Miami Beach
America’s Riviera celebrates a century
Hard to believe that Miami Beach, the oceanside city in Florida that boasts one of the most popular and heralded beaches in the world, is now celebrating its 100th anniversary. Like Tel Aviv by the sea, Miami Beach is a relatively new city.
I think about this connection as I sip a cappuccino in Aroma Espresso Bar, 540 Collins Avenue at 5th Street, Miami Beach. Aroma sits right in the heart of the section of Miami Beach known as South Beach, where throughout the year one can bask in hot breezes, sit or walk on miles of golden beach and frequent avant-garde coffee houses, top-of-the line restaurants and bars.
South Beach remains quintessential Miami and it sparkles 24/7. As one travel description has it, South Beach contains a congregation of “beautiful people, stunning girls and sleek hunks” in an area where people move from chic hotel to chic café to chic bar, including reasonably priced Cuban restaurants such as Puerto Sagua, 700 Collins Avenue.
Obviously, sun and sand play a big part in attracting several million tourists each year to Miami Beach. Its hotels range from the 800-room Loews to the world-famous Fontainebleau and Eden Roc to boutique deco hotels, such as the Raleigh and Cardozo, the latter proudly bearing the name of the US Supreme Court judge Benjamin N. Cardozo, who was Jewish.
Miami Beach island sits only 4 km. from the international city of Miami across Biscayne Bay, and the isle measures 16 km. from north to south and 1.6 to 4.8 km. wide. Four causeways link Miami Beach with the mainland.
Miami Beach leaves its mark on travelers and tourists as the spot “where the old could grow young and the young never grow old,” according to its founder, Carl Fisher, who arrived in the area in 1913 to begin developing the island. Two years later, Miami Beach was incorporated as a town; the rest is history: The resort turned into the spectacular winter playground known as America’s Riviera.
Not to overdo the Miami Beach-Tel Aviv connection, but South Beach boasts the world’s largest concentration of Art Deco buildings, known for their funky colors.
At 10th Street, I walk north along Ocean Drive. The palm trees and the beach are to my right, the bestknown Art Deco buildings to my left. This architectural style is varied, with names such as Mediterranean Revival and Miami Modern. Admiring the buildings, I notice tile roofs, rounded windows, ornamental balconies. I take in the modern-style, box-like buildings standing next to structures that look like the side of a ship. As our guide from the Miami Design Preservation League, Richard “Rick” Baugher, puts it, “where old meets new.”
Ocean Drive is very popular at night, when traffic, with its myriad of cars, is a slow process. It is so slow that it is said that drivers peer into outdoor restaurants and onto porches, and people in the restaurants and porches gaze back, a ritual “that is known to yield dates.”
A must-see Jewish site is the Jewish Museum of Florida, located at 301 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach. Two buildings comprise the complex: The building on the left is the historic Beth Jacob Congregation; the structure on the right is an addition which enlarged the museum.
The story goes that the location was picked because the congregation had to be located south of Fifth Street. In the early days of Miami Beach, Jews were not allowed to reside north of Fifth Street, as developers had placed restrictive covenants on island deeds that prohibited the sale of Miami Beach lots to Jews in the northern area.
However, the Lummus Brothers, one of the developers that built the island, owned properties at the southern end of Miami Beach and they did not bar Jews from retaining property there. Thus, Jewish hotels and apartment construction boomed in that area on into the 1920s. Beth Jacob was established in 1927.
By the 1930s, however, the restrictive covenants fell and construction continued so much so that all of Miami Beach became the chosen home of Jewish retirees, most of them from the Mid-Atlantic and New England states.
Finally, in 1949 a law was passed by the Florida legislature that ended discrimination in real estate and hotels. Today, three flags – of the US, Israel and Florida – fly at the Jewish Museum, indicating the ties between the three entities and their citizens.
I learn of the history of the Jews in Florida, a young history, considering that Jews first came to the United States in 1654. The first Jewish family came to Miami Beach in 1913.
At the museum, I take in a magnificent art display, titled “The Chosen: Selected Works from Florida Jewish Art Collectors,” as well as a special exhibition dedicated to senator Richard B. Stone, who served as Florida’s second and most recent Jewish US senator (1975-1980.)
After our visit to the Jewish Museum in the morning, we stop for lunch at a café along Lincoln Road Mall, the pedestrian area of shops and restaurants.
Next, on to the second must-see Jewish site on the beach: the Holocaust Memorial, one of the most striking monuments to the six million murdered Jews that I have seen in my world travels. It is located at 1933-1945 Meridian Avenue, right in the heart of Miami Beach. I recognize the numerical address of 1933-1945, the years of Nazi Germany.
The memorial is not a museum, though there is a historical overview on a black granite wall of the history of the period 1933-1945, with photos, many of them graphic, to show the horror the Germans committed against the six million, many of whose names line the memorial wall.
The centerpiece of the memorial plaza is the 13-meter bronze arm that appears to be reaching up out of the ground. The statue leaves an impression that one may never forget: life-sized bronze figures of people clinging to the arm and trying to climb up to safety to the sky above, to no avail. Many in our group say “Never Again.”
Admission to the memorial is free, 365 days a year, from 9:30 a.m. until sunset.
Today there are about 21,000 Jews living in Miami Beach, mostly Orthodox, Jews from Latin American countries and Israelis. The Israelis number about 1,300 adults, according to Prof. Ira M. Sheshkin, chairman of the Department of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. Total Jewish population in Miami-Dade County is about 123,000, out of about 2.6 million residents.
Sheshkin, who is also the editor of the American Jewish Yearbook, told me that in 1994 there were 34,000 Jews living in Miami Beach. But as the retirement-home structures aged in the 1980s, many Jews moved north to Broward and Palm Beach counties, the latter county reportedly now the fastest-growing Jewish county in the US.
It is not difficult for the traveler to find a synagogue or kosher restaurant in Miami-Dade County. One estimate has it that there are nearly two dozen kosher dairy restaurants, and several dozen kosher meat restaurants in the county.
Here are a few kosher establishments in Miami Beach: Asi’s Grill and Sushi Bar, 4020 Royal Palm Avenue; Pita Hut, 530 West 41st Street; and House of Dog, 456 West 41st Street.
According to Encyclopedia Judaica, there are more than 20 synagogues on the beach, and a number of Jewish day schools. A new Jewish Community Center is located at 4221 Pine Tree Drive, Miami Beach.
Ben G. Frank, travel writer and lecturer, is the author of the just-published Klara’s Journey: A Novel (Marion Street Press); The Scattered Tribe: Traveling the Diaspora from Cuba to India to Tahiti & Beyond (Globe Pequot Press); A Travel Guide to Jewish Europe: Third Edition; A Travel Guide to Jewish Russia and Ukraine and A Travel Guide to the Jewish Caribbean and South America (Pelican Publishing Company). www.bengfrank.blogspot.com, Twitter @bengfrank