Yosef Abramowitz is a Jewish social and business entrepreneur. He has been classified as a “[Jewish] leader and innovator”.[1]
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Yosef Abramowitz, a human rights activist, environmentalist, educator, investor and entrepreneur, was named by The Jerusalem Post in 2011 as the 26th most influential Jewish person on the planet, joining the ranks of Mark Zuckerburg (#1), Shimon Peres (#22), Jon Stewart (#27), and Bar Refaeli (#50) among others.[2] He was also named by Calcalist, a leading economic daily, as one of Israel’s top environmentalists in 2010 and, in 1991, as the most influential Jewish student leader of the previous decade, according to Moment Magazine.[3] Abramowitz was named by Haaretz as one of 2011's top ten most influential Anglo immigrants.[4] As co-founder of the Arava Power Company, Israel’s leading solar developer, he is considered the founding father of the solar industry in Israel, along with partners David Rosenblatt of New Jersey and Ed Hofland of Kibbutz Ketura.
Abramowitz was born in 1964. He lived in Israel as a child from 1969–1972 and when living in Boston, he attended the Solomon Schechter School of Greater Boston.[5] He is a Young Judaean; having participated in the 1982-1983 Young Judaea Year Course in Israel program on a prestigious Hadassah scholarship.[6] He received a Bachelor of Arts in Jewish Public Policy from Boston University in 1986 and a Master of Arts in Magazine Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1991 which he attended on a Wexner Graduate Fellowship.[7][8] He is married to Rabbi Susan Silverman and they have five children, two of whom were adopted from Ethiopia.[9] In 2006, he moved from Newton, Massachusetts to Kibbutz Ketura.[10] Abramowitz was elected to the 19th spot on the Israel Green Movement Knesset list.
Abramowitz founded and co-founded many magazines, editorial projects, and pioneer programs including Jewish Family & Life!, BabagaNewz (with Mem Bernstein and the AVI CHAI Foundation), JVibe, JBooks, SocialAction.com, Sh’ma (where he also served as Executive Editor), MyJewishLearning.com (with Edgar M. Bronfman and Hebrew College, and WorldManna.org, Jskyway.com (with Jon Woocher and JESNA).[11] Abramowitz served on the Executive Board of the World Jewish Congress from 1987-1990. Abramowitz says his inspiration comes from: “Jewish Peoplehood, which has been my big passion for the last decade.” [12]
Abramowitz was active in the anti-apartheid and divestiture movement at Boston University, he led the Jewish community’s successfully campaign to reinstate $7 billion to the US federal budget as corrections to the Welfare Reform Act. Abramowitz served as the president of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews from 1997–2007, and has been co-nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the keynote speaker at Russia’s national human rights convention in 2004. He helped to establish the Ethiopian Atid Ehad political party in Israel. Abramowitz is an active advocate of Solar power in Israel in Israel, both for Jewish Israelis and for Israeli Arab Bedouins.[13] Abramowitz was held up at gunpoint in Buchara, Ethiopia, while investigating the burning of Jewish homes. He has organized various political demonstrations in 23 countries.[14]
He has been arrested two times. The first arrest, outside of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. in October of 1985, was on behalf of Boris Lifshitz. “The U.S. Supreme Court overturned [Abramowitz’s] conviction, setting precedent on First Amendment rights outside embassies.” The second arrest was on behalf of Ethiopian Jewry. Border police beat Abramowitz up outside of the Jerusalem Convention Center at the World Zionist Congress in 1987. The then-newly elected Chairman of the Jewish Agency, Mendel Kaplan, freed him from the police van before police could bring record the arrest in record.[15]
