Adamah

Adamah is part of The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore and is the largest Jewish environmental organization in North America. ² Adamah, Inc. maintains hubs across the United States, including in Detroit, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Baltimore. ³ Adamah became its own central entity in 2023 upon the merger of two former Jewish environmental organizations, Hazon and Pearlstone. ⁴

Background

Adamah, Inc. is the official name of two Jewish environmental organizations that merged in 2023: Hazon and Pearlstone. The organization’s early history began in 1893 when the Jewish Working Girls Vacation Society established a nature retreat center which Adamah still operates today as the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. ⁴

In 1966, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore founded Camp Milldale Reisterstown as a Jewish youth day camp. It stopped being used as a day camp in 2015 and was absorbed by the Pearlstone Center, a predecessor organization to Adamah. ^{4  5}

What would become Adamah, Inc. expanded again in 1995 when the Teva Learning Center was founded at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, employing Jewish outdoor environmental education for day school students. ⁴

In 2000, Nigel Savage founded Hazon, an organization focused on spreading awareness of climate issues from a left-of-center perspective within the Jewish community. From 2000 to 2021, Hazon and Pearlstone became partner institutions, opening the Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center, coordinating events at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, organizing climate change awareness bike rides in Israel and the United States, and opening the first hub outside of Maryland in Detroit, Michigan.

In 2021, Hazon and Pearlstone announced plans to merge. The merger concluded in 2023 to form Adamah, Inc. ^{4  6}

Activities

Adamah hosts various environmental and spiritual activities at its several campuses and locations. At its Pearlstone Campus and Retreat Center in Maryland, Adamah hosts immersive nature retreats in the forest for over 20,000 visitors each year. ²

Adamah also maintains the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, a 400-acre campus in the Connecticut Berkshires that hosts nature retreats and environmental education programs. ⁷ It also hosts religious rites and holiday celebrations in the Jewish faith tradition. ^{8  9}

Adamah has several main climate action initiatives. It is a member of the Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition, a network of Jewish community organizations that advance a left-of-center stance on climate change and seek to reverse its effects. ¹⁰ Adamah runs a Jewish Youth Climate Movement, a program to enlist Jewish youth in environmental activism. Adamah also maintains several college and university clubs called Adamah on Campus that advocate climate change action. ¹¹ Adamah also operates a $1.2 million Climate Action Fund that distributed $134,450 in matching grants and $318,500 in interest-free loans in 2023 to climate change projects. ¹²

Adamah offers an Adamah Farm Fellowship, a three-month program for young adults that focuses on organic agriculture, farm-to-table living, Jewish learning, left-of-center social justice, and spiritual practice. ¹³

Leadership

Jakir Manela is the CEO of Adamah, Inc. He was trained as a Teva educator in 2004, established Kayam Farm at Adamah’s Pearlstone campus in 2006, and was the executive director of Pearlstone and a Hazon board member from 2012 to 2021. In 2022, he became the CEO of Hazon-Pearlstone, leading the merger into Adamah in 2023. ¹⁴

David Rendsburg is the CFO at Adamah. He started at Hazon in 2006 and staffed over 40 bike rides there before transitioning to director of data and analytics and then to CFO of Adamah after Hazon and Pearlman merged. ¹⁴

Yoni Stadlin is the chief program officer at Adamah. From 2008 to 2021, Stadlin served as the founding director of the Eden Village Camp, a Jewish environmental sleepaway camp. He has been recognized for his environmental work. Stadlin holds an MA in informal Jewish education from the Jewish Theological Seminary. ¹⁴

Finances

Since 2020, Adamah has seen yearly revenue totals that vary dramatically. In 2020, Adamah reported $5,120,827 in total revenue, a comparable total to its previous years. In 2021, Adamah’s total revenue spiked to $11,194,055 before falling to a total of $3,429,776 in 2022. ¹⁵ In 2023, however, following the merger of Hazon and Pearlman into the new Adamah, Inc, the group reported $16,461,906 in total revenue, $13,987,787 in total expenses, and $24,439,090 in total assets, representing a nearly 400 percent increase in year-to-year revenue. ¹⁶

In 2021, Adamah received $656,019 in government grants (approximately six percent of that year’s total revenue). ¹⁷ In 2023, Adamah, Inc received $317,650 in government grants (less than 2 percent of that year’s total revenue). ¹⁶

In 2024, Adama received a $150,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security‘s Nonprofit Security Grant Program to increase safety in places of worship. ¹⁸