CULTURE CRAWL

The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU
301 Washington Avenue | jmof.fiu.edu
Trolley Stop: Washington Ave & 3rd St
The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU invites you to experience their open galleries this Culture Crawl.

• Operation Moses | On November 19, 1984, Tudor Parfitt, an FIU professor, arrived in Sudan. He had been sent by the London-based Minority Rights Group to investigate reports that the Ethiopian Jews or Beta Israel as they called themselves, were being poisoned by Christian Ethiopians in the refugee camps. The camps had sprung up along the Sudanese-Ethiopian border to provide shelter for starving people fleeing the civil war and the Great Famine of 1983-5, which was a landmark in global humanitarianism. The Ethiopian Jews were known in Ethiopia as Falasha, a pejorative term meaning alien or exile.

• Jews of India | India is known for its antiquity and modern high-tech. Spirituality and Bollywood swagger. Bustling cities and pristine nature. A cultural kaleidoscope that’s the world’s largest democracy. But what’s typically not known is India’s long history as one of the most hospitable homes in the Jewish diaspora. For centuries, its three distinct Jewish communities – the Cochini, Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jews – found a haven in which their traditions flourished. So too, they were among India’s great mystics, starred in the wildly popular film industry, served as mayors in major cities, and produced the country’s greatest military hero as well as its most celebrated English-language poet.

• The Hate Around Us |Hatred is perhaps the oldest of human emotions, forming the basis of much of our recorded history since the biblical story of Cain and Abel. One particularly virulent form of hatred stands out for its uncanny ability to adapt to varying cultures and historical conditions: antisemitism, the hatred of the Jews. Sadly, despite the tremendous, unprecedented freedoms enjoyed by Jews in America, antisemitism has been preserved, and even nurtured among certain circles in American society. Florida’s constitution, written in 1838, protected its citizens’ freedom of religion. However, no constitution can protect people from individual bias, group bigotry or the arrogance of ignorant minds. As numbers of Jews increased in Florida, so did the discriminatory acts against them, especially during times of economic or social crises. The Hate Around Us takes the viewer through over 100 years of antisemitism in Florida through artifacts, photographs, and historical documents, culled from collection of The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU and various private lenders.