The next best thing to being in Israel, Amos Kamil says, is a job that will allow him to share his passion for the country.

Kamil, a Montclair resident has been appointed director of the Israel Advocacy Initiative run by the New York-based Jewish Council for Public Affairs and United Jewish Communities.

The new position, Kamil said, gives him a national platform from which to build support and understanding for Israel on college campuses, in the media, and in congregations around the country through programming of all different kinds.

"One of the problems is that there's been no central address for Israel advocacy, and I'd like to make JCPA that place," he said. "When a problem about Israel arises — on campus or in the media or around dinner tables — this is where they can turn."

Kamil praised the work of his predecessor with JCPA; he will concentrate, he said on giving community members "a cultural intimacy with Israel, the kind of feeling that people get when they actually visit the country. People-to-people programs, like the shaliah [emissary] program that brings Israelis here or programs that take people there make the case better than any of the Alan Dershowitzes of the world. But how do you bring that to people here?"

He said he would like to accomplish that goal by giving people "a deeper understanding of the crazy, complex, nuanced Israel that we all love, without necessarily having to get on a plane. And they can take whatever they want from the experience."

Part of the challenge, he said, is to "play offence." Faced with attacks and criticism, "you tend to go into defense mode, and you end up using the language of the far Right in Israel. Playing offense, we can change the image that comes to people's minds when they hear the word ‘Israel.' It doesn't have to be a kid with a rock facing down a tank, or a massive fence." The image that Israel should conjure, he said, is about "making the desert bloom, about people like Golda Meir, about being second only to America in the number of companies listed on NASDAQ."

Born in Israel, and brought up in the United States by Israeli parents who frequently took him back to visit their homeland, Kamil said he feels he brings a particularly apt "hybrid" perspective to the position. A member of Bnai Keshet in Montclair, his most recent job was marketing and communications director for the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey. He worked for a number of years in corporate and nonprofit branding and briefly as the founder of a Jewish television station. Many of these efforts have revolved around building an appreciation for Israel and Judaism.

"I couldn't say ‘no' when this came along," he said. "It's as if it brings together everything I've been trying to achieve. Is this the universe paying me back — or is this an advance payment?"

Kamil's outlook was honed most recently by an experience that immediately preceded his federation position: a two-year stint living in Jerusalem as a Mandel Jerusalem Fellow with his wife and their two daughters. Moved by stories they heard from Ethiopian immigrants there, on their way back to the United States, they stopped in Addis Ababa and adopted a child there, their son Itai (see related articles).

"Living in Israel gave me a less romantic, maybe more sophisticated sense of the country," he said. "It made me like it more. Being there with the family was particularly good. Kids have an amazing life there. Everyone values them so much. Being back here, I miss that for my kids — and you can quote me on that."