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The History of the Jews of South Florida: Antisemitism, Resilience, and Hope (PART TWO)
Congregants attend a service at Congregation B’Nai Israel in Boca Raton, Florida on October 10, 2023. Photo: GREG LOVETT/USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
Part One of this article appeared here.
Miami Beach: Shtetl by the Sea
Despite its reputation for antisemitism in the early 1900s, Jews started coming to Miami Beach hoping to benefit from the prosperity the city had become known for.
In the 1930s, restrictive barriers to Jewish land ownership began to be removed. As a result, large numbers of Jews purchased properties from debt-ridden owners desperate to sell them. The Miami Beach Art Deco buildings of the 1930s and 1940s — many designed, built, and operated by Jews — are architectural treasures.
In 1949, the Florida Legislature passed a law ending discrimination in real estate and hotels, and the Jewish community’s development bloomed. By the 1970s, almost 80 percent of the population of Miami Beach was Jewish!
The Jewish influence on Miami Beach was tremendous. Jews were and are involved politically and in developing the tourist industry. Almost all the museums and arts organizations were started by Jews. Miami Beach has had at least 16 Jewish mayors, including the father and brother of the former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer.
Thanks to its beautiful weather, Miami Beach became a popular Jewish winter vacation spot, earning it the nickname “Shtetl by the Sea.”
Yet, in 1980, Miami Beach began to change, with rising prices and changing demographics. This led many Jews to move north to Broward and Palm Beach counties, and in particular, Boca Raton.
Today, Miami Beach’s Jewish community has been bolstered by Jewish immigrants from Latin America, Russia, and Israel, as well as Orthodox Jews from the Northeast.
Surfside, which borders on Miami Beach, is currently the area’s most Jewish neighborhood. In fact, of its 6,000 residents, almost half are Orthodox Jews.
Miami in the 1930s.
Broward County: The Little-Known Story of Sam Horvitz
By 1910, five years before Broward became a county, a Jew named Louis Brown arrived in Dania, the county’s first city. By 1923, seven Jewish families were living in Fort Lauderdale, and after a few more families moved there, the first Jewish service in Broward County was held on September 17, 1926.
The building boom in the area went bust in 1926, but the small Jewish community remained. By the second half of the 1930s, the area began to recover. The Jewish community also grew, and by 1940, there were 1,000 Jews in Broward County. Today, the city of Hollywood, in Broward County, has a robust Jewish community.
Few know the fascinating background: a Jewish family is largely responsible for the city’s growth.
In the 1920s, Sam Horvitz, a high school dropout from Cleveland, entered a contract to build sidewalks and streets for Hollywood. In the building bust of the late 1920’s, Sam purchased and eventually owned more than half the vacant land in the city. As the owner of over 25,000 lots, Horvitz began building and selling single-family homes.
When Sam Horvitz died, his son William took the reins of Hollywood Inc. and continued to build on his father’s vision. The company began extending the city westward, with carefully controlled development adhering to the concept of quality communities. Hollywood Inc. built Orangebrook Golf Estates, Hollywood Hills, Emerald Hills, Lakes of Emerald Hills, Hollywood Mall (the first enclosed mall in Florida), the Bank of Hollywood Hills, the Post Haste Shopping Center, Sheridan Mall, and the Executive Plaza of Emerald Hills.
In 1966, Maynard Abrams became Broward’s first Jewish mayor for the City of Hollywood. He was followed by many dozens of Jewish mayors, state legislators, and US Congressional representatives in Broward County.
In the 1970s, Jewish retirees began choosing Broward as their new home, and moved to retirement communities in west Broward, such as Century Village in Pembroke Pines. The large Jewish population in Broward fostered a strong sense of community and Jewish identity. Multiple synagogues opened there. In 1970, there were 40,000 Jews, and in 1990, the Jewish community of Broward peaked at 275,000.
Today, Broward County has many thriving Jewish communities, including Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Cooper City, Deerfield Beach, Hallandale Beach, Pompano Beach, Tamarac, and Weston, with over 235,000 Jews.
Palm Beach County’s Boca Raton: From One Family to Half the Population
The first known Jewish residents of Boca Raton, Florence, and Harry Brown, arrived in 1931 from St. Louis.
