Shimon Farkas

Shimon Farkas is a Hungarian cantor, singer, and performer living in Australia. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2008.

Farkas and his mother immigrated to the United States in the fall of 1961, after his father's death. They lived in the Borough Park neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. For his musical training, he studied privately under Moshe Kusevitsky and was appointed lead soloist in Kusevitsky's choir.

Cantorial career Farkas was first posted as cantor at the Orthodox Shaarei Shomayim synagogue in 1967 for the High Holidays in Windsor, Ontario.

Farkas led High Holiday services for an Orthodox congregation in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1969 and 1970. During that time, while attending Yeshiva University in New York, he enrolled as an exchange student at Bar Ilan University in Israel, and studied under Cantor David Bagley. In Israel, he met Veronica Weisz, who was studying at Machon Gold in Jerusalem. The two were married and relocated to her hometown in Sydney, Australia.

Farkas has built up a notable repertoire over the course of his career, singing in seven languages, and including Broadway favorites. He performs primarily between the United States, Israel, Europe and Australia. He has appeared with Marvin Hamlisch, conducting the Calgary Symphony Orchestra and the Sydney International Orchestra when Farkas produced a concert in 2008, titled "From Broadway to Jerusalem" at the same synagogue where he served as cantor for decades, The Central Synagogue of Sydney. In the following years, Farkas and his son, Dov produced a series of gala concerts in Melbourne and Sydney called "Symphony for the Soul: A Salute to Israel," with Mordechai Sobol as conductor. In 2008, Dov was appointed Chief Cantor of the Caulfield Hebrew Congregation in Melbourne, Australia. Chaim Farkas serves as President of the Ichud Shivat Tzion congregation in Tel Aviv, and leads occasional services at Ichud Shivat Tzion.

Eden Shifroni, Farkas's granddaughter, is a soprano with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and grew up watching her grandfather sing as the chazzan at Sydney’s Central Synagogue. Shifroni won the 2024 IFAC Handa Australian Singing Competition Finals, accompanied by the Opera Australia Orchestra. She also received a Ryman Healthcare Opera Scholarship with Melba Opera Trust, where students are coached in multiple languages.

Participation In The March of the Living Frank Lowy at the 2013 March of the Living in Auschwitz-Birkenau in front of the cattle car he donated in memory of his father, Hugo.

Farkas has participated numerous times in the March of the Living in Auschwitz-Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance Day. At the March of the Living, he chanted the El Malei Rachamim, the traditional Jewish memorial prayer, for the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. With his two sons, Dov & Chaim, they performed Szól a Kakas Már, a Hungarian Jewish folk song composed by the Rabbi of Kalev (1751– 1821), expressing a deep yearning for the redemption of the Jewish people and their return to the land of Israel. Farkas has contributed significantly to the International March of the Living by raising funds to support more student participation.