On a Friday afternoon in northwest Broward County, the traffic thins out where the strip malls end and the horse fences begin. This is Parkland, a town that zoned itself quiet on purpose, and it is here that one of South Florida’s youngest Jewish populations has put down roots. The story of the Jews in Parkland, Florida is not the old Miami Beach story of retirees and condo minyans. It is a story of young families, packed minivans, and a Reform congregation that started with six households around a kitchen table.
The Place
Parkland sits at the far northwestern edge of Broward County, roughly 14 miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale and pressed up against the Boca Raton line to the north and Coral Springs to the south. To the west is the Everglades, which is why the town ends abruptly in canal and sawgrass rather than fading into more sprawl.
It was incorporated on 10 July 1963 by Bruce Blount, a cattle farmer and rancher who became its first mayor. He wanted a park-like town, and he got one. Over Parkland’s first decade, horses literally outnumbered the people who lived there.
The numbers have changed since. From 165 residents in 1970, Parkland grew to 13,835 by 2000, 34,670 by 2020, and an estimated 38,551 by 2025. The median household income now runs north of 200,000 dollars. What did not change was the low-density zoning, the equestrian trails, and the wide green setbacks that still make the place feel more like ranchland than suburb.
How It Became Jewish
Parkland did not have a Jewish community for most of its history. For a town that spent its first thirty years as horse country, there were simply not enough Jewish families to sustain an institution. That changed in the 1990s, and it changed fast.
The families who came down from the Northeast
The Jewish South Florida most people picture was built by retirees. Through the 1960s and 1970s, elderly Jews from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania filled the condominiums of Miami Beach and, later, the developments creeping north into Broward and Palm Beach. By the 2016 community study, Broward County counted roughly 149,000 Jewish residents, about 7.9 percent of the county. The same pattern of affluent, family-driven Jewish settlement shaped towns like Boca Raton just to the north and Delray Beach further up the Palm Beach coast.
Parkland’s wave was different. The people who arrived in the 1990s and 2000s were not retirees. They were young couples in their thirties and forties, many of them transplants from the same Northeast suburbs their grandparents had left a generation earlier, now coming for the schools, the space and the climate rather than for a quiet retirement.
Six families and a Reform idea
The institutional history of Jewish Parkland begins in 1991. That year, six families in Parkland came together with a single goal: to build a Reform synagogue of their own rather than drive to the older congregations elsewhere in Broward.
The founding group was deliberately inclusive from the start. It included a Jew by choice and an interfaith couple, and that openness shaped everything that followed. The first service was held on 7 June 1991 at Country Hills Elementary School, with folding chairs and borrowed space.
The congregation, Kol Tikvah, spent its early years renting. In 1992 it moved into a storefront on Wiles Road in neighbouring Coral Springs, which members renovated themselves. In 1996 it bought six acres on University Drive in Parkland, and in 1997 it joined the Union for Reform Judaism. The permanent building on University Drive was dedicated in January 2008.
Chabad arrives, and the map fills in
As the family population grew, so did the range of Jewish life on offer. Chabad-Lubavitch, which specialises in reaching Jews in places that lack traditional infrastructure, planted itself in Parkland and became a regional anchor.
Today Chabad of Parkland on Loxahatchee Road serves as a regional headquarters for North Broward and South Palm Beach, led by Rabbi Yosef Biston. A second outpost, Chabad of West Parkland, opened to serve the newer gated developments on the town’s western edge. Between the Reform congregation and the Chabad centres, a town that had no Jewish institutions in 1990 had a full calendar of services, Hebrew school and holiday programmes within two decades.
The growth tracked the housing. As master-planned communities like Heron Bay filled with families, the synagogue rolls and Hebrew school enrolments filled alongside them. Jewish Parkland is, in a real sense, a community built one new subdivision at a time.
The Landmarks
Congregation Kol Tikvah, 6750 North University Drive. The town’s founding Jewish institution, a Reform congregation born in 1991 from six families meeting in an elementary school. Its dedicated building on University Drive, opened in 2008, anchors Jewish Parkland and runs the religious school that many local families pass through.
Chabad of Parkland, 7170 Loxahatchee Road. A regional headquarters for Chabad across North Broward and South Palm Beach, led by Rabbi Yosef Biston. It offers Shabbat services, adult education, a Hebrew school and the weekly Kiddush luncheon that turns Saturday morning into a standing social occasion.
Chabad of West Parkland, 7373 NW 113th Avenue. The newer of the two Chabad centres, positioned to reach the gated communities on the town’s western side. Its existence is itself a marker of how far the population spread once the developments west of University Drive opened.