Restrictive and antisemitic real estate practices kept the Jewish community small during the first decades of the 1900s. By the 1960s, the Jewish population began to grow, and in 1979, the Jewish population of Boca Raton, Highland Beach, and Delray Beach was estimated at 37,000.
The opening of Interstate 95 through Boca Raton in the 1970s eased the path for Jews from the Northeast to move to South Palm Beach County. Additionally, Jews from Miami and Broward County began moving to Boca Raton in the 1970’s, a trend that continued for the next thirty years.
Today, Boca Raton’s Jewish community, which started with a single family in 1931, has grown to almost half the city’s population. There are approximately 230,000 Jews in Palm Beach County, with very large communities in Boca Raton, Delray Beach, and Boynton Beach.
One of Miami’s distinctive communities is that of Cuban Jews. With the rise of Fidel Castro in 1959, approximately 10,000 Cuban Jews came to South Florida. The foundation they laid would help Jewish immigrants who followed them integrate into the South Florida Jewish community.
The Miami area currently has the highest proportion of foreign-born Jews of any area in the United States. Jews from Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil have settled in the Miami area. There are also almost 10,000 Israelis in the Miami and Hollywood areas.
The Growth of the Orthodox Community
Recently, there has been an explosive growth of South Florida’s Orthodox Jewish Community.
South Florida is blessed with hundreds of Orthodox shuls and Chabad centers, and dozens of Orthodox schools, and yeshivas. Over 8,000 children in Orthodox schools benefit from Florida’s school voucher system. There are advanced learning Kollels, Jewish outreach centers, and numerous kosher restaurants. In the winter, Chassidim from New York, including prominent rebbes and tens of thousands of Orthodox Jews from Brooklyn, Lakewood, and Chicago, visit South Florida for days or weeks.
Many residents and visitors take for granted the thriving Jewish communities and infrastructure already in place to benefit them.
The truth is that they owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Rabbi Alexander S. Gross (1917 – March 10, 1980), who played a central role in establishing Jewish life and Torah education in South Florida.
Rabbi Gross was an American Orthodox rabbi who established the Hebrew Academy of Greater Miami, the first Orthodox Jewish day school south of Baltimore, Maryland. He began the school in a storefront with just six students in 1947.
He was a graduate of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and a close student of the great Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, the founder of Torah U’Mesorah. Rabbi Gross believed that by giving children a strong Jewish education, he would raise the level of observance and knowledge among adults as well, thereby building vibrant, knowledgeable Jewish communities.
Rabbi Gross’ devotion was legendary. He would drive all around South Florida to bring Jewish children to Hebrew Academy, literally driving carpool for multiple families, to help ensure they received the vital Jewish education.
In time, the results of his efforts would be clear, as the following vignette demonstrates.
In 1959, due to severe financial strain, the Hebrew Academy of Miami Board of Directors had to institute an austere tuition policy. If parents didn’t pay tuition, their child would no longer be able to attend the school. One of the affected families, which was in any case not overly enthusiastic about their son attending the Jewish school, told their son, Billy, that he would no longer be able to attend Hebrew Academy.
Billy was devastated. He loved the Torah studies and the school. Sadly but gratefully, he wrote a handwritten letter to Rabbi Alexander Gross, letting him know how much he appreciated what the Hebrew Academy did for him and that he had no hard feelings towards anyone at the school.
After reading the letter, Rabbi Gross personally paid his tuition, and Billy stayed in the school. He thrived and graduated eighth grade as class valedictorian. He continued his studies in the renowned Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland and became an accomplished Torah scholar. He returned to Florida as a rabbi and built up the North Miami Beach community. Rabbi Zev (Billy) Leff is today the rabbi of Moshav Mattisyahu in Israel and a renowned lecturer and author.
After Rabbi Gross passed away, his family was clearing out his desk and found a folder that had “my children” written outside in Yiddish. It was a list of children he personally paid tuition for, so they could stay in the Hebrew Academy and not attend public school.
After building the Hebrew Academy, Rabbi Gross looked to raise the level of Torah learning and scholarship in South Florida. Until that point, he had sent his best students out of town to study in the larger yeshivas of the Northeast. In 1974, the Talmudic College of Florida was started with the support of Miami Beach philanthropist Moshe Chaim Berkowitz. He brought Rabbi Yochanan Zweig to serve as the esteemed Rosh Yeshiva, and as a result of this step, other yeshivas, Bais Yaakovs, and Kollelim would come to be built in multiple South Florida communities.
