WEST BRATTLEBORO — On Friday, May 19, the Brattleboro Area Jewish Community will show the film, Green Rebel, a documentary about an Israeli-American doing large-scale solar energy work in Africa. Leaders in 12 African nations and Belize have nominated him for the Nobel Prize.
Green Rebel is an Israel/Africa story. The film follows the struggles of solar energy visionary and businessman, Yosef Abramowitz, and his African partners to provide solutions to both global climate change and to inequality in Africa.
Working together, they try to close successful business deals on solar fields costing upwards of $25 million each. The story is shot primarily in Israel, Rwanda, and Burundi.
After immigrating from Boston to Israel in 2006, Abramowitz struggled for five years before he succeeded in building Israel's first commercial-scale solar field to be connected to its national grid. “The Israelis thought I was crazy, a naive American,” he said. “We had to do battle with no fewer than 24 government agencies.”
The main story follows the very difficult struggles over the last six years to complete negotiations for, then to finally build, his second African solar field in Burundi, one of Africa's poorest nations.
On Abramowitz's trips to Africa, he builds cultural and personal bridges to help seal deals, meeting with African religious leaders, Christian or Moslem, to find a common ecological language.
Abramowitz asks, “can the African continent one day be powered exclusively by renewable energy?” In 2020, it boasts 11 out of the 20 fastest-growing economies on the planet, has 700 million cell phones, and its billion-plus population will double by 2050. Abramowitz and his small company want to be a pivotal force there.
A brief Shabbat service at 7 p.m. will be followed by dinner at 7:30 p.m. and then excerpts of the film and a question-and-answer session starting at 8 p.m. with director Harvey Stein. Contributions of $10–$36 will go toward completion of the film. RSVP to Rabbi Amita at ravamita@bajcvermont.org or leave a voicemail at 802-257-1959.