How A Palestinian Internet Star and Israeli Mormon Jew Found Love Online
Image by youtube
There is no reason that Nuseir Yassin and Alyne Tamir should be dating.
He is Palestinian. She’s Israeli. He’s Muslim, she comes from Jewish and Mormon traditions. He is two years younger than her. When they met, her divorce was barely finalized. She’s a vegetarian. He loves to eat meat.
And yet.
Yassin, an internet sensation who runs the Facebook and YouTube page “Nas Daily”, announced his relationship earlier today with a video that he said he hoped would address worries that “a million people” share about their significant others: that “they’re not the right age, religion, race, or country.”
Last year Yassin, a graduate of Harvard who hails from the Galilee, quit his engineering job in New York City and began traveling the world posting daily, one minute-long videos of himself living “the best possible life”.
Yassin decided to make drastic changes in his life when he realized how much of it was over. “The average life expectancy for a man is 76 years old,” he says in one video. “I am 25, so I am 32% done with life, and I want to fill the remaining 68% of my life with people.”
Now he has filled it with Tamir, an Israeli-American who introduced herself to him online after watching his “Day 58” video about Jerusalem (today’s dating announcement video was Day 445). According to Yassin, she wrote to him, “Cool video. I like Jerusalem too. We should be friends.”
Yassin and Tamir’s joint video has garnered over 50,000 responses from Nas Daily’s 1.6 million followers, many recounting the joys and difficulties of their non-traditional relationships.
Yassin thanked his followers for a response he called “borderline scary but heartwarming.”
Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny.
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