A Forgotten Zion in North Florida

In 1816, Moses Elias Levy, a Moroccan-Jewish businessman, set sail for America from London to create an agricultural settlement for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Germany and France in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. Established on a plot of land in Florida, his settlement, named Pilgrimage Plantation, survived legal troubles and an attempt by a local merchant to burn it down, but was eventually destroyed in the Second Seminole War of 1835. The area where the Jewish colony once stood is now in the town of Micanopy, but not a trace of it remains. Brian Zimmerman writes: