Yehoshua Fass

Yehoshua Fass is an American-Israeli rabbi, educator and organizational leader who co-founded Nefesh B'Nefesh and serves as its executive director. His life's work addresses one of practical Zionism's defining challenges: helping Jews who want to move to Israel turn that aspiration into a workable plan involving employment, housing, bureaucracy, education and community.

Since Nefesh B'Nefesh was established in 2002, Fass has helped build a coordinated support model for immigrants from North America and, later, Britain. Rather than treating aliyah as a single moment of arrival, the organization created a continuum of preparation, guidance and assistance before and after the move. According to the figures preserved in the supplied profile materials, its services have accompanied more than 100,000 immigrants. Fass's influence can therefore be seen not only in the institution he built, but in the families seeking to establish homes, careers and communities in Israel.

From New York to rabbinic and educational leadership

Fass was born in New York on July 9, 1973. He studied at Yeshiva University, completing a bachelor's degree in biology and education. After spending time teaching in New York and New Jersey, he chose to devote himself to Jewish education. He went on to earn a master's degree through the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration and received rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.

His early career combined teaching, rabbinic service and community institution-building. Fass participated in a Judaic studies fellowship program in Boca Raton, Florida, and subsequently became an assistant and then associate rabbi at Boca Raton Synagogue. He served on an Orthodox rabbinical council beit din, opened and directed the Helen Julius Reiter Institute of Judaic Studies, and worked as an educational director for March of the Living.

Those roles gave him close experience with the needs of Jewish communities: strengthening Jewish knowledge, providing religious leadership, connecting people with Israel and turning broad ideals into programs in which individuals could participate. In 2000, he received a Rabbinic Leadership Award from United Jewish Communities in Chicago in recognition of his educational outreach.

Founding Nefesh B'Nefesh

From personal tragedy to public action

In March 2001, Fass's 13-year-old cousin, Naftali Lanzkron, was murdered in a terrorist bombing in Israel. Fass has said that the loss strengthened his family's decision to make aliyah. As he prepared for the move, he encountered the gap between the desire of many North American Jews to live in Israel and the practical difficulty of acting on that desire.

Fass joined forces with businessman and philanthropist Tony Gelbart. They spoke with prospective immigrants and examined why people who felt a strong attachment to Israel did not complete the move. Their research identified four recurring barriers: financial uncertainty, complicated bureaucracy, employment concerns and the need to find a suitable community. The important insight was that Zionist commitment alone could not resolve these problems; prospective immigrants needed professional infrastructure that would help them make and carry out informed decisions.

A practical model for aliyah and integration

Fass and Gelbart founded Nefesh B'Nefesh in 2002. That same year, Fass and his family moved to Israel on the organization's first charter flight. His personal story thus became inseparable from the model he was helping to create: the co-founder was also an immigrant confronting the challenge of rebuilding family and professional life in Israel.

Nefesh B'Nefesh brought guidance on rights, documentation, financial planning, employment and social integration into a coordinated framework. It developed working relationships with Israeli authorities and institutions, helped immigrants understand the stages of the process, and connected them with communities and relevant resources. Employment support became especially important because the ability to find work suited to one's skills and experience directly affects whether a family can establish a sustainable life in Israel.

The organized aliyah flights also carried meaning beyond transportation. They gave immigrants a sense of making the journey together and provided a public welcome, presenting aliyah as part of a larger Jewish and Israeli story rather than merely a private relocation. Behind those symbolic occasions stood the less visible, long-term work that defined the model: processing documents, planning careers, answering questions and connecting newcomers with support networks.

Impact on aliyah and Israeli society

Fass's central contribution has been the creation of an institutional bridge between English-speaking Jewish communities and the State of Israel. Such a bridge works in both directions. It helps immigrants understand Israeli systems while helping institutions in Israel respond more effectively to the experience, professional skills and needs of people arriving from other countries.

Immigrants assisted through the organization's framework have entered Israeli communities, workplaces and a wide range of professions as individuals and families. Fass did not create their desire to make aliyah, nor was his organization the only factor in their integration. His achievement was to reduce barriers that might otherwise have prevented a move or made it harder to build a stable life afterward. This kind of impact appears in concrete decisions: a family that understands its rights, a professional who identifies a viable employment path, or a newcomer who finds a community in which to belong.

The scale of the work also made Nefesh B'Nefesh a recognized participant in discussions about aliyah from Western countries. The model led by Fass demonstrated that successful integration requires a combination of national vision and professional, person-centered service. It contributed to a modern understanding of aliyah that extends beyond bringing Jews to Israel and includes creating conditions in which they can build enduring lives there.

Recognition of his work

Jewish and Zionist institutions have recognized Fass's leadership. In 2011, he received the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism for his role in co-founding the Nefesh B'Nefesh aliyah movement for English speakers. In 2013, Yeshiva University awarded Fass and Tony Gelbart honorary doctorates, reflecting the university's appreciation of their service to the Jewish people and Israel.

In 2017, The Jerusalem Post included Fass in its list of 50 influential Jews. In 2024, Hadassah-Israel presented him with a Builder of Israel Award. Taken together, these distinctions recognize the breadth of his path: a rabbi and educator who transformed community experience into an organization with international reach.

A life in Israel and an enduring form of leadership

Fass built his own life in Israel while leading the organization he co-founded. He lives in Beit Shemesh with his wife and their seven children. His decision to settle in Israel gives his work a strongly personal dimension: he has approached aliyah not only as an idea, but as a transition that he and his family experienced themselves.

His contribution combines rabbinic leadership, education, social entrepreneurship and management. Rather than stopping at encouragement, he helped construct a system that addresses the details on which the success of a major life decision often depends. His career illustrates how contemporary Jewish leadership can connect identity and community with durable institutional action.

Why Yehoshua Fass belongs in Moreshet

Yehoshua Fass merits inclusion in Moreshet because his work reaches to the heart of the relationship between Diaspora Jewry and the State of Israel. Recognizing that aliyah cannot be sustained by ideals alone, he and his partners built infrastructure that translates Zionist aspiration into employment support, bureaucratic guidance, financial preparation and community connection. The assistance provided to more than 100,000 immigrants, as recorded in the supplied profile materials, gives that work substantial human and national significance.

Preserving his story on Moreshet.com also documents a practical form of building Jewish and Israeli life: removing obstacles from people's paths, strengthening ties between Jewish communities and Israel, and helping families establish roots in Israeli society. Fass's legacy lies not only in his awards or titles, but in the institution he helped build, the service model he developed and the new lives that immigrants have been better able to create through that work.