In 1790, George Washington promised the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island a government that “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Jewish life has flourished in America because in this country, power changes hands peacefully, and from its founding, we have been assured by our elected leaders that our rights and interests would be protected. That democratic inheritance, which we all share regardless of background, deserves our respect most in a season when so many Americans have begun to doubt it.
Angelenos have chosen Nithya Raman to be our next mayor. As a rabbi and the leader of Jewish Federation Los Angeles, I honor their choice and congratulate her. And I welcome the chance to build a new relationship with City Hall, one that can begin with the work the mayor-elect and our community already share.
Homelessness brought the mayor-elect into public life. Before she ran for office, she co-founded the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition. In 2014, as a congregational rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom, I organized our county’s largest faith coalition, and we pressed Los Angeles County to act. I later joined the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Commission, which I went on to chair, as voters approved Measures H and HHH, the largest investments the region had ever made to end homelessness.
We have both spent years trying to build a system that delivers for Angelenos. Yet the data shows where we have failed. This year’s homeless count found 45,194 unhoused people in the City of Los Angeles, and the number living on the street rose almost 8%. The agency whose commission I once chaired now faces critical audits while the city builds a homeless response of its own to replace it.
As chair of the council’s housing and homelessness committee, Raman fought for stronger renter protections and more homes. Our community needs both. Young families, older adults on fixed incomes and the people our agencies serve are being priced out of the neighborhoods where Jewish life in Los Angeles took root.
At the same time, our social safety net is fraying. About 260,000 county residents could lose CalFresh benefits under federal work rules that took effect in June, and the county estimates that as many as 1.5 million could lose Medi-Cal when new requirements begin in January. Contrary to the canard that all Jews are wealthy and powerful, our data shows unequivocally that one-in-three Jewish Angelenos needs a social service intervention. Poverty in our community is often hidden among Holocaust survivors, older adults, refugees from the former Soviet Union and Iran and young families just getting by. Our Federation will invest nearly $9 million in social services for them in the coming year.
I also owe the mayor-elect candor about a fraught moment in Jewish history and what it means for Jews in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County recorded 202 anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2024, the second-highest total in the 44 years the county has kept count. Jews were the targets of 80% of the county’s religiously-motivated crimes. Our Community Security Initiative, which watches over synagogues, schools and community centers every day, will cost our Federation close to $3 million this year. A partner at City Hall makes each of those dollars go further. Many Jewish institutions are now spending 20% of their annual budgets on security walls, guards and cameras so that children can go to school and worshipers can attend services. This is a tax on Jews for exercising the same freedoms as every other American.
We ask the mayor-elect to make three commitments to our safety. First, keep LAPD working closely with our institutions, especially during the holidays and after attacks abroad. Second, direct LAPD to enforce the new Safe Worship Zone Act, which our Federation helped pass, so that no one has to walk through a wall of harassment to reach a synagogue, church or a mosque. Third, when Jews in Los Angeles are attacked, as the past three years leave little doubt we will be, speak quickly and without qualification, and call it antisemitism. And when investigators classify it as such, call it a hate crime.
The mayor-elect has a record here worth acknowledging. She condemned the Oct. 7, 2023 attack early, supported a 2022 council resolution against antisemitism and has affirmed Israel’s right to exist. But we also disagree, and I won’t pretend otherwise. She has called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide. I believe that charge is false and misuses a legal term with a specific meaning. She has called BDS a legitimate form of protest, while her campaign says a boycott of Israel will not be part of her agenda as mayor. I take her at her word, and I will hold her to it. Her words and choices during the campaign stung many in our community and strained our trust. Our Federation and 35 Jewish organizations and congregations will say so in a forthcoming statement. I hope she reads it as I mean this letter, as an invitation to rebuild that trust, and I will do my part to help.
Los Angeles has no foreign policy. Its mayor’s words still speak for the whole city, and Jewish Angelenos have learned that words about Israel rarely stay overseas. They turn up as graffiti on a synagogue wall and as a crowd shouting at its doors. We will listen closely to how our mayor talks about the only Jewish state.
As this new era for our city begins, our Federation and I will engage with the mayor honestly. When we disagree, we will use the opportunity to privately dialogue. When she acts to keep our community safe, we will thank her by name and in public.
Each Shabbat, synagogues across America pray for our country and for the State of Israel, asking God to bless their leaders and inhabitants. The prophet Jeremiah told the exiles in Babylon to seek the welfare of the city where they lived, because in its peace they would find their own. He was speaking to a people far from home, in a place that was not theirs. Los Angeles is ours. We will pray for its welfare, and for its mayor’s, as she leads it.
Rabbi Noah Farkas is President and CEO, Jewish Federation Los Angeles
