaboration by and for people who want to activate Jewish values and help our community move the needle on climate change.

We aim to position climate change as a central moral issue of the Jewish community.

We will create a community that is designed to create a feeling of belonging for those who may not yet feel at home in the organized Jewish world, and for Jews who may not have yet taken an active posture on climate issues. This is a community for growth and action, not only for experts and enthusiasts.

We will leverage this unique current moment as a unique opportunity for collaboration and engagement that might otherwise not have been possible.

We will collectively re-energize Tu BiShvat as a modern, purpose driven holiday.

Values

The following values guide the design and management of The Big Beautiful Jewish Climate Fest.

Commitment to collaboration. We each bring what we do best, and network the rest. We will model new approaches to collaboration and design by creating a platform and culture that empowers organizations and leaders to create something larger and more inclusive that any one organization could do alone. Furthermore, we recognize that the Jewish community is part of a larger global faith community, we embrace the value of inter-faith and inter-sectional work to achieve national and international goals.

Inclusive, Diverse, and Equitable: We will embrace the intersection of race, economy, pandemic and climate, and we know that in doing so, we must look both within and outside of the Jewish community. We strive to ensure that all in our community feel represented and welcome, regardless of denomination, age, background, knowledge or otherwise. Every part of the Jewish world has a crucial stake in this issue, including our youth and the next generations to come. The Festival’s open-source structure models a way for everyone in the Jewish community to make their own unique contribution, and engage their own networks.

Focus on amplifying a long-term collective effort to move the needle on environmental responsibility within the Jewish community and beyond using the concepts of Shmita and Jewish cycles of time, which coincide with the timing of the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (where faith groups are being asked to make “long-term plans of action” to take on climate change).

Seek resonance between climate and Jewish content: Create opportunities for those engaged in Jewish tradition to understand how Torah speaks to climate, and for those interested in climate issues to find meaning and relevance in the Jewish tradition. We will help participants see the “yes and…” opportunity to advance causes they care about through the Jewish community, and to recognize the Jewish and spiritual underpinnings of their care for these causes.

Action-oriented and science-based: We believe that climate change is real, and human activities play a role in the atmospheric changes which will have, and are already having, profound impacts on life on our planet. We are committed to moving the needle on climate change through culture change, personal action, the economy, law and policy.

Pluralistic: We welcome all who identify as Jewish and who are interested in applying Jewish values to issues about our climate and planet. We welcome respectful disagreement and discussion that follows the following core concepts of Jewish Pluralism: