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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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El-Sayed defends opposing Israel aid as he woos Jewish voters
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed made opposition to U.S. military aid to Israel a defining issue of his campaign in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. On Sunday, as the party’s nominee, El-Sayed explained why he supported sending American military aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia but opposes sending aid to Israel as it fights Hamas and other armed groups in the region.
“In Ukraine, you’re talking about attacks from a leader of a neighboring sovereign country, who clearly violated international law in attempting to breach the sovereignty of the Ukrainian public,” El-Sayed said in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. “That is conditional on that circumstance.”
As for Israel, he argued, the United States has “been offering unconditional foreign military aid to Israel independent of the circumstances for years and years and years.”
The distinction comes as El-Sayed tries to draw a clearer line around his position on Israel aid as he moves into the general election, following a narrow victory over Rep. Haley Stevens, who was backed by AIPAC and other pro-Israel Jewish groups.
Since his primary win, El-Sayed said in media appearances that his opposition to unconditional military aid — including funding to the Iron Dome defense system — goes beyond Israel. He pointed to Egypt, where his parents were born, as well as to Saudi Arabia and Jordan, saying those U.S. allies should not receive unconditional American military support either.
“It’s not just Israel,” El-Sayed said, adding, “It’s about the conditions.”
When pressed on whether there was any scenario in which he would support military aid to Israel, El-Sayed said he could consider supporting it if Israelis and Palestinians reached an agreement that guaranteed, as he described it, the “Palestinian people and Jewish Israeli people” equal rights to “peace, dignity, and self-determination.” During the primary, El-Sayed stopped short of explicitly backing a two-state solution.
The Jewish voter test
El-Sayed’s position on Israel is becoming a test of whether he can unite Democrats for the general election in one of the nation’s most important swing states. Many Jewish Democrats remain uneasy with his rhetoric on Israel — including his calling Israel “bloodthirsty” — even as the party needs their support to defeat Republican Mike Rogers and improve its chances of winning back the Senate.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America, which backed Stevens and said its volunteers made nearly 100,000 calls on her behalf, said that the “razor-thin margin” in El-Sayed’s victory is evidence that pro-Israel Democrats remain an important electorate within the party.
Halie Soifer, JDCA’s chief executive and a Michigan native, said in a Substack post Friday that Jewish Democrats are standing “on a political fault line” after El-Sayed’s victory. “Jewish voters’ concern with El-Sayed and other far-left candidates is rooted in concern for our safety and security given rising antisemitism and antisemitic violence, including when Jews are blamed for the actions of Israel,” she wrote.
Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in Michigan, but they could still prove decisive in a close race. Michigan has been decided by narrow margins in recent elections: Donald Trump won the state in 2016, Joe Biden flipped it in 2020, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin narrowly won her Senate race in 2024 even as Trump carried the state in the presidential race.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, which spent more than $30 million in the primary, is reportedly weighing additional spending in the general election to boost Rogers. It would likely be joined by other groups, including the centrist Democratic groups Third Way and Welcome PAC, as well as the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal pro-Israel group J Street — a progressive alternative to AIPAC — urged El-Sayed to take a different approach to the Jewish voters who opposed him. Ben-Ami wrote in a Substack post that El-Sayed should spend significant time listening to Jewish Michiganders and their concerns about vulnerability and antisemitism, while making clear “in words and in actions” that Jews who care deeply about Israel have a place in his coalition.
‘I love and revere Judaism’
In the Sunday interview, El-Sayed sought to reassure Jewish voters who remain skeptical of him.
Asked to respond to President Donald Trump’s comments that El-Sayed “hates” Israel and Jewish people “with a passion that burns in his heart,” El-Sayed said, “I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people. I believe they’re a light unto the world.”
El-Sayed recalled growing up in Bloomfield Hills, a metro Detroit community with a large Jewish population, and being invited to Passover Seders, synagogues and bar and bat mitzvahs. “I’m really honored for what I learned and got to share with my Jewish sisters and brothers,” he said. “But they are not the same as AIPAC and Israel.”
The candidate also disavowed some remarks by Hasan Piker, the popular pundit and streamer who has been accused of antisemitic rhetoric and who appeared with El-Sayed on the campaign trail. El-Sayed said Piker’s statement that “America deserved 9/11” was “dumb,” though he did not commit to ending campaign appearances with him.
The test in the coming months is whether El-Sayed can win over skeptical Jewish and moderate Democrats without moderating his views on Israel or losing the progressive and pro-Palestinian voters who propelled him to victory.
The post El-Sayed defends opposing Israel aid as he woos Jewish voters appeared first on The Forward.
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The Nakba exhibit and the importance of historical context
By NOAH STRAUSS When I went to the Nakba Exhibit, I was shocked, not by the contents of the exhibit but by its size. The exhibit was tiny in my eyes, and I thought the amount of outcry was excessive for an exhibit that is less than 500 words. It felt like every other day the National Post had an article about the exhibit, criticizing different aspects of it. But then I had a realization: the exhibit was never criticized because it was “too” big, but because of the contents of it. When I was toured by the curator, I actually asked her, “Where is the rest of it?” I was confused because I had been misled by the media to believe the size of the exhibit was massive.
I believe that every human being should be able to live a free life. No human should be bullied for who they are. That is not okay, and to some credit, the Nakba exhibit does cover this. But where my problem now comes into play is the fact that the museum fails to portray the full history surrounding the Nakba.
The museum is publicly funded; our taxpayers’ dollars go there. It is supposed to represent our nation and our beliefs, not take a side on history. The Museum did exactly that. It took a side, and guess what? It caused chaos.
Whenever asked why it does not show the other side of history, the museum would always say something along the lines of: our space is limited, the focus of the exhibit is solely the Nakba, etc. But to me, these are excuses, and I will call that out.
For context, the Nakba was an event that occurred around 1948 after the 1947 UN Partition Plan. The Nakba continued until about 1949. During this time, approximately 750,000 Palestinians were either forced out or left what is now Israel.
The Museum is contributing to concerns surrounding the rise of antisemitism. The Museum has failed to mention that during the same era as the Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were displaced from Middle Eastern and North African countries, with many forced to leave because of their religion.
Context matters. Yes, 750,000 Palestinians were displaced, but what happened during the same era also left hundreds of thousands of Jewish people without homes. When a visitor with no historical context walks in to see what the “Jewish” people did to the Palestinians, of course they’re going to blame the Jews. Because it makes me, a Jewish person, look terrible.
In my view, the exhibit contributes to concerns about growing antisemitism by presenting an incomplete historical narrative.
But then, as Jewish people, we need to know when it’s time to move forward. We need to focus on how we can positively portray the Jewish community and show the world who we are, rather than allowing others to define us through a one-sided historical narrative.
Noah Strauss is a 15-year-old Gray Academy student
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Trump is still going after Palestinians in the U.S. Jews must keep protesting those antidemocratic efforts
Mohsen Mahdawi, a 35-year-old Palestinian, has been a permanent resident of the United States for the past 14 years. And as the U.S. government presses ahead with efforts to deport him over his pro-Palestinian advocacy at Columbia University, more than 1,000 Jews have come forward to defend him by signing an open letter I authored.
Why? At a time of particularly fractious division in the Jewish community over issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how is it possible that so many Jews have come together in support of a Palestinian activist?
One key reason is that the government is seeking to infringe upon the rights of someone who neither engaged in acts of violence nor supported them. In July, the Second Circuit Court overruled a prior district court judge’s dismissal of the deportation case against Mahdawi, giving new energy to the government’s efforts.
Mahdawi has committed no crime; the government has not even bothered to accuse him of doing so. Instead, he simply gave voice to his belief in the necessity of freedom for his people.
Jews of all ideological stripes can and should agree that it is wrong to penalize someone for the expression of their political views. They don’t need to go far back in time to recall that such tactics have often been used against Jews themselves — in the Soviet Union to suppress refuseniks who sought to manifest their identity as Jews; in the U.S. during the McCarthy era; and, most ominously, during the dark age of Nazi totalitarianism.
In drafting an open letter defending Mahdawi, focused on the attack on his political rights, I hoped that a diverse range of Jews would be willing to acknowledge that whether they agree or disagree with Mahdawi, the government’s targeting of him represents a threat to all of us.
I know Mahdawi personally. We met at a peace-building retreat in the summer of 2024. He was an enormously compelling presence who drew people together through his preternatural calmness and clarity of purpose.
Since then, I have come to see him as a unifier, not a divider. He’s an advocate of peace, not war. And he has the potential to become a leader of enormous charisma and potential.
So why has the Trump administration devoted so much attention to persecuting a Palestinian student who has repeatedly called out antisemitism, including at a Palestinian solidarity rally at Columbia?
The sad reality is that Mahdawi, like his fellow Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, is being persecuted for the crime of being Palestinian.
The U.S. State Department came up with the logic-defying claim, in March 2025, that Mahdawi’s activities at Columbia “would have a potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.” If this administration truly wishes to advance its foreign policy interests, then it should focus on reconstructing Gaza and building a framework for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, not targeting a devoted adept of non-violence like Mahdawi.
Many who signed the letter in support of Mahdawi joined in for the simple reason that they believe it is un-American to discriminate against people on the basis of their political views. Some who added their names felt, as I did , that there was another compelling reason to sign on: that Mahdawi’s activism gives the lie to the prevalent myth that to be pro-Palestine is to be antisemitic. This proposition gets buried in the raging discourse around antisemitism and Israel today.
It is essential to recognize that support for the cause of Palestinian freedom and self-determination is not the political or moral equivalent of antisemitism. It is a precondition to a world in which Israeli Jews and Palestinians live peaceably together. And it is a cause that Jews, by virtue of their own historical experience of exile, should be eminently capable of both understanding and supporting.
Mohsen Mahdawi perfectly exemplifies the position. He is fierce in his advocacy for Palestinian rights. And he is fierce in his opposition to all forms of identity-based discrimination, including and especially, antisemitism. He deserves better from the U.S., and we Jews must vigorously oppose the profound miscarriage of justice being directed against him.
David N. Myers teaches Jewish history at UCLA.
The post Trump is still going after Palestinians in the U.S. Jews must keep protesting those antidemocratic efforts appeared first on The Forward.
