Fighting Back, Together: A Night with Shurat HaDin's Young Professionals Community

Looking for a place that's a community, a home, but above all — meaningful? If you're Israeli, I'm guessing most of you served in the army. And if you're a new immigrant, you probably have a real soft spot for our soldiers.

Unfortunately, there are bad actors out there who just want to hunt us down. As the Passover Haggadah puts it: "In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us" — and for a long time now, that hasn't just meant violence. It's also legal warfare. Plenty of people try to organize and sue our soldiers abroad, hound them, and get them arrested — simply for having served their country.

That's exactly why Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center) was founded: an organization whose whole mission is to fight back — lawsuits, legal warfare, and exposing the people working behind the scenes to harm Israel and its soldiers. And recently, on top of its legal work, the organization launched a community called Young Professionals — a networking community for English-speaking young adults, new immigrants and diaspora Jews, built to connect young professionals around a shared identification with Israel.

Yesterday (September 1st) was the community's second meetup, and I got to join. This time it happened at Cinema City Glilot, at an evening called "Behind the Camera," with a very special guest.

The food was fit for royalty, everything looked polished down to the last detail — but what matters most is always the people. We were all chattering away like a bunch of hens, catching up, meeting new faces, and I genuinely got to meet some wonderful people. That's exactly the point of a good networking night: not just sitting and listening, but walking out with a few new phone numbers in hand.

On top of that, we got to meet up close with actor Daniel Yaakov Zada, who plays "Eli" in Fauda. He's tough and intimidating on screen, but in real life he's genuinely warm and lovely. He spoke to us in English about his life, his path to the role, his thoughts and feelings from filming, and even gave us a small taste of Fauda's fifth season, before anyone else in the country had heard about it.

After the talk, we got a private screening of the film "The Odyssey" — a really special film, exactly the kind of treat that makes an evening feel like a real event and not just another networking meetup.

To sum it up, it's clear real effort went into this, and the whole point is to come together as a strong, united group — to fight back against those who hate us, legally and otherwise. Enough being suckers. Am Yisrael Chai.