Kipa-clad Brandeis grad makes case for Israel

When the American Studies Association voted to boycott Israel, Joshua Nass found that the Jewish community was “shocked, shocked” and seized the moment and stepped into the breach.

Then a student at Brandeis University, a historically Jewish college with a recent reputation for anti-Israel tendencies, kipa-clad Nass called for the firing of professors joining in the anti-Israel campaign.

He has succeeded in bringing attention to and deflating anti-Israel campaigns during his college career; in the current crisis, he is calling for advocating for Israel on a variety of platforms.

Now 22 and living on the Upper East Side, Nass frequently visits his father in Woodmere and davens at Congregation Aish Kodesh. He is a graduate of Westchester Day School and Ramaz High School, studied in Israel for a year at Netiv Aryeh, and graduated Magna cum laude from Brandeis with a BA in political science. He spent a summer in Israel as a volunteer for the Koby Mandell Foundation, providing assistance and support to relatives of victims of terror.

Nass honed his public relations savvy with pro-Israel activism on campus, sending pitches from his dorm, fueling stories that, he said, would last for weeks. He hopes to channel his experience into a career in PR. He decried the “level of passion and enthusiasm of the J Street types” and their anti-Israel sentiments. “If the right side had the same level of passion as invigorated advocates for Israel, we’d be in a far better place.”

“Israel is in desperate need of PR” and the “State of Israel doesn’t invest enough into it,” he said, adding that he was “astounded” by the lack of response to the academic boycott.

“Israel Apartheid Week” prompted another foray into the media for Nass, when an unidentified group hijacked his image and inserted it into a video promoting the week-long campus-based anti-Israel campaign. “Alongside the hateful comments, they had me nodding as if approving of their hateful message,” he said.