Melissa Glazer is Executive Director at Teach Florida
Last week, a Jewish man was stabbed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for the crime of wearing a kippah. One detail should stop every one of us cold. He was in the process of moving his family from New York to Florida.
He is not alone. Jewish families are leaving cities they have lived in for generations and coming to Florida in remarkable numbers, and safety is only part of the reason. The other part is quieter and just as powerful: the chance to give their children a Jewish education without being crushed by the cost of it.
In much of the Uniited States, a full Jewish education is a luxury. Day school and yeshiva tuition in places like New York and New Jersey can rival a college bill, and families stretch themselves thin, take on debt, or give up the dream entirely. Florida decided it should not be that way. Here, the state makes every child eligible for a scholarship worth roughly $8,000, so that a Jewish education is within reach of ordinary families and not only the wealthy. For a great many people, that promise is the whole reason they are there. And it did not appear by accident.
Teach Florida fought for it, alongside parents, educators, and community partners, and we are proud to have helped lead that work. But that victory is not safe, even now. A teachers' union has gone to court to have Florida's school choice scholarships declared unconstitutional, a case still working its way through the system that could strip this support from more than a million children. Teach Florida is helping lead the defense.
None of it is guaranteed to last. Antisemitism is rising at both ends of the political spectrum. On one side, ideas that once lived on the fringes now shape mainstream politics in some of America's largest cities. On the other, public figures grow increasingly willing to flirt with extremists who traffic in the oldest hatreds. When the pressure comes from every direction, no political party and no zip code can be taken for granted. And the things that make Florida different, the scholarships that open the schoolhouse door and the tens of millions of dollars the state invests in keeping those schools safe, all depend on who holds office.
That defense begins with using your voice at the ballot box. Florida is home to a thriving Israeli community. Hebrew fills supermarkets and cafés across South Florida, and conversations about the news from home never really end. It's a connection worth celebrating. But Israelis know that safety is never something you inherit. It is something you protect. That lesson should not end at Ben Gurion Airport. It should shape how we engage in the civic life of the place in which you make your home.
Florida holds a closed primary on August 18, decided by remarkably small numbers of voters. If you are a citizen already registered with a party, you are one of the few who will decide it, so use that. And if you are not, the general election in November is still yours to claim, and registering takes only minutes. Either way, the fifteen minutes it takes to vote can do more to shape your family's future than hours spent worrying about the latest headlines.
Teach Florida will keep advocating in Tallahassee, just as we have for years. But there is one responsibility that belongs to every citizen alone. We cannot cast your vote.
Those Jewish families who leave their former homes but do not choose to live in Israel (the best choice by far) keep coming to Florida for both things at once: a place where their children are safe, and a place where they can live as Jews fully and openly, in school and in life. The rest of us have a responsibility to keep it that kind of place. None of it is something we inherit. It is built, protected, and strengthened by the people who choose to show up. In Florida, one of the ways we do that is at the ballot box.