From the streets of Los Angeles to the White House, a Chabad emissary has quietly become the go-to tefillin wrapper for Hollywood stars, hedge fund titans, and tech moguls — one serendipitous encounter at a time.

In an era when antisemitism is surging and Jewish identity is increasingly contested on the global stage, Yossi Farro has chosen an ancient answer: a small black leather box, a set of straps, and a willingness to walk up to anyone.

Farro, a Chabad emissary who once described himself as “an average Chabad guy,” has become something far more unexpected: the de facto celebrity tefillin wrapper of his generation. His roster reads like a collision of Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington — James Franco, Jeremy Piven, Michael Rappaport, Jared Kushner, hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, Palantir co-founder Joseph Lonsdale, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein, influencers Aiden Ross and the Nelk Boys, and nightlife mogul Dave Grutman, among others.

I sat down with Farro at the ADL’s Never Is Now conference — the world’s largest summit on antisemitism and hate — to understand how a young Chabadnik from LA quietly built one of the most unusual outreach operations in modern Jewish life.

Courtesy Aaron Herman

‘It Really Just Flows’

Ask Farro about his methodology and he laughs. “To be honest, it really just flows,” he told me. “I wasn’t like, sitting down with a master plan.”

The origin story........

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