Rabbi Alexander S. Gross, like Moses Elias Levy 130 years earlier, had a Jewish vision for Florida. Both of their visions have come true.
Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA, from 2007 to 2020. He is a popular speaker and writes for numerous publications on Torah, Jewish History, and Contemporary Jewish Topics. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org
A version of this article was originally published at Aish.
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Congressional Hopeful Michael Blake Seeks to Erase AIPAC Support, Misleads on Past Trips to Israel
Former New York State Assemblyman Michael Blake is running for US Congress in the Democratic primary in New York’s 15th Congressional District. Photo: Screenshot
Michael Blake, a progressive Democrat running for US Congress in New York City, appeared to have recently made misleading statements about the nature of his previous trips to Israel and relationship with AIPAC, the country’s foremost pro-Israel lobbying group.
In Instagram comments, Blake characterized one of his visits to Israel as being done in his capacity as a reverend. Blake visited Israel in 2014 with the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and in 2017 with the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation.
“I attended a trip and spoke at previous events about my faith as an ordained reverend and about the Black & Jewish relationship but haven’t been involved in years,” he posted when asked to clarify his ties to AIPAC, which seeks to foster bipartisan support for the US-Israel alliance.
Blake, a former New York state assemblyman, is running an insurgent left-wing campaign to unseat incumbent US Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres, a staunch supporter of Israel, in the state’s 15th congressional district.
Regarding previous support from AIPAC, Blake said, “Donations would have been minimal in the past.”
Social media screenshot
However, Blake’s social media comments contradict previous documentation about the nature of his trip to Israel and relationship with AIPAC. Although Blake asserted that he visited Israel with an AIPAC-linked group as a reverend, reports indicate that he attended AIPAC events through 2019 and only became ordained as a reverend following his 2020 Democratic primary defeat to Torres.
“The Bronx Democrat then gave up his Assembly seat to fall to Ritchie Torres in a 2020 congressional race. Since then, he’s run his public affairs firm, backed Maya Wiley’s 2021 run for mayor, and got ordained as a reverend,” Politico reported in 2024 in an article on Blake considering a bid at the time for New York City mayor.
Contrary to Blake’s assertions that he only participated with AIPAC as a reverend, the politician participated in multiple AIPAC events, including its annual policy conference in 2017 while serving as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Skeptics have suggested that Blake invoked religion to minimize progressive blowback over his connections to AIPAC.
Last year, the New York Post first reported that Blake deleted several past social media posts touting his attendance at AIPAC events.
Since announcing his campaign to unseat Torres, Blake has lurched farther left on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an apparent attempt to court progressive voters. Blake has issued blistering statements condemning Israel of committing a so-called “genocide” in Gaza and vowed to vote against any military aid to the Jewish state.
“I am ready to fight for you and lower your cost of living while Ritchie fights for a Genocide. I will focus on Affordable Housing and Books as Ritchie will only focus on AIPAC and Bibi,” Blake posted on X in a statement last year announcing his candidacy, referencing Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In May 2025, however, during his failed campaign for mayor, Blake walked back his accusations of “genocide” against Israel, claiming that he regretted using the term to characterize the war in Gaza.
“It was wrong language to use,” Blake said, referencing his October 2023 post which accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. He apparently again reversed his stance when launching his congressional bid in New York’s 15th district.
Despite his efforts, Blake’s previous trips to Israel and history of praising the Jewish state have elicited skepticism among left-wing voters in New York City. Progressive critics have pointed to his 2017 speech at the annual AIPAC conference in which he lavished praise on Israel. In 2020, while speaking with Jewish Insider, he compared his experience as an African American to the struggles of Jewish people in Israel.
As the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel continues to deteriorate following the breakout of the Israel-Hamas war, liberal politicians have continued to recalibrate their approach to Middle Eastern geopolitics. Many ambitious Democratic candidates have staked out positions on Israel more aligned with the far-left, progressive flank of the party, accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” while vowing to oppose any arms sales to Jerusalem.
