Joey Low

Two refugees and a promise

Joey Low's parents were refugees. His mother, Hannah, was born in Berlin and reached New York at fourteen after her family made its way through Belgium, France and Cuba. His father, Eddy, was born in Vienna and came to America with his family in 1939, at thirteen. They married in 1949 and raised their children with gratitude for the country that had taken them in.

They sent every child to Ramaz, a Jewish day school in Manhattan, so that they would know their heritage. Low studied there from kindergarten through twelfth grade, then went to NYU, as his mother had. What his parents taught him, he says, was simple: respect for immigrants and refugees, pride in being Jewish, and a deep connection to Israel. "Those values affected my entire life."

Israel, 1973

In his junior year of college, 1971 to 1972, Low studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. When the Yom Kippur War broke out in October 1973, he went back to Israel as a volunteer. He has said that this experience cemented his bond with Israel for the rest of his life.

2002: sending people, not spokespeople

In the spring of 2002, suicide bombings were striking the heart of Israeli cities. After the Passover massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya on 27 March, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, and much of the world condemned it. What troubled Low was not only the terror, but how Israel was being portrayed: the media, he felt, was not explaining why Israel had to protect its citizens, and American tourists had stopped coming.

If Americans would not come to Israel, he reasoned, young Israelis could go to America. In April 2002 he brought three young Israelis to American campuses, then two young men who had just fought in Jenin. Within months he had interviewed hundreds of candidates and sent 48 of them, all just out of the army and fluent in English, in groups of three on two-week tours of colleges, churches, synagogues and high schools. They slept in dormitories and lived alongside the students. "I did not want these young Israelis simply to lecture at American students," he wrote. "I wanted them to meet them, live alongside them, listen to them and bond with them."

That became Israel at Heart. Over two decades more than a thousand young Israelis have travelled with it across America, then Europe and South America, where Low looked for Israelis who spoke the local language. From the start he put an Ethiopian Israeli in each group of three, who could speak first-hand about discrimination and answer the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. A newspaper feature on his work called the delegates "Israel's best ambassadors".

A scholarship and a new generation

In 2006 Low went to Professor Uriel Reichman, founder of IDC Herzliya, now Reichman University, and offered scholarships for Ethiopian Israeli students. He set the bar himself: strong English, service in elite army units, and above all leadership. The Israel at Heart program is now in its twentieth year. More than 250 students have graduated, more than 45 are studying, and about 15 join each year. It is run today by Ester David, a graduate of the program who travelled to the United States with Israel at Heart in 2002.

That year IDC Herzliya named Low an Honorary Fellow "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to Israeli public diplomacy, the future of the State of Israel and the Jewish People". He has also served on the board of the American Friends of IDC Herzliya and on the International Board of Governors of Hillel.

Screams Before Silence

After October 7, Low was an executive producer of Screams Before Silence, the 2024 documentary with Sheryl Sandberg about the sexual violence Hamas terrorists committed during the massacre. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference in June 2024, he said the film was independent: "The movie was an independent project; we didn't take any money from the government." His reason for backing it was the same one that started Israel at Heart: "I love Israel, I've loved Israel my whole life."

Why he backs Naza: The Real Story

Low supports Naza: The Real Story as an endorser and adviser. The film rests on the idea he has worked by since 2002: that the most convincing case for Israel is made by the Israelis who were there, telling what they saw in their own words. One of the young Israelis whose work in Washington he once sponsored, Marina Naomi Smolyanov, is now part of the film's team.