California is my home. It is where my wife and I have built our lives and where we have chosen to raise our four children. I came to California because this state has more to offer than any other. I have spent my life believing in the golden promise of California – that our state can be a beacon of opportunity, justice, and belonging for all people.
I have served my community here – as a rabbi, as a county commissioner, and now as the head of the Jewish Federation Los Angeles, the central organization of our Jewish community. But today, I have to admit: many Jewish families feel that golden promise is broken for us. We no longer feel at home here.
We are angry. We are afraid. And we are at a defining moment in our relationship with the state of California.
That’s why the fight to pass AB 715, a bill which would help prevent antisemitism in California’s public schools, matters so much. This legislation is a test – not only of whether our government will protect Jewish children, but of whether California still believes in equal dignity and opportunity for all.
The state’s leaders now face a choice: will they act in partnership with the Jewish community to ensure that our kids are safe and included, or will they leave us to fend for ourselves in an increasingly hostile climate?
I have seen this state at its best. As a leader of a massive housing coalition, we brought together people from all races and religions to address critical shortages in affordable housing and homeless services. We rallied together in the face of tragedies like mass shootings and wildfires. Our diversity is our strength in California, and I’ve seen how California can live up to its ideals. The Californian promise is the American dream made manifest, but maybe not for us. Maybe not anymore.
In recent years, Jewish parents have watched with growing alarm as antisemitism has spread from the internet into our neighborhoods, schools, and public spaces. This is not an abstraction. It’s our kids being targeted in classrooms. It’s hateful graffiti scrawled on the walls of our synagogues and small businesses. It’s our children feeling isolated, unsafe, and unwelcome in their classrooms.
Antisemitism is not new – not to California, and certainly not to the United States. It has grown consistently for the last decade. But since October 7, antisemitic hate surged dramatically including harassment, and violence. I know that the war in Gaza has intensified passions and polarization — but let’s be clear: AB 715 is not about foreign policy, it’s about whether Jewish Californians are safe in our own communities. It’s about whether our children have the same opportunities as yours to learn and thrive and succeed — in school and in life.
Some will say this is just a “Jewish problem.” We’re not a huge population, there are other bigger problems Californians face. These ideas are wrong. When we allow the intimidation or exclusion of one group, it frays the civic fabric that holds all of us together. History has shown over and over again – tolerance of intolerance, exclusion masquerading as inclusion, and deprivation hiding as liberation are the tools of illiberalism that turn well meaning democracies into authoritarian autocracies. The same hate that Jewish students face today will threaten other children tomorrow — kids of every race, faith, and background.
The push for AB 715 for the Jewish community is more than a policy debate. It is a relational crossroads. Our trust in California’s golden promise — the belief that our government will stand up for us as we have stood up for others – hangs in the balance.
AB 715 is an opportunity for California to show that it sees us, hears us, and will stand with us. It is an opportunity to demonstrate that Jewish families are not outsiders in our own state, but an integral part of its story and its future.
The decision lawmakers make now will echo far beyond this legislative session. It will tell Jewish Californians, and all Californians, whether this state wants to keep its promise and be a place where everyone can belong.
Rabbi Noah Farkas is president & CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles