A few weeks ago, Michael Broukhim decided that a Torah study gathering for Jewish business leaders wasn’t big enough.
When Yossi Farro, a social media personality known for rapping about Jewish life, suggested bringing a few people together in Los Angeles to study Torah, Broukhim had a different idea.
“No, we have to go big,” he recalled telling her. “Let’s call it Wrap Fest.”
They put the word out and, within a week, about 200 people showed up.
For Broukhim, the gathering was about more than Torah study. It was an attempt to create something he believes is increasingly missing from Jewish life: a place for Jews to come together simply to be Jewish — joyfully, proudly and without having to fight or defend themselves.
“I don’t think a lot of people have those channels, and I think there’s a big yearning for it,” he said.
Broukhim was born in Los Angeles to Iranian parents who fled Iran after the revolution in 1979. He is an entrepreneur, investor and lawyer who first made his mark in digital media.
While still in college, he landed his first major client: Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign, for which he helped build a website and develop its digital media strategy.
After working with political clients, Broukhim returned to Los Angeles, where a chance introduction to celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe opened the door to Hollywood. He and his business partner began working with Zoe and her husband, Roger, and their client list soon expanded to include the Golden Globe Awards and the American Music Awards. Their work focused on websites, digital strategy and media.
Broukhim later turned from working for clients to building his own brands. In 2010, he and his brother, Daniel, along with Katie Ann Rosen, launched FabFitFun, initially as a media company covering beauty, fashion, fitness and wellness. In 2013, they introduced the subscription box that became the company’s signature product. It eventually grew to more than one million members. Broukhim also invested in companies such as SpaceX, Stripe and Hut8.
While Broukhim was building his career, his relationship with Judaism was also beginning to grow. He said meeting his wife in 2017 was a turning point.
“On our first date, she told me she didn’t like her Harvard experience. She was an undergraduate there,” Broukhim said. “I, on the other hand, had graduated a decade earlier and had a great time. I asked her why, and she said it was because of what she encountered in her Middle East course. Her professor was telling the class that the Middle East had once been this very peaceful and calm place until a bunch of European colonialists showed up and created the apartheid state of Israel. It was downhill from there.”
After arguing with the professor over those claims, his future wife eventually left the department and switched to the Divinity School, where she studied comparative religion.
“As we just started dating, all of a sudden I was kind of surrounded by these more Jewish-rooted ideas,” Broukhim said. “That was the beginning, I would say, of the process that followed.”
Until then, Broukhim’s Jewish life had largely centered on Shabbat and the holidays.
“I didn’t grow up close to religion and the core foundational ideas in Judaism,” he said. “To me, it was more about gathering for Shabbat dinner, and I knew I had to go to synagogue on Yom Kippur every year. But I didn’t understand the broader Jewish purpose, the plan, the reason we do all these things, the underlying philosophy and theology behind it.”
After he got married in 2020, Broukhim began studying Torah with rabbis and on his own. That period coincided with a series of personal and professional challenges: his brother was diagnosed with cancer, and Broukhim experienced his first major setback in his business.
“To me, it was almost like a revelation. I was like, I didn’t know that Judaism had this much to offer, so to speak. Before, I was proud to be Jewish, but I didn’t understand how much wisdom there was beneath the surface.”
What began as a personal exploration of Judaism eventually became intertwined with Broukhim’s professional life. Then came Oct. 7, which deepened his connection to Israel and drew him further into the Jewish community.
The experience that Broukhim had was shared by many Jews after Oct. 7. A term emerged to describe them: “Oct. 8 Jews,” people whose connection to their Jewish identity, Israel or the Jewish community deepened in the aftermath of the attacks. Broukhim, whose own Jewish journey had begun several years earlier, found himself among them. Oct. 7 deepened his connection to Israel and drew him further into the Jewish community.
It was also the first time he experienced antisemitism firsthand when his wife’s social-media posts went viral and his company was targeted online by pro-Palestinian accounts. But the experience did not make him retreat.
“There is even more strength and support that I get than negativity,” he said.
Rather than keeping his Jewish identity separate from his professional life, Broukhim began bringing it with him into his business relationships and the Los Angeles technology community.
“If that inspires people, connects them and unifies them, then I feel very very lucky to be able to do that. I think that’s a blessing.”
That connection between Judaism, Israel and technology eventually became central to his next venture. In January 2026, Broukhim and Israeli investor Lior Prosor launched Deep33 Ventures, a U.S.-Israel deep-tech investment firm focused on areas including artificial intelligence infrastructure, energy, quantum computing, autonomy and robotics. The firm closed its first fund at $200 million in June, exceeding its original $150 million target.
The name of Broukhim’s investment firm reflects the influence of his Jewish learning. He chose “Deep” to signify the firm’s focus on deep technology, while “33” refers to the 33rd day of the Omer, Lag BaOmer, a day deeply connected to the mystical tradition of Judaism and the teachings of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.
“It’s the day the secrets of the universe are revealed through the Zohar, a lot of what we think we’re doing as a firm is to reveal the truth of the world,” he said.
For Broukhim, the name reflects more than a connection to Jewish tradition. It also reflects how he sees the work of the entrepreneurs he backs.
“I think if we’re afraid to do or say the things that are meaningful and important to us, we’re just not going to build the world that we want to see and live in. So, I encourage everyone to take that jump.”
