By 
Leorah Gavidor
Something new is growing at Coastal Roots Farm in Encinitas this season: the first-in-the-world Jewish Climate Artists for California Incubator, starting in September 2025. With support from a prestigious Covenant Foundation Grant, the nine-month incubator is designed to nurture artistic voices at the convergence of Judaism and the climate crisis, bringing together six well-established artists from across the state to explore how performing arts can inspire collective action.
“The impetus of the JCACI program is to help artists move the conversation about the climate crisis forward, contributing to this larger movement through their creativity and art,” said Cantor Rebecca Joy Fletcher, Director of Jewish Life at Coastal Roots Farm.
The idea is to create and premier new works that “help us move from despair to hope and from overwhelm to action.” Throughout the upcoming year, artists will share ideas and inspiration with each other and with leading Jewish and environmental thinkers, ritual leaders, artists, and artistic directors, to forge connections and strengthen impact.
The artists comprise a diverse group: folk guitarist Heavy Meadow, who lived in the mountains of West Virginia; playwright Allan Havis, UCSD Jewish Studies director and author of a popular book on cult films; multi-disciplinary artist Michelle Franag Shofet, who taps into the shadows of the cultural soul; Stanford educator and playwright Dan Schifrin, who is considering creating a comedic solo performance about the climate crisis; Livya Howard-Yashar, who brings music and choreography; playwright Maya de la Rosa Cohen, daughter of the first queer parents in California to share equal parenthood.
They all have in common that each wants to “enter the arena of the intersection of Jewish wisdom and the ecological crisis,” Fletcher said.
That intersection is also the basis for how Coastal Roots Farm operates, grounded in Jewish wisdom with a vision of teaching the wider community how to care for the earth. Coastal Roots Farm work and its vision are based on five Jewish values: tikkun olam (repair), arevut (mutual care), Adam v’adamah (we are part of, and responsible for, the earth), peleh (wonder), and kodesh (sacred time). The farm practices regenerative agriculture and produces 80,000 pounds of food per year, gives away 75% of these fruits and veggies at its pay-what-you-can, no-questions-asked farmstand and through distribution partners, hosts a wide range of educational programming, and puts on events that promote a sense of awe for Jewish tradition and the natural world.
Located in Encinitas, on land that once comprised Ecke Ranch (which grew world-famous poinsettias), Coastal Roots Farm is a non-profit that started as an outgrowth of the Leichtag Foundation and now operates independently. “We are not only a farm, we are a center for earth-based Judaism,” Fletcher said. “We have wisdom and light to shine out into the community and beyond.”
The artist incubator will be a new addition to the farm’s offerings, providing a safe place for artists to work on something that Fletcher acknowledges is difficult: focusing on how to address the climate crisis while there are so many challenges in the world, and thinking deeply about how it affects us without falling into despair.
“There is a lot that’s hard for the Jewish community right now, a lot of division, outrage, and fear. But our mother earth is still here crying for us, and we can’t say ‘we’re going to wait on that.’ We cannot be divided from the earth; we are the world that we are trying to save.”
“This incubator will give the artists a path for how to draw from the wellspring of Jewish life and wisdom to create work that organically responds to the ecological crisis in this unprecedented time,” Fletcher elaborated. “Just like every period in its history, Judaism and Jewish tradition can meet this moment, while remaining rooted in the spirit.”
What shape that work and action will take remains to be seen. During the application process, artists were not required to present a fleshed-out project idea. Instead, the emphasis on incubation is to generate new ideas within the support of a cohort who will offer each other their talent, openheartedness, and wisdom, to create work that reaches audiences on another level.
Fletcher encourages the artists to go through the whole creative process, so after their time in the incubator they have the tools to continue bringing their voices and action to the climate crisis. They will come together for an intensive retreat at Coastal Roots Farm in early September, then meet via Zoom throughout the year to connect with each other and advisers from various disciplines, including Judaism, arts, and science.
Fletcher points out that there are a few other climate artist incubators in the world, but this is the first with its foundation in Judaism. Playwright Chantal Bilodeau, based in New York, founded the Arts & Climate Initiative to get artists and audiences to engage in climate action through live events, talks, workshops, and convenings. Fletcher attended her climate arts incubator in New York some years ago. Bilodeau’s plays include Homo Sapiens, It Starts With Me, Magical Fungi in Times Square, and Mother. Canadian non-profit Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts works to position the arts and culture sector as a driver of sustainable societies, providing quarterly reports on how artists are showing up in conversations about sustainability, resources for artists on how to integrate sustainability into their work, and creative climate leadership programs.
The most important thing she hopes that artists come away with, Fletcher says, is “a sense that they can be leaders through their art, and they have a clearer sense of how their work can help.”
“As we all navigate the darkness of the climate crisis and the environmental injustices of today, art can light our way and help us see, feel, and act with renewed joy and determination.”
Learn more at www.coastalrootsfarm.org.
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