When Rabbi Moishe Meir Lipszyc moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., 36 years ago, he and his wife, Penina Lipszyc, only knew one person in the city. “Many people asked, ‘What are you going down here for? There’s not a Jew here,’” he told JNS.

“The first person told me you’ll never make a minyan ,” a quorum of 10 men for prayer, the Chabad rabbi said. “He became my largest donor.”

There were, in fact, Jewish residents in 1990, the year that the Jewish population in Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale, peaked at approximately 275,000 people, according to the Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities , the Jewish Federation of Broward County and the American Jewish Yearbook . Temple Bat Yam of East Fort Lauderdale, a Reform synagogue, had been there for five years.

Still, i

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