Publisher's Synopsis
Since 1763 the Jewish experience in Florida has been a mosaic of traditions from one heritage pieced together with the culture of another. This work, the catalogue of a statewide travelling exihibit that documents that history, traces Jewish roots in Florida from the arrival of the Sephardic Jews, whose ancestors had been expelled from Spain in 1492, to the present.;With photographs, memories and treasured family items, "Mosaic" seeks to place Florida Jews in the context of southern history, debunking myths about southern Jews and redefining their role in the development of the state. It describes their immigration routes from Europe, Latin America, Cuba and the Caribbean, and portrays their lives and activities as farmers, fishermen, politicians, and professional people from Pensacola to Jacksonville to Key West.;The colour and black-and-white photographs depict such items as a personal-sized Torah that was smuggled out of Russia in 1887, a stained-glass memorial made by the wife of a Holocaust survivor, a garlic amulet to ward off evil spirits, a passport from immigrants who fled Castro's Cuba, and a watch with Hebrew letters that was owned by a man born in Jacksonville in 1857.
