This Chabadnik is on a mission to wrap tefillin for US Jewish celebrities

NEW YORK — Yossi Farro, a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, was walking down a street in Los Angeles in the fall of 2022 when he saw a production company filming a TV show.

He started asking those at the scene if they were Jewish. Farro, 18 at the time, had been wrapping phylacteries for strangers on the street since his bar mitzvah, a common form of Jewish outreach for youths affiliated with Chabad.

“I finally find a Jew in an alleyway, ask him if he wants to do tefillin. He agrees, we do tefillin together, take a picture,” Farro said in an interview, using the Hebrew word for the small black boxes observant Jews bind to their head and arm on weekdays, saying a prayer and fulfilling a commandment from Deuteronomy.

As Farro was walking away, the man asked him if he knew who Lil Dicky was.

“He’s like, ‘That’s me,’” Farro said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, cool.’ Walked away, Googled his name, realized he was a famous rapper.”

Farro had opened his first social media accounts earlier that week and posted the photo on Instagram and Twitter. The picture gained some traction in Jewish circles, he said.

The chance encounter marked the first instance of Farro’s mission to put tefillin on Jewish celebrities around the US, an effort he hopes will inspire other Jews to do mitzvahs, or religious commandments. Farro estimates he has put tefillin on thousands of people since his bar mitzvah.

Farro is originally from the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, the home base of the Chabad movement, and was studying at a yeshiva in Los Angeles at the time of the run-in with Lil Dicky. He also studied in yeshivas in New York and Israel, and now serves as an assistant rabbi at the Chabad Russian Center of South Florida, in Miami.

The Lil Dicky incident was only his first chance encounter in the city’s celebrity stomping grounds.

Weeks later, he was on Melrose in Los Angeles when he asked another passerby if they were Jewish and offered to wrap tefillin for him. They said the prayer, snapped a picture and Farro went on his way.

“Someone’s like, ‘Hey, was that James Franco you were speaking to?’” Farro said. “They’re like, ‘He’s a famous actor.’ I’m like, ‘Oh cool,’ Google him, realize he’s a famous dude.”

Weeks later, he wrapped tefillin for actor Jeremy Piven outside a cigar lounge.

He has since met with celebrities including actor Michael Rapaport, Bret Gelman of “Stranger Things,” David Mazouz of the TV show “Gotham,” and online personalities the Nelk Boys and Adin Ross, who each have millions of followers on YouTube and other platforms.

He has also connected with business leaders including billionaire investor Bill Ackman; business leader Scooter Braun; Joe Lonsdale, the head of the defense company Palantir; Gabe Plotkin, majority owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets; and Harley Finkelstein, the president of Shopify.

Several prominent Jews remain on Farro’s tefillin hit list: Mark Zuckerberg, Drake, Sandy Koufax, David Schwimmer, and Mark Cuban.

He has already made the pitch to one of his remaining targets, Larry David. Earlier this month, during a question and answer session at an event in Florida hosted by David, Farro asked David if he had ever wrapped tefillin. The unexpected question drew a laugh from the “Seinfeld” creator, who said he never had and that he would need to think about the amount of money he would need to be paid to do so. Someone in the audience offered $18,000 to David’s favorite charity, and another spectator offered $100,000.

“I thought it was hilarious,” Farro said.

 

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Chabad is known in the Jewish world for its outreach to Jews outside of the community. The movement operates thousands of “Chabad houses” around the world that provide services to Jews in the area, from major cities and college campuses to far-flung locales such as Iceland and Siberia.

The movement also makes savvy use of social media and technology for its Jewish outreach, and Farro documents his efforts on his social media accounts. The media strategy stretches back to Chabad’s late leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who broadcast his lectures on the radio for decades.

Farro reaches the celebrities and business leaders through “a pretty cool network” that he said has “snowballed” throughout his tefillin crusade, and says it helps that he’s “pretty persistent.”

He keeps in touch with some of the celebrities after the deed is done, for example with Rapaport, whom Farro gifted his own set of tefillin. The two have exchanged text messages about prayer since their meeting, he said.

Farro said his most meaningful encounter was with Ackman, the billionaire investor who has become a leading critic of campus antisemitism since the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught on Israel. He reached Ackman through his network.

“I pulled some strings, had some people reach out, and in short, he DM’d me on Twitter, wrote, ‘OK, I am in,’” Farro said. They met in Ackman’s office, where the investor wrapped tefillin for the first time in his life. Ackman’s father had passed away earlier that year and Farro told him his father “is looking down from heaven right now and schepping so much naches,” Farro said using the Yiddish words for having great pride.

When he met Braun, the mogul showed Farro the set of tefillin Braun’s grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, had gifted him.

Farro has not wrapped tefillin for women, saying “tefillin’s a special mitzvah for men,” but is planning to begin distributing Shabbat candles to women so they can perform the mitzvah of lighting the candles on Friday nights.

Farro hopes reaching the celebrities, and their large platforms, will “inspire others to follow in their footsteps” to carry out mitzvahs and embrace their Jewish identity.

“It makes me feel good, it makes me feel whole, gives me an extra push in life,” he said. “It just brightens my day.”