Despite his aggressive overtures to progressives, Blake’s campaign to unseat Torres still remains a longshot. The 15th district encompasses Riverdale, a heavily Jewish and affluent community and hub of pro-Israel activism. Polling suggests that Torres maintains heavy levels of support in his district, placing him among the most popular politicians in the state of New York.
Blake’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
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National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis
(JTA) — A national nonprofit that supports interfaith Jewish families has slashed its workforce after facing an unanticipated budget shortfall.
18Doors announced on March 31 that it had “significantly” reduced its staff due to budget constraints. In fact, about two-thirds of the staff were laid off the week before the announcement, board member Laurie Beijen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The nonprofit had 15 staff members last August, according to an archived version of its website. This week, it lists four employees, nearly all in the C-suite.
CEO Mike Wise has stepped down, and 18Doors is now being led by Ellen Frank, the chief operating officer, and Adam Pollack, the chief program officer, the organization said.
Among those no longer at 18Doors are employees responsible for fundraising, creating digital content about interfaith inclusion and running a referral service to connect interfaith families and clergy. That service, which the organization says reached 2,000 families a year, remains operational, Beijen said, but “to a lesser degree.”
She said the budget crunch was complex and had come as a surprise. She cited in particular the squeeze felt by nonprofits like 18Doors in recent years as foundations and donors shifted their giving priorities toward Israel and fighting antisemitism.
“We were kind of caught off guard by the severity of our funding issues,” Beijen said. “It’s a myriad of causes that are sort of short, medium and long term, and we ended up just getting caught in this storm.”
Jodi Bromberg stepped down as CEO in 2024 after helming the organization for a decade, including during its 2020 rebrand from InterfaithFamily. The organization hired a search firm to find her replacement and a consulting firm to help draw up a strategic plan, which Beijen said it had been “on the cusp” of announcing before instead sharply contracting.
A delayed annual gift also scrambled budget planning, Beijen said, with a gap of just a few months sending the organization into a financial crisis. 18Doors declined to identify the donor or the size of the gift.
The nonprofit has raised $2 to 3 million a year in recent years and spent all of that or more, according to its filings with the IRS. Its significant donors have included the Marcus Foundation and Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Jewish federation in Boston, where 18Doors is based. The Marcus Foundation and CJP did not respond to requests for comment.
In a statement emailed to the 18Doors community and posted on social media last week, the nonprofit wrote, “The Board has since secured necessary funding to stabilize the organization in the short term.”
Jewish philanthropic giving has changed since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with many donors choosing to focus on pro-Israel giving and causes that address antisemitism.
In December, the Shabbat dinner nonprofit OneTable laid off a quarter of its staff, citing donors’ funding priorities. The group is adapting its programming to include more Israel content.
At the recent Jewish Funders Network international conference, speakers, funders and philanthropy executives put a heavy emphasis on giving toward Israel and antisemitism-related issues, according to video and recaps of the conference.
Activists and educators in other areas say that while Israel and antisemitism are important issues, other causes are being left behind.
Founded in 2001, 18Doors says its mission is to encourage mixed-heritage families to engage in Jewish life, while encouraging Jewish communities and clergy to become more welcoming and inclusive.
18Doors’ vision of inclusion for interfaith families has grown closer to reality in the decades since its launch. In 2001, a Pew survey found that half of Jews who married in the previous 10 years had married non-Jews. Two decades later, in 2021, it found that the rate for marriages in the last decade had risen to 61%. Most children of the couples were being raised Jewish, the survey found, with participation in synagogue life and Jewish institutions common.
Two major seminaries recently began admitting students who are in relationships with people who are not Jewish, saying that they wanted to ordain rabbis who match the communities they serve. And in December, while continuing to prohibit intermarriages performed by its rabbis, leaders of the Conservative Movement formally apologized for decades of discouraging intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews and vowed to create new opportunities for inclusion in Conservative synagogues.
But advocates for interfaith families say much more needs to be done.
“The idea that being warm and welcoming is sufficient is false. There’s much more to learn and to do,” said Keren McGinity, an interfaith educator and scholar. “18Doors is important because they are part of the work that gets done, including training clergy.”
McGinity has her own experience with layoffs in the interfaith inclusion space. She was the interfaith specialist at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism before her position was eliminated last year.
She said she is optimistic that 18Doors’ financial crunch will be temporary — but she said she believed the Jewish philanthropic landscape needs to change nonetheless.
