Jewish Life and Death in Daugavpils, Latvia
Samantha G.
Gary R. Gerson Undergraduate Scholar, Spring 2022.
Receiving the Gerson Scholarship through UF Jewish Studies was a privilege and an honor. It enabled me to spend a semester in Daugavpils, a city in Latvia close to Lithuania and Belarus that one had a large Jewish population. Latvia’s Jewish history is complex; besides information on the Holocaust, there is little online information on modern Jewish life and culture there.
The Lost Jews of Suriname: Archaeology at Cassipora Creek and Jodensavanne
Simon Goldstone
PhD Candidate, Anthropology (Kugelmass)
Gary Gerson Graduate Scholar, 2020.
Not far from Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, in an overgrown section of jungle lie the remains of an unlikely community: a 17th-century settlement established by Sephardic Crypto-Jews. Forced to convert and live as Christians in Iberia during the Inquisition, these migrants came to the Caribbean seeking to reassert their Jewish religious and cultural heritage, which they had been practicing in secret for generations.
My Year in Paris
Kristin Soulliere
Gary R. Gerson Undergraduate Scholar
I am incredibly honored and grateful to have been supported in my studies this past year by the Gary R. Gerson Scholarship and the UF Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies. With this support, I was able to travel inside and outside of France, work on the ground in Paris on my research, and dedicate time to projects that I intend to pursue in my graduate work in French-Jewish Studies at UF.
Studying Gravetones in an Iraqi-Jewish Cemetery
Alexander Slotkin
Gary R. Gerson Graduate Scholar, Summer 2022
Although cemeteries are important in many Jewish communities, gravestones in particular have served as important visual and linguistic texts for many Jewish communities by ensuring that memories of loved ones are preserved over time l’dor v’dor (“from generation to generation”), and that they remain tied to a particular place.