On Parshat Pinchas:

When Moshe finds out he’s not going to be let into the Promised Land, his first move is to appoint successors. A real leader invests in grooming the next generation and knows when to pass the torch.

On serving in the IDF:

It was foundational for me: I wanted to really understand the culture and saw the army as integral to Aliyah. As a researcher in the Behavioral Science/Social Diagnostic Unit (ממד״ה – מכון מדעי החברה), I got to study the psychology of life-and-death combat decisions.

On the power within:

I was Natan Sharansky’s research assistant for his last book and we became close. He said at my wedding: “With your parents’ help, you broke through the Iron Curtain. And with the sheer force of your own will and stubbornness, you broke through the Golden Curtain.”

On bearing witness:

In 2007, I went to Syria. I met a young lady from Dubai who helped me meet the last Jewish woman of Damascus. As we walked past boarded-up old buildings in Al Amin, the old Jewish quarter, we finally found her—a frail, hunched over woman in her 90s, hanging laundry in her tiny yard. My friend told her in Arabic that a young American tourist wanted to meet her. The woman turned away. I asked my friend to tell her I am Jewish, too, and wanted to know if she was okay. She muttered “inshallah” (G-d willing) and scurried back quickly into her house.

Who makes me laugh?

Dave Chapelle, Ali Wong, Balki Bartokomous, and Shayna B!

Diana File holds a BA in Psychology from Yale University and an MA in Psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the CEO of DF Analytics & Consulting, a data-driven research, project management, and organizational improvement firm that puts hard numbers to soft guesses about human behavior for dozens of global corporations. After college, Diana made aliyah and spent 10 years in Israel, where she served in the IDF. Diana now lives in Teaneck, NJ with her husband, two rambunctious boys (Sha’anan, age 5, and Liam, age 1), and a fluffy white dog named July. Diana can be reached at [email protected].

Photos and interview by David Beyda www.davidbeyda.com 

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