Temple Beth Orr, 2151 Riverside Drive, Coral Springs. Just over the southern line, this long-established Reform congregation has drawn Parkland families for years, its religious school serving children from Parkland, Coral Springs, Coconut Creek and Tamarac alike. The county line is a formality; the congregation is part of the same web of Jewish life.
The Equestrian Center at Temple Park, 8350 Ranch Road. Two riding rings and open pasture, a reminder that the horse town never fully gave way to the suburb. Between April and November it hosts the Parkland Farmers Market, where synagogue families and old ranching neighbours share the same Sunday morning.
Pine Trails Park, 10555 Trails End. The town’s central green, with playing fields, a playground and an amphitheatre that hosts community gatherings. For Parkland’s Jewish families, it is the everyday backdrop of childhood, the place soccer practice and birthday parties happen between Hebrew school and Shabbat.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 5901 NW Pine Island Road. The public high school that serves most of Parkland, named for the writer and Everglades defender. It is where the great majority of the town’s teenagers, Jewish and otherwise, grow up together inside the Broward County Public Schools system.
Where They Came From
The Jews of Parkland are, overwhelmingly, a Northeast diaspora within the American diaspora. The dominant origin points are the suburbs of New York and New Jersey, with Pennsylvania close behind, the same regions that had received Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe four and five generations ago.
What pulled them to Parkland specifically was a combination of things South Florida has long offered and a few that are particular to this town. The climate and the absence of a state income tax brought them to the region, the same forces that drew Jewish families to Aventura’s high-rises and Bal Harbour down on the coast. The top-rated schools, the gated master-planned communities, and the green, low-density character brought them to Parkland rather than to denser parts of Broward.
It is a quieter kind of chain migration than the immigrant ships, but it is chain migration all the same. One family moved down, told friends and relatives, and the relatives followed. The congregations and Chabad centres gave the arriving families a ready-made community, which in turn made the next family’s move easier.
Parkland Today
Jewish Parkland today is a community in its second generation. The children who attended Kol Tikvah’s Hebrew school in the 1990s are now raising their own children here, and the institutions that began in rented storefronts now own land and buildings. It is a settled, family-centred Jewish life rather than a striving immigrant one.
The town carries a grief that the wider world knows. The 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School marked Parkland in a way no community ever wishes to be marked, and the Jewish families here, like all their neighbours, live with that history. The synagogues and Chabad houses were among the places that held the town in the aftermath, and the response was less about any one community than about a town refusing to be defined only by its worst day.
What Parkland remains is a place that chose its own scale. The horse trails are still there. The setbacks are still wide. And the Jewish community that arrived so recently has become a permanent part of the town’s character, threaded through the gated communities and the school carpool lines and the Sunday farmers market, present without ever quite announcing itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a large Jewish community in Parkland, Florida?
Parkland is home to a substantial and growing Jewish community, concentrated in young professional families rather than retirees. While precise town-level counts are not published, the broader Broward County Jewish population was roughly 149,000 as of the 2016 community study, and Parkland’s synagogues and two Chabad centres reflect strong local demand.
What synagogues serve the Jews in Parkland, Florida?
The main congregation in Parkland is Congregation Kol Tikvah, a Reform synagogue on North University Drive founded in 1991. Chabad of Parkland on Loxahatchee Road and Chabad of West Parkland serve the Orthodox and outreach community, and many families also attend Temple Beth Orr just across the line in Coral Springs.
When did Jews start moving to Parkland?
Jewish families began arriving in significant numbers in the 1990s, much later than the retiree-driven Jewish settlement of older South Florida communities. The first Reform congregation, Kol Tikvah, was founded by six families in 1991, marking the real beginning of organised Jewish life in the town.
Where did Parkland’s Jewish families come from?
Most came from the suburbs of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, drawn south by the climate, the schools and the low-density character of the town. They represent a younger, family-oriented migration distinct from the earlier wave of Northeast retirees who settled Miami Beach and inland Broward.
Why did Jewish families choose Parkland specifically?
Parkland offered top-rated public schools, gated master-planned communities such as Heron Bay, and strict low-density zoning that preserved a green, equestrian feel. Combined with Florida’s lack of a state income tax and the established Jewish institutions nearby, it became a natural landing spot for young Jewish families.
What is Jewish life in Parkland like today?
Jewish life in Parkland is settled and family-centred, built around Reform and Chabad congregations that offer Hebrew schools, Shabbat services and holiday programmes. The community is now in its second generation, with children who grew up in its synagogues raising families of their own in the same town.
If your family’s story passed through Parkland, or any of the places Jews have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From the suburbs of New York and New Jersey to the horse trails and gated communities of northwest Broward, to wherever you are now.