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Ami James is talented, generous, handsome and... Jewish!

You may recognize Ami James as the sharp-tongued, hot- tempered tattoo artist from TLC’s Miami Ink.

I’ll admit I was slightly intimidated when I caught up with James at the new dana hotel and spa—a $60 million dollar, 216-room development at 660 N. State Street in Chicago, for which James was commissioned to design “Do Not Disturb” door hangers for each room—but I quickly discovered that underneath Israeli-born James’s tough, tattooed (and might I add, handsome) exterior, lies a talented artist with a big heart.

James hit it big in 2005 when TLC picked up his idea for a reality show following him and his three best friends as they opened a tattoo shop in Miami. “Like every other show, you shop around until a network picks it up,” James says. “TLC, they wanted to change The Learning Channel to something edgy.” Now in its fourth season, Miami Ink is one of the network’s most highly watched shows, bringing in between five and six million viewers each week and spawning spin-offs, LA Ink and London Ink.

Although the show’s website describes him as “the tough guy you don’t wanna mess with,” James says he is “nothing like [he’s characterized] on the show.”

“It’s really funny how everybody assumes you’re a certain person that’s portrayed on a TV show, but in a TV show you really are portrayed the way the editing room wants to portray you. You have no say,” he says. “I rarely scream at anybody, I never argue, but the show is only 40 minutes out of that whole week and they’ll focus on what they want to focus on.”

He says the network also wanted the show to center on sad stories of meaningful tattoos, and to shy away from the stereotypical image of a tattoo parlor drunks stumble into late at night and get some permanent body art they’ll regret the next morning.

“We’re trying to focus on educating the people and kind of putting a little more thought into the tattoos,” he says. “That’s where the stories evolve from, but we definitely didn’t want to make the whole show point out every sad story, but that’s what the network wanted. In reality, we tell a lot of happy stories, but I think it’s important to have a meaningful tattoo.”

Meaningful, yes, but specifically sentimental, no. He often deters people from getting tattoos of their girlfriends or wives’ names. “You know,” he says, “tattoos last longer than romance.”

James co-owns the tattoo shop with friend and co-star Chris Nuñez; the duo also co-own Love/Hate bar and the DeVille Clothing Company in Miami.

But wait, isn’t a Jew with a tattoo a taboo?

“God didn’t really go, you know guys, tattoos are not good, but piercings, nose jobs, boob jobs, ass jobs—those are all fine,” he says. “It’s really funny how you have all these super Jews running around with tons of plastic surgery at the age of 65 always stopping me and preaching to me that [Jews are] not supposed to get tattoos.”

“We aren’t supposed to desecrate our bodies no matter what, so follow the rules or don’t follow them at all.”

While James does not consider himself a religious Jew, he definitely will never forget where he came from.

Born in Sinai, James and his family moved to Tel Aviv in 1976 when Israel gave Sinai back to Egypt. When he was 12, he moved to Miami with his mom and brother, where he fell in love with tattoos as an art form and got his first one, a dragon, at age 15.

At 17, James returned to Israel to voluntarily join the Israeli Defense Forces. “All my friends I grew up with went into the army and I felt like I was running away from it and I didn’t want to be that guy,” he says. “It turned me into a man, but then you realize, even when you’re 21, you’re not a man yet.”

James says while he will never return to live in Israel full-time, he hopes to one day have a summer home there. “I love Israel,” he says. “I do hope that we’ll compromise one day and be able to live in peace because my whole life I’ve lived pretty much not in peace and I’ve watched how hard it is—I’ve watched friends die, I’ve watched soldiers die in my hands. One day, it’s gotta stop.”

After he got out of the IDF at 21, James came back to the States to become a tattoo artist. “I’ve always been an artist,” he says. “And I found a way to not be a starving artist.”

And if you still can’t embrace the softer side of James, his charity work and love for animals and children should do the trick.

“People do a lot of wrong these days, but kids and animals never do any wrong,” he says. “The two purist forms of heart and love the innocence of both makes me want to make a difference every day.”

James was the face of PETA’s “Ink, not Mink,” campaign and has also worked with Amigos for Kids and the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

“I don’t do it for recognition,” he says. “I really could give a shit if anybody knows. It really makes me feel good at the end of the day.”

In contrast to his love for animals and children, James hates the corporate world, something that drew him to this design project with Chicago’s new dana hotel.

“I like people getting out of the box and doing something different, especially eco-friendly hotels,” he says. “It’s cool to see people get involved in art. So when I was asked to do the “Do Not Disturb” signs for the doors—that would be the last thing I would ever think anybody would ask me to do—so as soon as I got approached to do it I was like, ‘hell yeah I have to do this.’ It’s just something that I really wanted to do.”

You'll find these edgy "Do Not Disturb" signs on your door at the new dana hotel and spa