In 2007, Assaf Rappaport was 24 years old and working inside Unit 81, an elite technology division of the Israeli Defense Forces that builds hardware and surveillance tools. For weeks, a friend had repeatedly badgered him about a 19-year-old soldier he was serving alongside, named Yevgeny Dibrov, insisting Rappaport needed to meet him.
“He kept telling me, this guy is being wasted there, you need to talk to him,” Rappaport told Fortune.
Before the two ever spoke, the friend told Rappaport that Dibrov had once won second place in a regional bout of Chidon Tanach, Israel’s national Bible trivia championship—a contest that requires memorizing scripture well enough to answer detailed trivia questions. Dibrov, who was not religious, entered purely to win. “I said, oh my God, this guy can probably do everything,” Rappaport recalled thinking.
Soon after, the two men spoke on the phone, one of them a teenager, the other already a rising figure inside Israeli military intelligence. They talked about Dibrov’s work, his dreams and aspirations, and whether he was in the right military unit. “By the end of that conversation, I knew I wanted him to be part of my unit,” Rappaport said. It wasn’t until Dibrov joined Rappaport’s command that the two men met face-to-face.
