Canadian Jewish Congress
Farber was employed by the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) from 1984 until 2011. He was appointed chief executive officer in 2005 and had previously been executive director of the CJC's Ontario section and CJC's National Community Relations Director. He is currently on leave from the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy which absorbed the CJC on July 1, 2011.
Farber was appointed by the Ontario government to serve as a member of the Hate Crimes Community Working Group. He also serves on the city of Vaughan, Ontario's Mayor’s Task Force on Community Safety & Security. Farber is also an associate member of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police.
Farber has contributed articles on the Jewish political scene, human rights issues, the Holocaust, hate crime and white supremacy to newspapers including The Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Toronto Star, and others. He has expressed his own or the CJC's views in newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times. In 1997, Farber was the editor of and wrote portions of From Marches to Modems: A Report on Organized Hate in Metropolitan Toronto, commissioned by the Access and Equity Centre of the municipality of metro Toronto.
Farber appears in the 1994 educational video Who is Peter Iswolsky?, conducting an anti-racism workshop for high school students. The film was co-sponsored by the CJC and the National Congress of Italian Canadians.
Regarding the proposed beatification of Pope Pius XII, Farber has said it is improper to move the process forward until the Holy See's archives from the Second World War are fully released.
Farber, who is not gay, was mocked by columnist Antonia Zerbisias in 2009 for wearing a "Nobody knows I'm gay" t-shirt while marching in Toronto's Pride parade in a protest against the inclusion of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the march after he had said that political groups do not belong in the Pride parade. The t-shirt was sold as a fundraiser by the Jewish LGBTQ group Kulanu at the parade. Zerbisias commented on Farber's decision to himself march as itself being a political act by sardonically writing on her blog, "Imagine my surprise when I saw Bernie Farber identifying himself as queer by joining a pro-Israel gay rights group in the parade." The Canadian Jewish Congress responded by filing a complaint with the Toronto Star against Zerbisias for allegedly "outing" Farber. The Star's public editor, Kathy English, ruled that Zerbisias’ comments “fell short of the Star’s standards of fairness, accuracy and civility,” and promised to rein in journalists who “put the Star in a negative light.”
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