Real New Yorkers: Nelson Braff
Nelson Braff Interview: Part 1
Nelson Braff is a well-known hospitality entrepreneur and co-owner of Hunt & Fish Club, an opulent luxury steakhouse located just steps from the center of Times Square.
Nelson is a born and raised New Yorker who grew up in the projects of Coney Island and moved to Canarsie at the age of 14. Both of his parents were civil servants - his father a mailman, and his mother a bookkeeper for the Transit Authority. The old joke about his neighborhood was that even though it was on the beach, nobody wanted to live there because it was a “two-fare zone,” meaning it was so far from Manhattan that you had to take both a train and a bus to get there.
Nelson went to a local Yeshiva, followed by NYC public high school, and then to Brooklyn College and Emory University where he earned a law degree, leading him into successful careers in real estate/law and hospitality.
Between Nelson’s life experience and personality, I quickly learned that he’s one of those people who can talk to anyone about anything. After several interesting conversations with Nelson, I decided to sit down with him and ask him about everything except the hospitality industry.
*Part one of this interview focuses on his experiences in dealing with antisemitism in higher education. The remaining parts of this interview focus on what it was like to own a business in Times Square during the pandemic, tourism, politics, and the importance of first responders.
Jason: I’ve heard that you have some experience in fighting against antisemitism within the education system. Tell me about this part of your life.
Nelson: I never went out looking for this role but it eventually found me. As my career progressed, I became more involved in various charities including Jewish-based charitable organizations. One night, I was at an alumni event for my alma mater and met some students who told me they had just transferred out of Brooklyn College because they were made to feel uncomfortable for being supporters of Israel, which took me by shock. Brooklyn is one of the largest concentrations of Jewish people in America. Jews might be 2% of the population but at the time I believe something like one out of every four people in Brooklyn was Jewish. When I was at Brooklyn College it was approx. 60% Jewish. Nowadays I believe it’s somewhere around 30%. The idea that there was antisemitism happening here was shocking to me. Growing up I knew antisemitism existed but always thought it came from the right and had no idea it could emanate from the left, let alone in education. I was invited to join the board of the Hillel Foundation at Brooklyn College and soon learned that the students who told me this story was merely scratching the surface of antisemitism within higher education.
If Jewish students mentioned they were supportive of Israel, instructors would often grade them more harshly and make them feel uncomfortable in the classroom. I learned that Jewish students were deciding it was better to lie about it and hide their support for Israel to avoid the headaches it came with. Not long after I joined the Hillel Foundation board at Brooklyn College, there was a school-sponsored BDS lecture on a Thursday night at the student center featuring Omar Barghouti (the founder of BDS). In and of itself, it sounds harmless, but the college was nearly 110 years old at the time and had never sponsored any events before. This was the first of its kind and happened to be a one-sided event featuring all pro-BDS speakers. We offered to have Alan Dershowitz as a counter for the discussions but they were not interested. The woman in charge of the event graduated from Berkley in 68 or 69, and then I put together that the President of Brooklyn College at that time was also from the same class.
Four Jewish students attended the lecture and reportedly were thrown out for being disruptive, but it was later revealed that they were simply visibly Jewish students. The college released their names to the press that night as if they had done something wrong, but thankfully they had an audio recording of the event and were able to conclusively prove that they were silent. This event combined with the false narrative showed the world what it was like to be a Jewish kid at Brooklyn College. I urged the kids to file lawsuits, but it all seemed to dissipate once the school year was over and everyone moved on with their lives.
Ultimately, the college issued the students nothing more than an apology and an acknowledgment that the students never acted inappropriately. We had a meeting with the then President of Brooklyn College to discuss the issue of antisemitism. I ended up going on behalf of the board because the whole story bothered me. I wanted to do what was right.
We sat down and the then President of Brooklyn College had the nerve to tell us: “I think we have a communication problem.”
To which I responded: “We do not have a communication problem because I don’t care if we ever speak again. We are here because we have an antisemitism problem, and you are here because you are worried that we are going to inform the Jewish alumni and suggest they take their donations elsewhere.”
Another strange thing during this time was Brooklyn College had pro-Palestine required reading for incoming freshmen. Many Jewish students found it upsetting, only to later find out that pro-Palestine / anti-Israel events were also being held in person on campus. All of these things combined made it easy to see that the release of the kids’ names was likely not an accident.
If I’m the parent of a kid, I expect the administration to protect my kids, but apparently, the Brooklyn College administration is who these kids needed protection from.
A friend of mine got the Daily News to do a story about antisemitism at Brooklyn College, he also got Andrew Cuomo to hire a law firm that then went on to find rampant antisemitism in CUNY (and a little less in SUNY). Cuomo then forced schools to implement policy to correct course or risk the loss of state funding. Breitbart assigned reporters to unearth more stories about antisemitism in education, and that’s when it all started to come out of the shadows. It should be lost on nobody that rather than universities across the country do their job and teach students to distinguish between extremism and hate speech as opposed to legitimate, thoughtful, policy criticism. Universities are instead betraying that mission by supporting antisemitic campaigns that make students feel unsafe.
Fast forward to recent years and I hosted an event for an organization called “Stand With Us” that combats antisemitism across the country. They asked me to briefly speak that night and someone asked me: “Is antisemitism on the rise in America or just more out in the open?” I didn’t know, but it’s probably both.
One thing that seemingly came forth during the Trump presidency was that racists became quite comfortable showing their prejudice. Some of that prejudice (from the right and the left) that came forward was targeted at Jews.
Frankly, If you’re gonna hate me I’d rather know about it.
My activism in this space stems from these experiences, and eventually, I became the president of the Hillel Foundation at Brooklyn College. My wife, this spring, has organized a fundraising event in conjunction with JNF’s Caravan for Democracy which is an organization that brings non-Jewish college students, faculty, and administrators to Israel so that they can see for themselves and not have to rely on the misinformation, agenda-driven, antisemitic leanings that they’re being fed. We collectively need to do more than just complain.
Jason: Maybe antisemitism is becoming normalized in America but not through giant notable events. Maybe it’s more akin to slowly walking from one end of a football field to the other end and taking one small step each day.
Nelson: Yes. Antisemitism can become normalized by a million little events that may or may not be noteworthy without ever having a full-scale tragedy. A friend of mine’s father (himself an academic) once told me that he believed America’s full-fledged support for Israel stopped when Israel won its wars in 1967 & 1972.
When Israel stopped being solely dependent on the United States and was no longer perceived as a victim, that was when support for Israel began to erode, especially within the ranks of academia.
Things happened back when I was in school in the 1970s, and I did notice things I believed were antisemitic in the 1980s, but I didn’t think it was adding up to a real change of tide. 50 years later, I now know I was wrong. These were the signs of a real shift, but it was just so slow that most people didn’t notice.
I also find modern victimhood culture very confusing, as they seem to have space for every group except for Jews, even in the face of rising hate crimes against Jewish people.
Everyone rightly says victims have to be believed… but apparently, that means everyone except Jews. If any one member of the protected classes says they’re offended, there is enormous pressure within modern society to both believe and support them. But if a Jew says they’re offended, we just get explanations as to why we shouldn’t be offended.
I don’t identify as a victim, I never did. I never will. But in America today, every group is seemingly fighting for their place on the victimhood totem pole, and this totem pole doesn’t seem to have a space reserved for Jews.
_______________
To be continued…