Avi Strauss earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and studied at Ben-Gurion University in Israel with a strong emphasis on Jewish History, Holocaust, Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. He studied Judaism at Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem and New York. He also volunteered on Kibbutz Kfar HaNassi.

​

He is the proud grandson of loved ones who escaped Nazi Germany and the pogroms of Eastern Europe.