SARASOTA – Exiled from her home country, Sabrina Silverberg and her family found refuge in the U.S. after escaping persecution.
Now she’s sharing her story of survival at the Temple Emanu-El Shabbat dinner to celebrate Sephardic Jews.
Director of Education at the Temple Emanu-El Sabrina Silverberg was just five years old when she had to escape from her home.
“Seventy plus member of our extended family at one point or another had to leave Egypt because of persecution for being Jewish,” she says.
Saturday night Shabbat service at the Temple Emanu-El celebrated the Sephardic Jewish Community.
Serphadic Jews are minority groups that are originally from Spain and Portugal. Rabbi Brenner Glickman says they escaped from the Iberian Peninsula after the inquisition of 1492.
“Before the state of Israel was established in 1948 there were 800-900 thousand Jews living in Arab lands. In the 1950s and 1960s they were so persecuted that almost all of them fled primarily to Israel but a lot to France the United States as well,” says Rabbi Glickman
Silverberg has been sharing her story across the Suncoast hoping to inspire someone’s lives. “I really cherish these opportunities to speak about Sephardic cause I call it a neglected theme,” she says
Silverberg says the differences in Sephardic culture is what makes this Jewish community unique.
“The Sephardic Jews have different customs, ceremonies although we all ascribe to the same religion we all celebrate the same holidays we have the same life cycle events but culturally we are different,” says Silverberg.
As Education Director at the temple she hopes that people continue to educate themselves on Sephardic Jewish history as she’s not alone.
“My story is not unique it’s the story of every Jew that was born perhaps grew in an Arab country and what happened to them,” says Silverberg.