Abramowitz has led two two hunger strikes. The first was a fourteen-day strike that protested Boston University’s investments in South Africa, during apartheid. Abramowitz was banned from pre-democratic South Africa for his anti-apartheid leadership. The second was during Abramowitz’s time serving as the WUJS chairperson. This two-week strike was held on behalf of the Soviet prisoner Zion Alexei Magarik, “who was subsequently released from prison and flown to Israel. [Abramowitz] organized 23 demonstrations and events worldwide in February, 1987 for the most successful ever International Jewish Student Solidarity day for Soviet Jewry.” Alexei, subsequent to his release from solitary confinement and his release to Israel, was the last prisoner of Zion in the USSR.[16]
Abramowitz won a U.S. Supreme Court case for free speech. Abramowitz v. Boston University helped set a precedent for free speech rights at private institutions in Massachusetts.[17]
Abramowitz co-founded the Arava Power Company in 2006 with David Rosenblatt of New Jersey and Ed Hofland of Kibbutz Ketura. Today he serves as the company’s President.[18] Arava Power Company’s mission is to supply 10% of Israel's electricity needs through renewable solar energy. Specifically, APC works with Kibbutzim, Moshavim, and Bedouins in the south of the country.[19] Abramowitz said in a 2010 interview with The Jerusalem Post: “We are implementing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s vision to cease use of fossil fuels within a decade and [help Israel] develop alternative energies for itself and the world”.[20] Abramowitz calls solar energy the “energy of peace”; in an 2008 interview he said “To realize that the same sun shines equally on all of us, is owned by none of us, and can supply our energy needs in abundance, inherently promotes peace. The sun doesn’t recognize borders.” [21] Abramowitz has met with Energy Ministers and officials from two dozen countries to assist them plan for a solar energy future for their countries.[22]
Abramowitz and his wife, Rabbi Susan Silverman, wrote Jewish Family and Life: Traditions, Holidays, and Values for Today's Parents and Children which was published by Golden Books from St. Martin's Press on September 15, 1998.[24]
How Americans Feel About Israel, With Steven Rosen, AIPAC, 1984
Jews, Zionism, and South Africa, 1984, second edition, 1985, B'nai Brith / Hillel
Sex, Lies and Leadership, JFL books, edited 1987
Abramowitz made a brief appearance in a 1994 episode of Saturday Night Live during a Weekend Update sketch in which comedian Sarah Silverman joked that her sister, Susan Silverman, and Yosef Abramowitz had recently gotten married; “…They took each other’s last names and hyphenated it. So now my sister is Susan Silverman-Abramowtiz. But they are thinking about shortening it to just – Jews.” [25] Silverman once again made a sarcastic quip about Abramowitz on Israeli national TV while being interviewed at the 2011 Israeli Presidential Conference. Silverman joked that Abramowitz was “flirting” in the front row with Shakira. The two were supposedly discussing solar power for the schools that Shakira supports.[26]
Abramowitz served on the student committee of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Holiday Commission, which founded the national holiday in the United States for the civil rights leader, and met secretly with Coretta Scott King in 1985 to help the King family’s campaign to have the King Papers donated to the King Center, from Boston University.[27]
In 2011, Abramowitz co-authored “Solar Energy” with rapper Shyne under the pseudonym of Kaptain Sunshine. Shyne premiered the rap at the June 5, 2011 inauguration of Israel’s first solar field, Ketura Sun.[28]
He was also the last non-Lubavitcher with the Rebbe prior to the stroke that eventually led to the Rebbe’s death.[29]
Along with Aryeh Green, via Kol Dor and socialaction.com, Abramowitz co-founded the Hebrew month of Cheshvan as Global Jewish Social Action Month.[30]
Abramowitz’s first photographic exhibit, "The Ketura Years: Part One" is on display as of July 2011, at Presentense on Emek Refaim Street in Jerusalem. The exhibit features nature shots, as well as photos of Aviv Geffen playing at the opening of MTV Israel and of Fergie of The Black Eyed Peas performing at Sultan’s Pool in Jerusalem.[31]
Abramowitz has his own personal website/blog, http://www.peoplehood.org/. He also keeps his own Twitter account, @KaptainSunshine