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Draft:Yossi Farro

Jewish ritual social media influencer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yossi Farro is an American member of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement known for approaching Jewish public figures and inviting them to put on tefillin. His outreach, which he documents on social media, has included actors, entertainers, investors and technology executives.[1][2]

Farro grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and began approaching Jewish strangers to offer them tefillin after his bar mitzvah. While studying at a yeshiva in Los Angeles in 2022, he encountered rapper Lil Dicky near a television production and invited him to put on tefillin without knowing who he was. Weeks later, he encountered James Franco on Melrose Avenue and later approached actor Jeremy Piven outside a cigar lounge. Farro subsequently began deliberately seeking encounters with Jewish public figures.[1][2] He later studied at yeshivas in New York and Israel and, by 2024, was serving as an assistant rabbi at the Chabad Russian Center of South Florida in Miami.[1]

Among those Farro has approached for tefillin are actors Michael Rapaport and Bret Gelman, investor Bill Ackman, music executive Scooter Braun, entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, investor Gabe Plotkin and Shopify president Harley Finkelstein.[1] Farro met Ackman at his office in 2024, where Ackman put on tefillin for the first time.[1]

In 2026, Farro attended events surrounding the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, where his outreach included Braun, Daniel Lubetzky and venture capitalist Mark Suster. He also met Alexis Ohanian outside a Beverly Hills hotel and traveled to San Francisco to meet Lonsdale.[3] Later that year, he met Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce, during the company's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco and discussed Benioff's practice of putting on tefillin.[4]

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