Temple Israel hosts ‘Captain Sunshine’ for Shabbos

Temple Israel Cape Town hosted human rights activist and three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Yosef Abramowitz, as one of its guest speakers on Friday night, 15 November. Yossi, who made aliya to Israel from America, is a global social entrepreneur who is pioneering solar energy in the Middle East and Africa, earning him the nickname “Captain Sunshine”.

He’s also a member of one of Temple Israel’s sister synagogues, Kol Haneshama, in Jerusalem.

Abramowitz was in Cape Town to attend an investors’ conference on the way to the COP 29 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November. He finds himself in South Africa regularly, however, and shared an interesting tidbit about his past. He started his career in activism for Soviet Jewry and against apartheid, and was actually banned from coming to South Africa at the time.

Yossi gave the dvar Torah on Friday night, linking the first four parshiyot (portions) of B’reishit to his theme of climate change. Genesis calls on human beings to be true to our role as guardians of the planet, and the flood was a warning call to humanity to step back from the path of environmental destruction, he said. He suggested that we are both the “10 good men” that couldn’t be found in Sodom, as well as the angels who have to bring the message of responsibility to this time, just as Avraham called on the “shofet kol ha’aretz” (judge of the earth) to “ta’aseh mishpat” (do justice).