Noah Zvi Farkas
In 2013, Rabbi Farkas gave a High Holiday sermon asking us to look around our community and take stock of the overwhelming number of homeless people living on the streets in southern California. A group of us from the synagogue rallied to his call and formed the Valley Beth Shalom Homelessness Task Force. Under the leadership of Rabbi Farkas, we have met with city, county and state legislators to urge them to support legislation that would provide affordable housing to the homeless in the area. Most recently, our congregation, led by Rabbi Farkas and the Task Force, played a significant role in making a historic policy change in Los Angeles County to build more affordable housing for low-income residents. Through his inspiring, loving and humanistic approach to life, Rabbi Farkas has made a difference in the lives of his congregants by helping us understand that we improve our own circumstances by reaching out to the world around us.
— David Polinsky
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
