Zooming through Southwest Florida Jewish History

Marina Berkovich, JHSSWF President

I hope your 5781 started well and will continually bring you mazel, great health, plentitude and, of course, love from your loved ones. We all need it always and, excepting harsher times in Jewish history, perhaps never more urgently than now.

Over the past several months, you, us and the community around us, did our very best to stay together and combat the challenges life brought to our doors. We thank you for being a fighter, a pioneer in these unchartered times of human suffering. It is with small steps of individual courage that history records are written. We are glad you take them every day.

During the summer, Jewish Historical Society Southwest Florida (JHSSWF) Zoominars covered Jewish history of our area’s relatively new Jewish life, and even explored the speculative possibilities of some Jewish presence dating all the way back to the 16th century.

How very lucky we are to live in the Jewish century of Southwest Florida, which the 21st century has become. The community is growing, services expanding; cultural and religious life offers an incredible range of options to old-timers and newcomers alike. None of that existed just one lifespan back.

For our fall Zoom series, leading into the long anticipated, COVID19-delayed 10th Anniversary Celebration with four-time Naples Mayor Bill Barnett, we will be Zooming JHSSWF’s original production, the Telly Award-winning documentary film series “Southwest Florida Jewish Pioneers” to our members and supporters.

In the span of 10 years, we interviewed quite a number of fascinating individuals, whose efforts, skills and determination glued this community together by connecting transplants from points north, dreaming big, putting their mouths where their money is and turning the tide from the virtual pre-1972 ban of Jewish residency in Collier County into a thriving and bustling Jewish community, complete with important Jewish agencies, like The Jewish Federation of Greater Naples and five—five!—Jewish congregations, each serving their specific group.

If you have not yet had the opportunity to watch the broadcast-quality films we created from testimonies, please sign up at jhsswf.org to watch weekly, starting Wednesday, Sept. 30 at 3 p.m. and continuing over 10 remaining Wednesdays of 2020, excluding Nov. 4.

We will begin the 2021 Florida Jewish History Month with our 10th Anniversary Celebration with Bill Barnett at the Hilton Naples, on January 7, 2021, starting at 5 p.m. Tickets are available online at Eventbrite and at The Society’s website jhsswf.org.

There are three things we’d like you, the Southwest Florida Jewish Floridian, to experience in the 2020-2021 season—as far as it relates to our mission:

• The joy of learning from those who came before us

• The fun of sharing with those who live among us

• The pride of preserving it for those who will come after us

We are an all-volunteer local organization, supported mostly by the generosity of people like you and grants from JFGN and CFCC. Please continue to invest in us, so that everything that was postponed and delayed by our common fight with COVID-19, can go on as originally planned, or better.

You have given us 10 years of your unwavering support.

Thank you and L’Chaim to the next 10!

BECOME A JHSSWF MEMBER TODAY

Family Membership $54; Individual Membership $36. Please mail checks to: The Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida 8805 Tamiami Trail North, Suite # 255, Naples FL 34108

833-547-7935 (833-JHS-SWFL) www.jhsswf.org • email: office@jhsswf.org

Virtual Museum of SWFL Jewish History http://jewishhistorysouthwestflorida.org/

The Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida Gale is a Schulman section 501(c)3 charitable organization. Contributions are deductible to the fullest Avra Schwab extent allowed by law.