“What concerns me is that there should be more funding channeled towards engaging interfaith couples and families,” McGinity said.
Though no other institution has quite the national reach that 18Doors has, other organizations addressing some aspects of interfaith family life include the children’s Jewish literacy program PJ Library; Embark at Mem Global, a program for interfaith and mixed-heritage couples in their 20s and 30s; and Honeymoon Israel, which provides trips to Israel for “young couples of all backgrounds.”
Beijen said 18Doors is aiming to preserve its flagship 18-month clergy program, the Rukin Rabbinic Fellowship, which provides training for spiritual leaders who work with interfaith families.
Bromberg, the group’s former CEO, says 18Doors serves families like hers: Her wife is Catholic and they have children together. Now a consultant helping other nonprofits, she said the cuts at 18Doors signify both a crushing loss and a pressing question.
“These are long time, long-tenured staff. The Jewish community as a whole will lose the institutional knowledge and the relationships that it’s had through 18Doors, through the laying off of those staff,” she said.
Bromberg added, “The question it leaves in the minds of families like mine is: Whose priority are mixed-heritage and interfaith families in Jewish life?”
The post National support group for interfaith Jewish families guts staff amid funding crisis appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish groups condemn Trump’s threat that a ‘whole civilization will die’ in Iran
(JTA) — Jewish groups were among those criticizing President Donald Trump and accusing him of using genocidal rhetoric on Tuesday after Trump posted online that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social. “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?”
The president’s comments came hours before his 8 p.m. deadline for Iran on Tuesday to reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and were met by swift condemnation by a group of Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“We speak today with one voice and one purpose: to condemn President Trump’s threat to extinguish an entire civilization,” Schumer wrote in a joint statement. “This is not strength. Intentionally destroying the power, water or basic infrastructure upon which tens of millions of civilians depend to punish the very civilians who suffer at the hands of the Iranian regime would constitute a war crime, a betrayal of the values this nation was founded on and a moral failure.”
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, condemned the president’s remarks, saying in a statement that there were “simply no words to describe the danger of a U.S. president openly threatening to erase an entire civilization.” She alluded to Jews’ history of facing genocidal leaders in her comments.
“Make no mistake: the president’s threats are deeply reprehensible to us as Jews and as Americans, and must be condemned by all leaders – regardless of their stance on the war with Iran,” Spitalnick said. “We know what it means when leaders call for communities and populations to be wiped out.”
Spitalnick was not the only Jewish leader to weigh in. Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal pro-Israel lobby J Street, said in a statement that the group was “appalled by President Trump’s heinous remarks.”
“This language – a threat to carry out war crimes – is a searing violation of Jewish and American values, certainly will not lead to the de-escalation we desperately need and is a terrifying example of the senseless violence that has characterized Trump’s leadership,” Ben-Ami said, calling on Congress and the Cabinet to “do everything in their power to restrain and remove him.”
Other progressive Jewish groups and leaders accused Trump of promoting genocide, including Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, which wrote in a post on Instagram, “This is not strength. This is not safety. This is a call for genocide.”
Timothy Snyder, a historian of the Holocaust, also leveled the accusation against the president in a Substack post published on Tuesday titled “The president speaks genocide.”
“To bomb a bridge or a dam or a power plant or a desalinization facility, very likely a war crime in any event, could very well have a different legal significance, a genocidal one, if it takes place after the expression of genocidal intent by the commander and head of state,” Snyder wrote.
For some Jews, the president’s looming deadline for Iran carried added significance as it came during the final days of Passover — and as Iran continued to barrage Israel with missiles.
“Tonight, I pray that the Pharaohs who insist on our demise recognize the harm that they may bring on themselves,” Rabbi Arie Hasit, associate dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Israel, wrote on Facebook. “That they recognize that Iran can put aside its insistence that Israel must be destroyed and that they can make the necessary steps to end this war.”
“And I pray that if they are overcome by Pharaoh, that no leader try to play the part of God,” Hasit continued. “That in the name of my future, we do not wipe out any civilization. That we understand that even the worst of enemies does not justify the use of the fiercest of our power.”
The post Jewish groups condemn Trump’s threat that a ‘whole civilization will die’ in Iran appeared first on The Forward.