NEW YORK — Yossi Farro, a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, was walking around Los Angeles in the fall of 2022 when he came across the set of a television show.
He asked around him if there were any Jews. Then aged just 18, Farro had gotten into the habit, since his bar mitzvahto pose the speech bubbles to complete strangers in the street, a practice of raising awareness of Judaism rather common among young people affiliated with the Chabad movement.
“I ended up finding a Jew, I asked him if he wanted to wear tefillin. He accepts, we put the tefillin together and we take a photo,” Farro explains in an interview, using the Hebrew word for these small black boxes that observant Jews wear on their heads and arms during the week. , to pray and at the same time fulfill one of the commandments of Deuteronomy.
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As Farro was leaving, the man asked him if he knew who Lil Dicky was.
“He told me, ‘It’s me,’” Farro recalls.
“I was like, Oh, cool. I walked away and googled his name and realized he was a famous rapper. »
Yossi Farro (right) with Jewish rapper David Burd, better known as Lil Dicky. (Credit: Courtesy)
Farro had just opened his first social media accounts that week, and he took the opportunity to post the photo on Instagram and Twitter. The image circulated a lot in the Jewish community, he said.
This chance encounter in some way set the tone for Farro’s mission, which consists of putting the tefillin to Jewish celebrities across the United States, in hopes of inspiring other Jews to make mitzvotin other words to respect religious commandments.
Farro believes he put the tefillin to thousands of people since bar mitzvah.
Farro is from Crown Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, birthplace of the Chabad movement. He studied in a yeshiva from Los Angeles when he chanced upon Lil Dicky. He also studied in yeshivot in New York and Israel, and is now the assistant rabbi of the Russian Chabad Center in South Florida, in Miami.
Lil Dicky was his very first chance meeting with one of the local celebrities.
A few weeks later, this time near Melrose, in Los Angeles, he again asked a passerby if he was Jewish and offered to help him put on the tefillin. They pray together, take a photo and go their separate ways.
“Someone calls out to me: ‘Hey, was that James Franco you just talked to? », recalls Farro.
“The guy said to me, ‘He’s a famous actor.’ And I said: Oh cool. By the time I did some research on Google, I actually realized that this guy was famous. »
Yossi Farro (left) after putting tefillin on James Franco. (Credit: Courtesy)
A few weeks later, it was to the actor Jeremy Piven that he put the tefillin in front of a cigar tasting room.
Since then, he has crossed paths with many celebrities, starting with actors Michael Rapaport, Bret Gelman from “Stranger Things”, David Mazouz from the television series “Gotham” or social network personalities like the Nelk Boys or Adin Ross, who each have millions of subscribers on YouTube and other platforms.
He also met business leaders, such as billionaire investor Bill Ackman, business leader Scooter Braun, defense company Palantir CEO Joe Lonsdale, Gabe Plotkin, majority owner of the Charlotte Hornets – an NBA team – or even Harley Finkelstein, the president of Shopify.
He is still missing famous Jews from his list, starting with Mark Zuckerberg, Drake, Sandy Koufax, David Schwimmer and Mark Cuban.
One of his targets – Larry David – has already had his pitch. Recently, during a Q&A session on the sidelines of an event David hosted in Florida, Farro asked him if he had ever put the tefillin. The unexpected question made the creator of “Seinfeld” laugh, who admitted never having done it but said he was ready to think about it, everything would depend on the amount.
Someone in the audience donated $18,000 to David’s favorite charity, and another donated $100,000.
“I found it hilarious,” says Farro.
Chabad is known throughout the Jewish world for its work on behalf of Jews outside the community. The movement operates thousands of “Chabad houses” around the world that serve local Jews, from major cities and college campuses to far-flung places such as Iceland and Siberia.
He also uses social media and technology to reach Jews. Farro documents his efforts on his social media accounts. The media strategy dates back to the late Chabad leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who broadcast his lectures on the radio for decades.
Farro reaches celebrities and business leaders through a “pretty cool network” that he says has “snowballed” throughout his crusade for tefillin. He specifies that he is “rather perseverant”.
He remains in contact with some celebrities after the deed is done, for example with Rapaport, to whom Farro gave his own tefillin. Since meeting, the two men have exchanged text messages about prayer.
Farro said his most meaningful meeting was with Ackman, the billionaire investor who has become one of the leading critics of anti-Semitism on campus since the pogrom perpetrated by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on October 7, 2023. in southern Israel. He contacted Ackman through his network.
Yossi Farro(left) after putting tefillin on James Franco. (Credit: Courtesy)
“I pulled some strings, asked some people to contact me, and long story short, he sent me a message on Twitter and said, ‘Okay, I’m in. ‘ »
They met in Ackman’s office, where the investor put tefillin for the first time in his life. Ackman’s father died earlier this year. Farro told him, using Yiddish words, that his father was “looking down from heaven right now and he was very proud.”
When he met Braun, the tycoon showed Farro the tefillin that Braun’s grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, had given him.
Farro n’a pas mis de tefillin to women, believing that “tefillin is a special mitzvah for men”, but he plans to start distributing Shabbat candles to women so that they can perform the mitzvah to light the candles on Friday evenings.
Farro hopes that reaching out to celebrities and their major platforms will “inspire others to follow in their footsteps” to accomplish the mitzvot and embrace their Jewish identity.
“I feel good, I feel in agreement with myself, it gives me extra momentum in life,” he says.
“It brightens my day. »
