Fighting Forward:Yuval David on Jewish Joy, Allyship and Refusing to Be Silenced

Newly named to The Jerusalem Post’s 25 ViZionaries, the Emmy Award–winning actor and filmmaker turned full-time advocate on why the Jewish people have always answered hatred with joy — and why the fight belongs to today’s teenagers as much as anyone.

There are pro-Israel voices, and then there are the rare few you actually believe. Yuval David is one of the believable ones. Watch him for five minutes — on a news panel, at a rally, in the comment-section trenches — and the thing that comes through is not talking points. It’s conviction. “I’m glad you can sense the BS,” he says with a laugh when I tell him as much. “I can as well. In fact, I now call it out professionally.”

Courtesy  Aaron Herman

The wider Jewish world has taken notice. The Jerusalem Post and Jewish National Fund-USA recently named Yuval one of their 25 ViZionaries — the annual roster of the most influential young Zionists making their mark in Israel advocacy, Jewish life and beyond. “Proudly Jewish. Proudly Zionist. And deeply grateful,” he wrote of the honor. For David, though, the label reads less like a title than a set of marching orders.

Calling it out is, these days, close to a full-time job. Yuval is a celebrated actor, host and filmmaker — an Emmy winner with more than 100 international film festival awards to his name — whose creative mantra is simply “to entertain, uplift and inspire.” His most recent documentary, Wonderfully Made – LGBTQ+R(eligion), has swept the festival circuit, and his acting credits stretch across Feud, Madam Secretary and The Plot Against America. But since October 7, the storyteller has become something else entirely.

“October 7th absolutely changed my world,” he tells me. “I became much more of a professional Jew than ever before — a full-time Jew, whether it’s in media, in government affairs, or just walking down the street.” The reason, he says, is refusal. “I refuse to let anybody’s hate silence me. I refuse to let anybody’s discomfort with who I am stop me. That bothers people. But it also empowers other people who want to live the same way.”

“A theme within Jewish life is resilience, is determination — not fighting back, but fighting forward.”

— Yuval David

Values Before Identity

Ask Yuval what anchors him and he doesn’t start with identity — he starts with values. “If you truly focus on your values, the things you wish for your family, your community, your people, your nation — then you always stay on the right side of things,” he says. “But if your values aim to exclude, to erase, to censor or to kill somebody else, then you’re absolutely on the wrong side.”

It’s why he can describe himself, without contradiction, as a proud Jew and a proud citizen of two democracies. “The United States and Israel — two places where we can absolutely disagree, but we all have a seat at the table,” he says. “The question is: who has a seat at the table? Not everybody. Not if you wish to kill, erase, censor or exclude someone else.”

Not Just Allies — Friends

Much of Yuval’s energy now goes into coalition-building, an instinct that maps closely onto the work we do at IMPACT reaching across the Christian, Hindu and Muslim communities toward shared goals. One of his newest projects is the Jewish and Indian Alliance, which he co-founded to link “two ancient peoples, two indigenous peoples.” He points out that one of the oldest words in Jewish tradition for another nation is Hodu — the Hebrew name for India. “This alliance empowers both communities from a place of self and community celebration,” he says, “from collaboration and not just allyship, but friendship.”

He does the same with African communities and with political groups across the U.S. and Canada. The common adversary, he says, is “the Islamist and jihadist agenda — whether political Islamism or violent terror jihadism.” But a shared enemy is never the whole story. “We don’t only join in allyship because we have a shared enemy. We join because we have shared promise, shared hopefulness and optimism.”

‘The Leaders of Today’

When the conversation turns to high schoolers — the ones telling us they feel overwhelmed and outnumbered in the TikTok feed — Yuval’s message sharpens. Jewish and Zionist teens, he says, are facing an ever-rising tide of anti-Jewish hatred, “especially when it’s masked as anti-Zionism or anti-Israel.” His advice flips the usual cliche on its head.

“You are not the leaders of tomorrow. You’re the leaders of today.”

— Yuval David

“What you do today, facing the hardship and moving forward, is going to change all of our worlds,” he says. “You are just as important as all of us. When you have challenges, reach out. Remind the people older than you, younger than you, beside you, that they’re here for you — and that you represent them just as much as they represent you.”

The Joy of Life

If there’s one word that can sound like a cliche but sits at the center of everything Yuval believes, it’s joy. He reaches for the Hebrew: simchat chayim, the joy of life. “As long as we have life, we must find our joy,” he says. The Jewish people, he notes, have had every reason to define themselves by their persecution. “We’ve been occupied, exiled, dispersed. There have been real genocides against us. Yet that is not what defines us. What defines the Jewish people is our joy, our faith, our peoplehood.”

“We are Am Yisrael, the nation of Israel,” he continues. “We survived then, we’ll survive now. And one of the ways we do it is by always leaning on the joy — creating it, sharing it, experiencing it.” It’s a conviction that rhymes with something we say often at IMPACT: fear is loud, but joy is louder.

‘We Too Are the Algorithm’

Yuval is candid about the cost of visibility. “I receive more hate comments across social media than positive ones,” he admits — the product, he says, of coordinated Islamist, Russian, Chinese, Qatari and Turkish campaigns targeting Jewish public figures, activity he’s been briefed on by outside organizations and the FBI. Their advice was practical: get friendly accounts to engage. “Haters share content of people like me, and their friends assume they must be haters too, so they engage more and more — and that builds the wrong audience.”

The remedy, he argues, is in our own hands. “We need to remember that we too are the algorithm,” he says. “If we want to change social media, we have to support each other, amplify each other, share the positive messages. That’s movement-building 101.”

For all the hate he absorbs, David keeps circling back to the same place. The persecution, he insists, was never the point. “The challenges further define our joys, and the joys further define the challenges,” he says. “But we always focus on the joy — creating it, sharing it, experiencing it.”

“We are Am Yisrael, the nation of Israel. We survived then, we’ll survive now.”

— Yuval David

It is, in the end, less a strategy than an inheritance — a way of meeting the world that predates the news cycle by a few thousand years. “I’ve become a much more intense person,” he says, “where I’ve embraced my intensity as an American-Israeli, as a Jew, as a defender of democracy.” And he wants that intensity to be contagious. Whatever anyone takes from watching him, he says, gratitude isn’t it.

“So don’t ever thank me for what I do. Join me.”

— Yuval David

It’s a fitting creed for someone the Jerusalem Post has just counted among the movement’s rising leaders. Ask Yuval what Zionism actually means to him and he doesn’t reach for politics. “Hope, life, connection and building,” he says — “loving our people, celebrating our history and homeland, strengthening Israel, building bridges, telling our stories, and helping the next generation stand taller.” There is, he insists, so much still to celebrate, so much to build, and so much good ahead. He signs off the way he seems to live — as a kind of standing instruction to the rest of us.

“Live proudly. Speak boldly. Fight forward.”

— Yuval David