Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action

Dayenu is supported by several large left-wing foundations, including the Dorot Foundation and Walter and Elise Haas Fund.

Initiatives

The leaders of Dayenu assert that the Jewish Torah and respect for God’s creation require left-wing climate policy. They mobilize their members to join climate protests and organize to pressure lawmakers and political candidates in favor of left-wing climate policies. Dayenu also advocates for Jewish institutions and large banks to stop financing conventional fuel companies through the “All Our Might” campaign. Using the analogy of biblical Jews eating unleavened bread because they had limited time for the bread to rise before needing to flee Egypt, All Our Might urges big banks and asset managers to “move their dough” out of conventional-fuel investments by organizing protests outside large banks and bringing unleavened bread with them. ^{1 2 3}

In 2022, it led an interfaith conference pushing the New York congressional delegation to include new spending programs subsidizing clean energy and projects in communities most affected by climate change. ⁴ The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed in August 2022 including $369 billion in climate and energy spending. Leading up to the successful vote, Dayenu successfully lobbied several Jewish senators, including Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD). Cardin quoted Dahlia Rockowitz, a Dayenu organizer, in his remarks on the Senate floor. ⁵

Fiscal Sponsor

Dayenu is sponsored by the Social Good Fund, a donor-advised fund provider that supports left-of-center causes and activist organizations. ⁶ The fund earned $95,226,685 million in revenue and incurred $83,637,489 in expenses in 2022. It spent $56,258,465 on fiscally sponsored projects that year. ⁷

Leadership

Jennie Rosenn is the founder and CEO of Dayenu. She has had a long career in Jewish left-leaning nonprofits. Rosenn helped build the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable to support left-wing initiatives and sits on the board of the New York chapter of Jobs with Justice, a left-wing group that fights for a higher minimum wage and other organized labor priorities. In 2022, she was named one of the top 22 faith leaders to watch by the Democratic establishment-aligned think tank Center for American Progress. She has twice been named one of the most 50 influential Jews in America by Forward, a left-wing news organization for American Jews. ⁸

Rosenn is also a project director at the Social Good Fund, a left-wing donor advised fund provider that provides significant funding for Dayenu. Rosenn earned a salary of $184,536 from the Social Good Fund in 2021 and $191, 421 in 2022. ^{9 10}

Mary Babic is the director of communications for Dayenu. She previously worked for Oxfam, an international aid organization. ¹¹

Nathaniel “Nati” Passow is the director of operations and finance. He founded the Jewish Farm School near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to train young Jewish people in farming skills and promote environmentalist beliefs. The Farm School was in operation from 2005 to 2019. ¹²

Financials

Dayenu is fiscally sponsored by the Social Good Fund, which provided Dayenu $100,000 in 2021 and $192,000 in 2022. ^{13 14 15} The 2022 funds were directed to the Social Good Fund through the Dorot Foundation, which supports left-of-center advocacy in the United States and Israel. ¹⁴

The Walter and Elise Haas Fund awarded Dayenu $60,000 in 2020, $175,000 in 2021, and $300,000 in 2023, dispensed through the Social Good Fund. ¹⁶

The Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation, a nonprofit family foundation that supports politically liberal Jewish causes, awarded Dayenu $150,000 in 2021. ¹⁷

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg has been a major supporter of Dayenu, awarding $100,000 in 2020 through his Righteous Persons Foundation. In 2021, Spielberg was awarded the Genesis Prize for his contributions to cinema, culture, and Holocaust remembrance. He donated the $1 million prize, plus a matching $1 million in personal funds, to a group of organizations working for racial and economic left-wing causes. Dayenu was named as a recipient, along with One Fair Wage, Jewish left-wing organizing group Avodah, and others. ¹⁸