January is Florida Jewish History Month, as designated by then-Governor Jeb Bush in 2003. While there have been Jews in Florida since the earliest Spanish explorers and conquistadors began coming to this part of the world in the early 1500s, Jews were not openly welcomed in the state for centuries and it wasn’t until the late 1950s that the first Jewish residents of Collier County were recorded.
We meet southwest Florida resident Marina Berkovich. She’s a native of Kiev, Ukraine, who fled the Soviet Union and Communism with her mother at the age of 18.
Trained as a CPA, Ms. Berkovich was chief financial officer of a New York City-based hotel and property management company before she began teaming up with her husband Alex Goldstein, a renowned Russian-American cinematic composer, to make documentary films -- many of which help tell the story of Jewish people who made, and make, a positive impact on life in Southwest Florida. Ms. Berkovich is an oral visual history interviewer for the Holocaust Museum of Southwest Florida.
She and her husband moved here from New York in 2004, and in 2010 helped found the nonprofit Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida, where she remains president. We sit down with her to hear her thoughts on the world today — including Russia's war against Ukraine, and the Hamas attack on Israel and what has unfolded since — as well as the work they do at the Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida.
They are hosting their 2024 Annual Florida Jewish History Month Celebration on Wednesday, January 24 from 2-4:00pm at the Nina Iser Jewish Cultural Center on Pine Ridge Road in Naples.
Click here to watch some of the documentary work she and her husband have done for the Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida.
Click here to listen to her interview on this show in 2014.
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